Album Liner Notes

1960 Outward Bound liner notes by Ron Eyre

Much of the excitement in Jazz is crested when new name comes to light. Sometimes it is carried from lip to lip with forest fire speed and soon everyone is talking about this new name. Sometimes the fire is quenched as quickly as it began. Other times it persists, steadily burning and increasing in intensity, the name continuing to be mentioned and discussed wherever jazz is the topic. The latter analogy describes the effect Eric Dolphy has had since he came east from California in 1958 as part of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Eric immediately began to make his presence in N. Y. felt. Noted critic-writer and broadcaster Ira Gitler heard Eric play at an after hours session at Newport in 1958 and the fire was started. It was Ira who started the thought processes turning here at Prestige to the direction of producing an album by Eric. On the day this session was recorded, Martin Willies (Co-editor of the Jazz Review) called us up to tell us he had heard a young men playing with the Charlie Mingus group and that we must hear him. It was Eric and when we told Martin we were doing a date with Eric that same afternoon, well, he flipped.

Eric Dolphy was born in Los Angeles on June 20, 1928 and had started on his first instrument, the clarinet, before his ninth birthday. At sixteen he took up the saxophone. He studied music with Lloyd Reese. His first gigs were in L.A., and it was here that Eric got his first professional job, with Charlie Mingus!

On this album you will hear Eric playing alto-sax, bass-clarinet and flute. He also plays tenor sax. When we asked Eric about his early career on the west coast he was quick to express his gratitude to the people who had taken an interest in his career. If you think the young jazz musician doesn't get any encouragement from the experienced guys you would do well to listen to Eric.

"I was helped greatly by Gerald Wilton. Here is a man who has been making the modern sounds since the war years. He had a band in 1944 that would still be considered modern today". We had asked Eric whether modern jazz had slowed in progress between the years 1950 and 1960. "A lot of people don't realize that what they hear on records are not the only sounds being played. A lot of guys have been trying to put forward a new approach and a different sound, something in which they honestly believe in. But they've been put down. Nobody wants to listen so the cat goes back to the popular sounds, he loses heart and gets discouraged. This is particularly true on the west coast, a guy doesn't have much of a chance to be heard anyway, the clubs come and go all the time. The sounds the guys plea among themselves are a lot further advanced than what is heard in the clubs. The new sounds age there if somebody wants to listen."

Returning to his influences, Eric went on; "Gerald did a lot for me, he would take me around to hear all the musicians and explain things to me. I owe an awful lot to this man."

Eric then went on to tell us of the many others who had helped him; "Walter Benton, who plays tenor sax on the coast, influenced me greatly. We played together a lot and we were in the army together. Then there's Lester Robinson, a trombonist. We were very close and Les was in the band I had for a while which consisted of ten pieces. There is Buddy Collette who got me interested in the flute."....."I met Clifford Brown out there too and he and Harold Land, Max Roach and Richie Powell used to come over to the house to play. Oh there were lots of guys that helped me, Red Callender, now there's a man who influenced me." Going back to an early influence Eric recalled, "I remember seeing the show Sweet And Hot and I couldn't watch the show for listening to the Ellington band and that wonderful Jimmy Blanton".

We asked Eric how he's felt since being in the east; "I had always wanted to come to New York but you have to be pushed. Things are so bad on the coast. I guess you get to feeling it's the same anywhere and then you know you are going to meet a lot of competition. I'm glad I came and since I have been here I've been able to expand and develop. Working with Chico did a lot in this respect. I met Freddie Hubbard when I was with the Chico Hamilton group and Freddie was with Sonny Rollins, and George Tucker and I met when we worked together at Minton's. John Coltrane has been very helpful, and encouraged me to stay. I admire John's work, he keeps going forward all the time, always fresh and new sounding." It is interesting to note the similarity of backgrounds between Eric Dolphy and another multi-instrumentalist who is well represented both on the Prestige label and the New Jazz label, one Jerome Richardson. They both are from the West coast, both started on their first instrument at the age of eight and started playing professionally around the same time, both play a range of instruments and both have creative writing ability. When we asked Eric about Jerome he said "I call him my secret teacher."

