Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,217

This is the grave of Eric Dolphy.

Born in 1928 in Los Angeles, Dolphy was interested in music from the time he was a small child. While he was always interested in blowing instruments and messed around with the clarinet and saxophone as a kid, his first real instrument was the oboe. I wonder why you never see the oboe in jazz. Seems like a real missed opportunity there. I am sure it exists somewhere, but while I can name a couple of jazz accordionists, for example, and even a jazz bassoonist and the late great Susan Alcorn even brought the pedal steel guitar into jazz, I cannot name a jazz oboist off the top of my head. USC had some sort of music school for kids and Dolphy received a scholarship to go there for a couple of years. He was more interested in symphonic music than jazz for quite awhile as a child, but by the time he was in high school, he was playing a lot of jazz. He never lost that interest in symphonic music though and it would influence his own career tremendously.

Los Angeles had a pretty good music scene in the 1940s and the young Dolphy won acceptance in it. Roy Porter, a drummer who was successful on the west coast scene, brought Dolphy in to play on several recordings in the late 40s, mostly on clarinet and sax. Then of course the military came calling for the young musician. He was drafted in 1950 and spent most of his time in Colorado, so his service wasn’t too dangerous, as it well could have been during the Korean War. There were tons of bands in the military and Dolphy’s talent was clear to many people. He was even sent to the Navy’s music school in 1952.

Dolphy was discharged in 1953. His father had built him a studio, so he became a locally important guy. But it took awhile before he became the legend that we know him as today. His life changed in 1958, when Chico Hamilton brought him into his touring quintet. That brought Dolphy to New York and people were immediately blown away. Incidentally, you can see Dolphy on the flute in Jazz on a Summer’s Day, the film about the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, where Hamilton played.

Now, Dolphy was not the only young guy from LA who was on his way up in New York. Charles Mingus had already made it and he was happy to see Dolphy. Mingus brought him onto recordings immediately, starting with Pre-Bird and then on Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and Mingus. Incidentally, Mingus had some album title issues. Dolphy was in his working band as well. Dolphy was also with Mingus and Max Roach in their rebellion over the conservative programming and bad treatment of musicians by the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 and was on the Newport Rebels album they recorded in response, along with Roy Eldridge and Jo Jones.

Dolphy had become friends with John Coltrane all the way back in 1954, when the great saxophonist was in Los Angeles. Shortly after Coltrane went solo, he asked Dolphy to join his band as a second saxophonist (not to mention his clarinet), in 1961. The music they produced caused the conservatives at DownBeat, who have hated most adaptations as “not jazz” before eventually coming around to them, to loathe both men as destroying jazz. These so called “anti-jazz” albums included Live at the Village Vanguard!, Impressions, and Africa-Brass. The idea of Africa-Brass as somehow destroying jazz, I mean, I know I’m hearing it only long after these men were dead and coming at it from a different perspective and different musical background than jazz critics at the time…but that’s such a perfect set of music. But as I’ve said before, jazz is more a process than a genre and a lot of people get very uncomfortable with that because the sounds change and people get very uncomfortable with new methods and new sounds, even as they once embraced the new methods and new sounds when they were younger. Dolphy was a huge influence on Coltrane and the latter freely admitted that Dolphy had completely transformed his own approach to music.

Dolphy did a bunch of other backing work in 1960 and 1961 as well. That included on Out Front, for Booker Little, where he also played some bass clarinet and flute. He was also on Abbey Lincoln’s Straight Ahead and Max Roach’s masterpiece, Percussion Bitter Sweet. He also was on Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, playing bass clarinet, guaranteeing himself a place in jazz history if that’s all he ever did. And of course, Sammie Davis Jr.’s I Gotta Right to Swing, which was also recorded with the Count Basic Orchestra, but not the Count.

But Dolphy was on his way to leading his own groups. His first recordings are still in the hard bop world, more or less. However, he was moving beyond this pretty quickly. He recorded albums such as Out There and Far Cry in 1960, then the two fantastic At the Five Spot albums in 1961 and 1963 (in fact recorded the same night in 61, which are in my view among the best live jazz recordings ever), and then 1963’s Conversations.

Dolphy is also one of the first musicians to record solo saxophone tracks. I found this interesting, but it’s true that in older jazz, you just don’t see the solo albums that you would see later. There’s a claim, and it’s probably true, that he is the first major musician to record songs on solo alto. Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins had done a few on tenor.

Dolphy’s sudden 1964 death is one of the saddest things in modern music. He had diabetes and it was undiagnosed. While playing in Berlin, he collapsed. A doctor diagnosed him as going into a diabetic coma and gave him a shot of insulin, but then he went into insulin shock and died. Or maybe…there’s another version that Dolphy collapsed and was taken to a hospital. When the nurse found out he was a jazz musician, she assumed he had overdosed on heroin, since he was a jazz musician. So she gave him those drugs instead of doing due diligence and he died unnecessarily. Who knows, but it’s just very, very sad. Dolphy as free jazz rose to prominence would have been fascinating. We can’t project how he would have responded. I bet he would have made a lot more awesome music though.

Eric Dolphy was 36 years old.

But that’s not all. See, he had album about to be released called Out to Lunch. One wonders what would have happened at lived because this is nearly a perfect album. He was right there with Coltrane in transforming jazz, particularly with his interest in modernist classical composers. This date included Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Tony Williams on drums, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, and Richard Davis on bass. It is correctly seen as one of the premier jazz releases ever. That wasn’t the last release with Dolphy on it either. He was on Andrew Hill’s excellent 1965 album Point of Departure.

Let’s listen to some Dolphy:

Eric Dolphy is buried in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles, California.

If you would like this series to visit some of the people Dolphy played with, you can cover the required expenses here. Roy Eldridge is in East Farmingdale, New York and Jo Jones is in Calverton, New York. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.