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Jazz Is… #12: Eric Dolphy

Swing-era bandleader Cab Calloway once penned a Hepster’s Dictionary, where he defined the term “hep cat” as “a guy who knows all the answers, understands jive.” Hep cats (or hipsters, as they were later called) were initially just jazz musicians, but they became pop culture caricatures – the goateed and nattily-dressed denizens of smoky basement clubs in Greenwich Village, whose laconic attitude and insider patois set them apart from ordinary squares. Eric Dolphy wasn’t the prototype (that was probably Dizzy Gillespie), but he should’ve been. As his mentor, bassist Charles Mingus, said, Dolphy was “a complete musician [who] could fit anywhere. He had mastered jazz. And he had mastered all of the instruments he played. In fact, he knew more than was supposed to be possible to do on them.”

Eric Allan Dolphy, Jr. was born in Los Angeles in 1928. His mother was a Panamanian immigrant. He began playing the clarinet at age 6. By high school, he had also mastered the oboe, the flute, and the saxophone. He attended LA City College, where he directed the orchestra. While there, he met Mingus and John Coltrane. Dolphy’s professional break came in 1958, when he toured with Chico Hamilton’s quintet. There’s video of that band from the Newport Jazz Festival in the movie Jazz on a Summer’s Day. (The Chico Hamilton set is around 50:45.)

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In 1959, Dolphy left that band for New York. There, he joined Mingus’ big band, and featured on the 1960 albums Mingus Revisited, Mingus at Antibes, and Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus. That year, he also recorded his first two records as a leader—Outward Bound (with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet) and Out There (with Miles Davis’ eventual second-classic-quintet bassist Ron Carter on cello).

After a trip to Europe, Dolphy returned to the States and joined Coltrane’s band for the 1961 album Africa/Brass. The Coltrane quintet with Dolphy was also documented on the fantastic Live at the Village Vanguard album (and, years later, on the Complete 1961Village Vanguard Recordings). That ensemble was not a critical favorite, and Down Beat magazine called their often thrilling, and always challenging, music “anti-jazz.”

[Photo credit: Herb Snitzer.]

In the early ‘60s, Dolphy gained prominence as a multi-instrumental mercenary, and played on some of the most essential albums of that period: Mingus’ Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and the Abstract Truth, and Andrew Hill’s Point of Departure. Dolphy even played opposite Ornette Coleman at the front of one of the two double quartets on the latter’s seminal Free Jazz.

Dolphy recorded his most renowned album as a leader, Out to Lunch!, for Blue Note Records in 1964. It featured Dolphy on bass clarinet, alto sax, and flute; Hubbard on trumpet; Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone; and eighteen year-old drummer Tony Williams, who would soon join Miles’ band. The album is an all-time classic. The Penguin Guide to Jazz said, “If it is a masterpiece, then it is not so much a flawed as a slightly tentative masterpiece.” That’s a decent description. The album is mostly angular and moody, like a New Wave film score, but also emotionally expressive and open – particularly, the standout track “Something Sweet, Something Tender.” Jawdropping stuff. Hubbard and Hutcherson shine throughout, but this is Dolphy’s show. He was never hepper.

Before Out to Lunch! was released, Dolphy accompanied Mingus’ band for a European tour. One night in Olso, Norway, he announced that he would be leaving the band and staying on the Continent. According to the wiki, he was disillusioned with the tepid reception that his music had received in the U.S. Dolphy and his fiancee, ballet dancer Joyce Mordecai, moved to Paris, where he played with Jazz Messenger alum, Donald Byrd, and planned sessions with a couple of like-minded ex-pats – saxophonist Albert Ayler (imagine that) and pianist Cecil Taylor (ditto).

While onstage in Berlin on June 29, 1964, Dolphy collapsed. He was rushed to a hospital, where doctors assumed that, as a stereotypical jazz musician, he was a junkie suffering from withdrawal. They refused to treat him, deciding to wait until the drugs ran their course. Dolphy was actually straight, and always had been; he was diabetic, and needed insulin. He lapsed into a coma and died.

Mingus offered a tribute in the liner notes to a posthumous album, Last Date: “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.” (There’s a really touching post on the Under the Deer blog about that album.) And in a contemporary interview, Coltrane added his own thoughts: “Whatever I’d say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.”

The Mingus Jazz Is post included a video of his sextet with Dolphy playing Duke Ellington’s “Take the A-Train.” Here it is again:

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More soon.

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