The effect on us when the group went into the first take at the session is difficult to describe. The number was "G. W."; written by Eric in 1957 as a tribute to Gerald Wilson. Our immediate thoughts were that these five amazing musicians were right at that moment adding a new dimension to modern jazz. We were taken back to the first time we heard the Kenton crew back in 1945 with guys like Vido Musso, Ray Wetzel, Conte Condoli and "Boots" Mussulli. The comparison may sound strange but the Kenton band in those days opened a door for this listener who was then living in England and the "new" sounds being made by people like Parker and Monk were just not being heard across the Atlantic.

As we listen to "G. W." we thought, "This is what we have been waiting for, this is jazz one step ahead". We know there are going to be the cries of criticism and alarm, as there was with the printing press, the steam engine and the automobile. As there was with Parker, Monk, Coltrane and now Ornette Coleman. (Eric met Ornette in L. A. in 1954. "He taught me a direction".) This is right out of the Coleman dynasty, this is the sound of tomorrow, the sound of the Atlas missile, the sound of the Pioneer radio blip from outer space. It 1s beyond, searching and probing and full of the blood tingling excitement of a jet taking off, or when a bathysphere records the sound of subterranean inhabitants several mites down on the floor of the deepest trench.

It is all here on this first track, from the opening unison of alto and trumpet, into Eric's intense and electric solo and Freddie following with some beautiful trumpet. There is so much to notice and hear in this one, for us it was a lesson in driving cohesion from a quintet. The tremendous drive of Roy Haynes and the great power of George Tucker's bass. His solo is masterful and one of the finest we've heard. Then there is the punching attack from Jaki Byard's piano throughout, just listen to that guy "blow". On this showing George and Jaki are very big threats for top honors on their respective instruments.

The fantastic technique of Eric Dolphy on a reed instrument is brought into sharp focus on "Green Dolphin Street". His bass clarinet solo is full of ideas and rich with movement and color. Note the contrast of bass-clarinet and muted trumpet. The pendulum ending is a real ear catcher. The range of the bass clarinet is such that one almost feels there are two different instruments with the trumpet.

The next one was written by Eric in honor of trombonist Lester Robinson. "Les" is a torrent of sound that opens with a roar as Roy Haynes’ drums lead Eric and Freddie in. The solo order is alto, trumpet, piano. Bass and drums come in fast before the ensemble. The close is a kaleidoscopic patchwork of colors. The fire of the group is astounding and we should point out that none of the rhythm section had seen the charts prior to the session. They sound as though they had been playing them all their lives. This was one of those rare occasions where a quintet was formed for a recording session and absolute harmony was achieved immediately.

"245" (Eric's street number in Brooklyn) is next. We like Freddie Hubbard's open horn on this one, particularly when he growls. Eric picks up his alto again and his solo is a blending of the old and new, still OUTWARD BOUND, but the foundation of the blues is strong. This is part of the excitement that Eric Dolphy is creating, the major fact that his seeking of new vistas is not just blind groping but a forward movement with a firm hold on jazz conception. We wonder if you will have the same feeling as we on listening to these examples of the Dolphy writing, that is that they would make fine big band arrangements. This impression is probably heightened by the wonderful full sound the group has.

Richard Rodgers' "Glad To Be Unhappy" (from the Broadway production of "On Your Toes" of 1936) is used as a vehicle for Eric on flute. His breathing control is shown to good advantage and he doesn't find it necessary to "cover up" with flourishes on this tricky instrument. He constructs with charm and feeling, setting the mood with lyrical phrasing. "Miss Toni" is a light swinger with the bass-clarinet again. Eric gets a richness of tone and a clarity in the upper register that is not easy on this cumbersome reed instrument. Freddie comes in with some strong horn and then Jaki, George and Roy have some fun at the bridge before the out chorus.

