Eric Dolphy

1928–1964

'Music, after it's over, is gone into the air. You can never capture it again.' — his own voice, left at the end of "Last Date"

At a glance 🔭💭

A journey of stages 🧭🗺️

Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)

People he played with ⏳🌊

FamilySadie Dolphy and Eric Dolphy Sr.
His parents, immigrants from Panama, built a practice studio in the backyard and backed their only son's music to the very end.
TeacherLloyd Reese
A Los Angeles music teacher who also taught Mingus and Collette, he laid the young Dolphy's foundations.
FriendshipClifford Brown
A friend who played with Dolphy in his backyard studio in 1954; his death in 1956 was a deep loss for Dolphy.
ColleagueCharles Mingus
An acquaintance from the Los Angeles days, he brought Dolphy to New York, made him a core member of his band, and wrote "So Long Eric" for him as he left.
ColleagueBooker Little
His trumpet partner at the Five Spot in 1961, who died that fall at twenty-three.
FriendshipJohn Coltrane
A friend from the 1950s on who brought Dolphy into his band, weathered the anti-jazz criticism alongside him, and recalled that knowing him had made his life better.

I. The only son and his backyard practice room · 1928–1950 (age 0–22)

(Birth) He was born in June 1928 in Los Angeles, California. He bore his father's name: Eric Allan Dolphy. His parents, Eric Dolphy Sr. and Sadie Dolphy, were immigrants from Panama, and he was their only son. The family was not well off, but his parents believed in their son's music to the end and stood behind him. Even after his death, the two never let go of the work of guarding his belongings and his memory. (Clarinet) He began music by taking up the clarinet at school and quickly stood out. He is said to have won a scholarship to study at the music school of the University of Southern California while still in junior high, and he later studied music at Los Angeles City College. He learned the alto saxophone and then the flute, studying with Lloyd Reese, a renowned teacher in the city. Reese had also taught Charles Mingus and Buddy Collette. (Parker) What captivated him in his late teens was bebop, and above all Charlie Parker. He absorbed the music Parker made during his stay on the West Coast in the mid-1940s almost as if taking it down by dictation. Even after he later made his name with strange melodies that leapt to distant notes, critics often pointed out that their roots lay in Parker's language. (Practice room) His parents built a small practice room for their son in the backyard. He practiced there all day, and the room became a place where local musicians dropped in to play together. From around 1948 he played in a bebop big band led by drummer Roy Porter, making his first recordings. In those years he was less a standout soloist than a diligent section player who read music with precision.

II. The long wait in the West · 1950–1958 (age 22–30)

(Army) In 1950 he joined the Army and served at Fort Lewis, Washington, and during his service he also trained at the Naval School of Music. After his discharge around 1953 he returned to Los Angeles. The Army was a time that drilled the discipline of the score and the ensemble into him once more. (Obscurity) For nearly five years after that he worked in obscurity, moving among local clubs, dance bands and jam sessions. No record label came looking for him, and money was tight. Yet over this long stretch he dug deep into the bass clarinet, on top of the alto saxophone·flute·clarinet. Raising this low instrument, almost never heard in jazz, to the status of a solo voice would later become his most original achievement. (Brown) In 1954, when Clifford Brown and Max Roach formed their quintet in Los Angeles, Brown would often play with Dolphy in his backyard practice room. Tapes of those sessions were released on record decades later. When Brown was killed in a car accident in 1956, Dolphy lost a cherished friend and a colleague walking the same path. (Birdsong) He said that when he practiced in the backyard the birds would sing along, and that birdsong held notes lying between those of the scales we use. That he imitated birdsong on the flute survives in his own recollections. His quiet, courteous nature and a life kept clear of alcohol and drugs were also known among his peers from around this time. His friendship with John Coltrane is likewise said to date from Coltrane's visits to the West Coast in the 1950s.

