Eric Dolphy

I suppose I am drifting off the avant-garde edge with these last few posts, but their baleful moans offer so much more than ordinary music. Their oddity mandates scrutiny, and it affords complete uniqueness to the notesmiths.

Although Eric Dolphy was relegated to the free-jazz or anti-jazz classification during his time, this music is nothing like my previous post. It's comical given this anti-jazz classification that I find Eric Dolphy to epitomize the 'jazz is conversation' analogy. But it's not just an analogy with him – he really speaks through his instrument. Initially you may think that he blows into his instrument like a cacophonous reprobate. But take note of exactly how weird his sound is – perhaps how hauntingly familiar it is. He articulates instrumental sounds into emotive voices. This is most apparent on the Mingus recording, but he continually speckles his solos with strange yalps and gasps.

For the What Love? track I want to focus your attention from 7:00 (in particular from 9:30) onward. Here Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy participate in a most realistic of musical conversations. Mingus sporadically throws Dolphy cat calls and grievances, enticing specific melodic phrasings. And at 10:33, when Mingus so vividly jabs “Ya Serious Man?” Dolphy snaps right back on the same motif with what I can only interpret as the snarling of a cornered animal.

Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch offers an entirely other side of musical expression. Throughout the solos, the rhythm section interjects their sparse language and discord. The vibes in particular feel like a specter who persists in jousting with the group, prodding the harmonic cracks until bursting forth in solo. But as this raucous group grates your ears, discover that in the midst of this apparent musical void, the soloist attains relative freedom of expression. The chaos allows the absurd melodic lines of Dolphy's mind.

The heads are strikingly awkward; they flounder around like fish gasping for oxygen – struggling to find sustenance. The melodies are distinct enough to count as themes, but Dolphy's music runs in a different stream of thought. He fabricates a unique musical logic which emanates through each piece, and though I cannot fully understand it, I find his intentions palpable enough to drag my mind along for the ride. And so no matter which of his instruments he chooses to play (bass clarinet, alto sax, or flute), the music always elicits some strange new awareness within me.

What Love?; Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy on Mingus at Antibes


Hat and Beard; Eric Dolphy on Out to Lunch


Something Sweet, Something Tender; Eric Dolphy on Out to Lunch