This then is Eric Dolphy and some of his many sides. We hope you enjoy listening to his work here as much as we did in producing it. We would like to give you some brief particulars on the other four members.

Freddie Hubbard was born in Indianapolis on April 7, 1938. He studied music at the Jordan Conservatory of Music. He is at the time of writing with the Jay Jay Johnson Quintet. Although only 22 he has already worked with such greats as Sonny Rollins, John Colrane, "Philly" Joe Jones, Charlie Persip and Slide Hampton.

George Tucker was a perfect choice for this date, having worked with Jerome Richardson during 1959. George was born in Palatka, Florida some 33 years ago. He has been very active in the East during the last few years and is a much respected bassist. We think he is one of the finest on the scene today.

Roy Haynes needs little introduction, one of jazz' most tasteful modern drummers, Roy has swung behind such names as Lester Young, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and many more. He is famous for his association with Sarah Vaughan. Roy currently has his own trio and at this writing had recently completed an engagement at the Five Spot in New York.

Jaki Byard has been dividing his activities between New York and Boston. He did much of the writing and preparation for the famous DJ John McLellan and his History Of Jazz show in that city. Jaki taught music for seven years and his own studies were under Grace Johnson Brown. He comes from a very musical family and plays the trombone and saxophone as well as piano. He has been with the Maynard Ferguson band for about a year. His fellow musicians are aware of his great jazz piano, we think the jazz fans will be getting the message in a very short time.

1961 Out There liner notes by Joe Goldberg

It would be best to acknowledge, right at the outset, that this is not the most easily grasped jazz album you are ever likely to hear. And it is also appropriate to say that, like many things which require careful attention, it repays that attention with a greater reward than you might get from music that reveals its total character the first time round.

This is Eric Dolphy's second album for Esquire. He has appeared as a sideman on other records (Oliver Nelson's Screamin' the blues, Esquire 32-148: Ken McIntyre's Looking ahead, Esquire 32-133), but since Eric himself makes a careful distinction between albums such as this, on which his own music is played, and others, it would be best to regard it as the second. This is by no means to disparage those other records. Eric says, "All music is good, and all music is challenge," and so he gave his best to those other efforts.

I asked him, thinking of rock-and-roll as I did so, if he really believed all music was good. "Yes," he said, "All music has its own message for someone. And I'm in no position to criticize anything. Take a piece like Bobby Timmons' Moanin'. A lot of people are talking against that kind of music, but those people are playing it different, in a modern way. That piece is really a beautiful piece. It's not really a blues, it just seems to be. It's got a very beautiful, complex structure. It shows a very good musical mind. I think that if you can play a piece, and get to understand it and what it's made up of, then you're in a position to criticize it."

Feeling put in my place, I returned to the subject of this record. It is, as I said, his second album as a leader. The first, Outward bound (Esquire 32-123), was based on the standard bop quintet format - reed instrument, trumpet and rhythm - and managed to do several things within that context that had never been done before. Many writers, in discussing it, latched on to a certain similarity between Eric and Ornette Coleman, and played it up for all it was worth, possibly as an excuse to avoid discussing the music directly. "I get bugged when people compare us," Eric said. "I've known Ornette a long time, and we agree about a good many things. But I'm just playing myself, the same as he is. Of course, so many people aren't interested in the music, but in the person. They only talk about the person. Take Beethoven. He was supposed to be a terrible person, and the writers of his time only talked about that. But he created something, and what he created was beauty, and it's still alive today."