III. From Chico Hamilton to Mingus · 1958–1960 (age 30–32)

(Hamilton) In 1958 he joined drummer Chico Hamilton's quintet and stepped onto the national stage for the first time. In this chamber-style band, which featured a cello, he moved among flute, alto and bass clarinet. That year's set at the Newport Jazz Festival was captured in the documentary “Jazz on a Summer's Day,” preserving on film the thirty-year-old Dolphy at work. (New York) Leaving Hamilton's band in 1959, he moved to New York. Charles Mingus, whom he had known since his Los Angeles days, called on him, and in 1960 he became the core of the Mingus band. Mingus was a volatile leader, but with Dolphy he shared a rare and deep trust. Mingus later named Dolphy as one of the players he cherished most. (Debut) On April 1, 1960, he recorded his first album as a leader, “Outward Bound,” for the Prestige label. Under producer Esmond Edwards, he was joined by Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Jaki Byard on piano, George Tucker on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. The opening track, “G.W.,” was dedicated to Gerald Wilson, an older arranger from Los Angeles. The long wait in the West, and the friendships of those years, had in effect become the dedication of his first album. (Means) Yet his circumstances did not improve much. A handful of albums as leader could not pay the bills, and he covered his living costs with sideman sessions and teaching. That same year he recorded, in quick succession, “Out There,” featuring Ron Carter on cello, and “Far Cry,” with Booker Little. “Far Cry” included “Ode to Charlie Parker,” written by Jaki Byard, and “Tenderly,” played on unaccompanied alto.

♪Outward Bound1960 (age 32)

His first album as a leader, released in New York after long years of obscurity in the West. In his dedication of the opening track to his elder Gerald Wilson, one can read the friendships of his Los Angeles years.

In the opening track, “G.W.,” Dolphy's alto races along like bebop, then suddenly vaults to a distant note (wide interval leaps). This leaping line is something like his signature.
On “On Green Dolphin Street” he plays bass clarinet. Listen for the range he travels within a single phrase, from a thick, low tone up to a shrill high register.
Roy Haynes's drums spur the soloist on with light, clipped strokes on the cymbals. The give-and-take between soloist and drums, pushing and pulling at each other (interplay), comes through clearly.
Recorded on April 1, 1960, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey with producer Esmond Edwards.

IV. The busiest year · 1960–1961 (age 32–33)

(Dialogue) In October 1960 Mingus recorded “Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus” for the Candid label. It was a quartet with no piano, formed with Ted Curson on trumpet and Dannie Richmond on drums. On “What Love,” Mingus's bass and Dolphy's bass clarinet conversed as if trading words, and Mingus is said to have explained that in this passage the two were discussing Dolphy's plan to leave the band. (Experiment) On December 21 of the same year he took part in the recording of Ornette Coleman's “Free Jazz.” In this experiment, with two quartets improvising at once, he played bass clarinet in the second quartet. In February 1961 he played alongside Bill Evans and Freddie Hubbard on Oliver Nelson's “The Blues and the Abstract Truth.” He was also called in for George Russell's “Ezz-thetics” and for projects by John Lewis and Gunther Schuller. He moved with ease between the meticulous scores of arrangers and experiments that shook the very framework. (Little) The companion he cherished most in this period was the trumpeter Booker Little. In July 1961 the two played the New York club the Five Spot with Mal Waldron on piano, Richard Davis on bass and Ed Blackwell on drums, and the performance of the night of July 16 was released on record by Prestige. Little's round, dark trumpet and Dolphy's sharp alto were like mirrors reflecting each other. (Loss) But that October Little died of uremia at twenty-three. After Brown, Dolphy had lost yet another young trumpeter friend. The Five Spot recordings remained almost the only record of their brief partnership.

♪What Love1960 (age 32)

The recording that most vividly preserves the trust between Mingus and Dolphy. Their instrumental dialogue sounds like the record of a friendship on the eve of parting.

Midway through, Mingus's bass and Dolphy's bass clarinet toss short phrases back and forth like two people in an argument. It sounds as if they were imitating the inflection and pitch of the human voice.
With no piano, there is no instrument to fill in the harmony. The empty space between sounds is all the wider for it, and the lines of the bass and horns come through clearly.
Though built on the chord progression of an old standard, the piece shifts tempo and mood often, revealing Mingus's characteristic way of loosening a fixed framework.
Recorded for the Candid label by producer Nat Hentoff, a former critic.

♪Stolen Moments1961 (age 33)

In a year spent moving between experiment and tradition, this is a recording where Dolphy's flute shines within a meticulous arrangement. It is also a record of him standing side by side with Bill Evans on one album.

A minor-key piece in sixteen bars. Oliver Nelson's arrangement, in which four horns stack the theme in layered harmony, creates the tune's twilight mood.
Following Hubbard's trumpet, Dolphy's flute solo begins with a breathy tone and soars into the high register. His wide leaps are added to the feeling of the blues.
Bill Evans's piano solo unfolds calmly, pressing the chords down gently. Listen and compare its texture with the horn solos that came before.
Recorded on February 23, 1961, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio for the Impulse! label with producer Creed Taylor.

♪Fire Waltz1961 (age 33)

A live recording left by his brief partnership with Booker Little. When Little died three months later, this night became the last record of the two together.