Which is a good enough place to talk about what Eric has created here, with his second album. It is the mark of an artist that he takes what he needs, from whatever source, and turns it into something much deeper and more meaningful than it was before. Eric has made fresh use of some of the things he learned about orchestral sound when he was with the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Chico Hamilton, of course, is the man who combined the many reed instruments of Buddy Collette. the cello of Fred Katz, and the guitar of Jim Hall into one of the most unique sounds jazz had ever heard. But the music he created with that sound was, in many respects, quiet, placid and not too venturesome. As each of the men in the group became well known, some of them left the group, and Hamilton began looking for replacements. One of the men he found was Eric Dolphy. Since Eric could play alto, flute, and regular and bass clarinets, he was ideal for the group. He also found a young bass player named Ron Carter, who had played with the Eastman Rochester Symphony. Eric's ideas about music were a little different from Hamilton's ("I could play what I wanted," Eric said, "with restrictions"), and a record he made with the quintet was never released, because the recording company officials felt that "the group had lost its sound". It was later redone with a more conventional reedman, and everyone, presumably, was happy. Ron Carter never played cello with the group, but he would jam on the instrument whenever he got the chance, and Eric was highly impressed with what he heard - he had found, if you wish, a soulmate in the group.

Time passed, both Eric and Ron were in New York, and when the time came to do his second album as a leader, Eric decided to put the reeds-and-cello sound, which he loved, to more personal use. This album is the result. It could be discussed endlessly and technically, and probably will be, but Eric cautioned me, "Don't try and tell anybody what the guys are saying," and he is probably right. What he does want said, and he is right here, too, is that Ron Carter contributes here what is probably the best jazz use of bowed cello that has ever been heard. George Duvivier, he says, is one of the best bassists in jazz, but since he works mostly on recordings, his reputation is somewhat limited to the profession. "He's the bass on Lena Horne's record of Mood indigo," Eric said. "And musicians always ask for him again. That's the real reputation." (And it should also be noted that the one plucked solo of Ron's, on Serene, achieves an enormous degree of fascination and complexity with George's plucked bass behind it.) Roy Haynes, Eric feels, solved to perfection the problems in dynamics presented by a quartet with two stringed instruments.

Quickly, about the tunes themselves:

Out there is Eric's composition, and he plays alto.

Serene is also Eric's. It is a lovely, austere blues, and he plays bass-clarinet.

The Baron is Eric's portrait of former employer Charles Mingus, who used to call himself Baron Mingus several years ago in Los Angeles. I fell into the trap of discussing the man rather than the music, and tried to get some information about the controversial Mingus from Eric. "He writes very strong, daring music, and it's a ball to play with him." Eric said, ending that part of the conversation. The instrument is bass-clarinet.

Eclipse, is Mingus' own composition. Eric feels that, while this is perhaps not representative of Mingus' best writing, it most closely approximates the way Eric feels about him, and so he chose to play it. The instrument is regular B-flat clarinet.

17 West, by Dolphy, is part of a former Manhattan address. He plays flute.

Sketch of Melba, again on flute, is pianist Randy Weston's impression of trombonist Melba Liston.

The final composition, Feathers, which I find almost painfully haunting when Ron Carter backs Eric's poignant alto with a guitar-like use of cello, is by Hale Smith. Smith has recently been commissioned by BMI to write a composition commemorating that organization's twentieth anniversary. Eric was particularly impressed with this piece when it was in Chico Hamilton's book. When the quintet played Cleveland, Ohio, where the composer lives, Eric asked to meet him. They have since become good friends.

It should be said that, while the basic conception remains the same, there are differences in style in Eric's playing from one instrument to another. That is because he is highly conscious of the particular characteristics and capabilities of each one. and tends to shape a solo along these lines. An ambition of his, which he has not yet realized, is to some day play sets in clubs which would consist of the same tune played on the various horns.

His most basic ambition is rather a simple one. As he puts it, "I just came to New York to play". And that is what he's been doing. As this is written, he is about to go into rehearsal for a Jean Genet play, The Blacks. The music has been written by Max Roach, and Eric will be part of Max's pit band. He has also been associated with some of the so-called "Third Stream" experiments of Gunther Schuller and others. "It's just: music," he says, "and it's good music. I wish people would quit saying jazz musician, and just say musician. If you can play jazz, you can play other things. There's so much good music that isn't being heard. Schonberg and Berg and Bartok and Webern, they're just beginning to be heard. And so many other things that haven't been heard at all."

About his own work, and the work of the men he's been associated with, he has a final comment to make: "Something new's happening. I don’t know what it is, but it's new, and it's good, and it's just about to happen, and it's wonderful to be here in New York, right in the middle of it."

1965 Last Date liner notes by Nat Hentoff

The man's music had scorching power and there was often an exultant quality in his explosive solos - like, "Look how far I can GO on this horn!" The man himself was extraordinarily gentle. Not soft, but considerate, and remarkably free of malice. Eric Dolphy died in Berlin, Germany, on June 29, 1964. He was only thirty-six. The void he left was a considerable one in jazz. To those who knew him, the loss was personally acute because one gets to experience exceedingly few Eric Dolphys in a lifetime.

Charles Mingus, with whom Eric worked for a number of years, is not known for euphemisms. He speaks his mind about the live and the dead, the daily drag and the cosmic woe. So it comes with particular force when Mingus says: "Usually, when a man dies, you remember - or you say you remember - only the good things about him. With Eric, that's all you could remember. I don't remember any drags he did to anybody. The man was absolutely without a need to hurt."

Mingus went on to talk of Eric's music: "He had such a big sound, as big as Charlie Parker's. I mean, he didn't need a microphone. In that way, he was like the jazz musicians of the old school. Inside that sound was a great capacity to talk in his music about the most basic feelings. We used to do that, you know. We used to actually talk in our playing. He knew that level of the language which very few musicians get down to.

"Another thing about Eric," Mingus continued, "is that he was a complete musician. He could fit anywhere. Me was a fine lead alto in a big band. He could make it in a classical group. And, of course, he was entirely his own man when he soloed. Eric wasn't like a lot of the kids who call themselves 'new'. He had mastered jazz. And he had mastered all the instruments he played. In fact, he knew more than was supposed to be possible to do on them.

"He practiced," Mingus recalled, "incessantly. One of the last times I saw him was at a party in Europe. When I got there, the room was full of people talking and drinking. In a corner, listening to a Charlie Parker record, there was Eric practicing along with the record. He had music on his mind all the time. I don't know a time when he wasn't either playing or thinking about playing."

"A woman once told me," Mingus said, "about the effect of just looking at Eric from the audience. It was something about his eyes. The intelligence, the sense that he was absorbing everything around him. You know, there was a luminous quality about Eric, like he had distilled everything he was into the act of listening to and playing music. And another thing was that although he had his economic troubles and problems of not getting wide enough acceptance, he was always encouraging other people. I went through a time at a club we were playing in for a long while when I stopped taking solos. I was dragged because people weren't listening. He kept after me to solo again, 'Man,' he'd say, 'You've got to play. There are some people out there listening. Somebody cares.' No, I don't remember anything bad about this cat."

Another characteristic of Eric was his ceaseless wonder of the continual surprises in finding oneself through music. "There's so much to learn," Eric told me a few years ago, "and so much to try to got out. I keep hearing something else beyond what I've done. There's always been something else to strive for. The more I grow in my music, the more possibilities of new things I hear. It's like I'll never stop finding sound I hadn't thought existed."

Eric's last chance on recordings to keep finding sounds he hadn't thought existed was this session on June 2, 1964, in Hilversum, Holland. The rhythm section consisted of Misha Mengelberg, piano; Jacques Schols, bass; and Han Bennink, drums. An index of the pleasure Eric felt at working with this rhythm section was that he invited them to join him for an engagement at the Club Montmartre in Copenhagen. The letter containing the final details of the gig come to Han Bennink two days after Eric's death.

From the opening, lunging entrance to Thelonious Monk's Epistrophy on bass clarinet, Eric was irrepressibly engaged in search. The way Eric played the challenging bass clarinet, which he explored more fully than anyone else had in jazz before, was well described in Down Beat by musician-critic Dan Heckman: "In Dolphy's hands, the bass clarinet was never on awkward instrument; it possessed, instead, a serpentine aliveness that literally coiled with vitality." Because of difficulties endemic to the way the instrument is structured, few musicians can range easily throughout its whole spectrum; bet Eric had achieved total control and, as Heckman has observed, "he was ranging not only throughout its complete breadth but in and out harmonic overtone extensions as well."

The Madrig Speaks, The Panther Walks is another Dolphy original. Here Eric plays alto, and that was the instrument on which he first became widely known. I remember hearing him for the first time with Chico Hamilton in 1958. I'd heard that Chico's new group was much more emotionally driving than his previous chamber-like units, but I was not prepared for the lean young man who played alto with such searing intensity and in a style that was unmistakably and fiercely his own. By the time of this recording, Eric had continued to build on that style so that he was able to experiment more and widely on those speech-like sounds and figures he so liked. And yet, as you can hear in this track, underneath the successful experimentation was a basic concern with lyricism - with on unabashed, unfeigned intimacy and emotional expression.

in Misha Mangelberg's Hypochristmutresturz, Eric returns to the bass clarinet. Mengelberg himself is impressive in the percussive incisiveness and harmonic astuteness with which he both solos and accompanies. Eric customarily travels the whole circuit of jazz history in his solos in the sense that on inseparable part of his avant-garde adventures is the kind of "speaking" on a horn that marked the work of the very first jazzmen throughout the South and Southwest. I think, for example, that George Lewis or Jim Robinson would have little difficulty in understanding the fundamental thrust of Eric's music, even if they couldn't follow the exact logistics of his improvisations.

South Street Exit was one of Eric's own pieces. Just as he kept going deeper and deeper into the expressive possibilities of his instruments, so Eric kept growing as a composer, in this quicksilver-like tune, he switches to flute, an instrument on which he was - for me - the most resourceful and personal of all the musicians who have been trying to transmute the elusive sound of that instrument into jazz. On the flute, as on all the other horns he played, Eric listened for ways in which to play speech-like sounds and rhythms. And on the flute particularly, his remark about birds has special relevance. "Why shouldn't I imitate birds?" Eric once told Leonard Feather. "I can remember when the birds used to whistle along with me, back home in California and I'd drop whatever I was doing and play along with them. Sure it's deliberate; I've always liked birds and I like to sound like them." But, of course, it was more than imitation. It was the incorporation into his music of yet another of the sounds around him that intrigued him. And the sound of the birds become annealed to all those other sonic elements in the air - if one is able to hear them all. To Eric, no sound was alien to jazz.

You Don't Know What Love Is is one of the most mesmeric flute performances by Eric on record. Here his basic lyricism is clearly revealed and sustained. And with it are those turns of imagination that enabled Eric to add a further dimension to so familiar a song. Note too the subtleties of shading, the persistently fresh choice of notes and the resilient rhythmic line which is so sure in its underlying pulsation that it allows the beat to breathe.

The final Miss Ann, a Dolphy composition, is a brightly affectionate portrait, sketched with the alto. Hearing it, I was reminded of Mingus' point about the fullness of Eric's sound. One of the most exciting kicks in jazz listening was the sudden emergence of that Dolphy sound from an ensemble. It was not only its soaring strength that pulled you into the music, but there was also the enormous vitality powering the sound. And, of course, the swiftly moving arabesques of ideas.

Now, all that is left of this unique musician is in memory and, fortunately, on record. This album ends with Eric's voice (sounding, incidentally, very much like LeRol Jones): "When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." For Eric, this was especially true. He never wanted to play anything exactly as he played it before, because he couldn't. His mind was always hearing new ways to play, to sound, to explore. But for us, at least some of Eric's music was not lost in the air. Some of it will last as long as jazz. The music, for example, in this album.