A tune by Mal Waldron in which the piano doggedly repeats a short figure over a dance meter counted in three to the bar (waltz).
Listen to Dolphy's alto and Little's trumpet solos back to back. The sharply angled alto and the round, dark trumpet paint the same tune in entirely different colors.
Drummer Ed Blackwell rolls his drums as if singing, ornamenting the beat. His drumming, also heard alongside Ornette Coleman, moves like a melody, doing more than keeping time.
Recorded live at the Five Spot club in New York on July 16, 1961, capturing the sounds of the audience and the atmosphere of the club.

V. Coltrane and the anti-jazz controversy · 1961–1963 (age 33–35)

(Coltrane) In the spring of 1961 his old friend John Coltrane called him into his band. That May he helped with the big-band arrangements for “Africa/Brass,” and on “Olé Coltrane,” recorded around the same time, he was credited under the pseudonym George Lane because of a contract with another label. In November, at the live dates at New York's Village Vanguard, he stood alongside Coltrane, McCoy Tyner on piano and Elvin Jones on drums, and he went on to join the band on its European tour. (The label) That same month, however, John Tynan, a critic for “DownBeat,” called the two men's music anti-jazz. The following year, in an interview with the same magazine, they calmly explained their music, but the label clung to them for a long time. Club owners and promoters hesitated to hire him, and the work dried up. Miles Davis, for his part, savaged his playing in the magazine's Blindfold Test in 1964. (Character) In America his income never did become steady. Even so, colleagues remembered him as a man who helped others when he himself was struggling and who listened wholeheartedly to younger musicians. After leaving Coltrane's band in 1962 he took part in Third Stream projects and widened his view toward the borderlands of classical music, deeply admiring the Italian classical flutist Severino Gazzelloni. (Solo) In the summer of 1963 he recorded several times with the producer Alan Douglas. These sessions came out as “Conversations” and “Iron Man,” which included “Alone Together,” a duet with the bassist Richard Davis, and “Love Me” for unaccompanied alto. The growing number of performances in which he stood alone, without accompaniment, seems to echo his circumstances, as the stages he could share with others grew fewer.

♪God Bless the Child1961 (age 33)

A signature piece of his repertoire, in which he unfolds Billie Holiday's song on the bass clarinet alone. It seems to echo his circumstances, as more and more often he found himself playing alone.

A song Billie Holiday sang and co-wrote, it carries a quiet resolve: lean on no one, and live by your own strength. Dolphy carries that feeling over to his instrument, without words.
Playing entirely alone, he scatters the notes of the harmony rapidly up and down between the phrases of the melody (broken chords), supplying his own accompaniment.
A thick, breathy low register and sudden bursts of thin high notes come from the same instrument. It is a performance that shows just how wide a range of sound the bass clarinet can produce.
He played it many times around 1961, in clubs and on European dates, so the interpretation differs a little from recording to recording.

♪Spiritual1961 (age 33)

These are the very Village Vanguard performances that earned the anti-jazz label. Here you can hear Dolphy's bass clarinet standing beside his old friend Coltrane.

A slow piece whose melody is drawn from a Black spiritual. Follow its arc as it begins solemn as a prayer and gradually rises to a fever.
Dolphy's bass clarinet solo mutters in the low register, then suddenly soars upward as if crying out. Its timbre, unmistakably different from Coltrane's saxophone, sets up a striking contrast.
McCoy Tyner's piano lays down the same chords heavily in the left hand, while Elvin Jones's drums split the beat into fine pieces and set it rolling.
Recorded live at New York's Village Vanguard in November 1961, with Bob Thiele of Impulse! producing.

VI. Out to lunch, and then Berlin · 1964 (age 36)

(Blue Note) On February 25, 1964, he recorded “Out to Lunch!” for Blue Note. Under the producer Alfred Lion and the engineer Rudy Van Gelder, he was joined by Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone, Richard Davis on bass and the eighteen-year-old drummer Tony Williams. The opening track, “Hat and Beard,” was dedicated to Thelonious Monk. In March he also took part in the pianist Andrew Hill's “Point of Departure.” (Europe) In April he set out on the Mingus sextet's European tour and told Mingus that he would stay in Europe once it ended. Mingus wrote “So Long Eric” for him. He said that in America you were put down if you tried anything even a little different, and he is said to have planned to marry his fiancée, who was living in Paris, and settle there. (Last Date) On June 2, at a broadcasting studio in Hilversum in the Netherlands, he recorded with Misja Mengelberg on piano, Jacques Schols on bass and Han Bennink on drums. The performance was later released as “Last Date,” and at its end was placed his own voice, saying that when music is over it is gone into the air. (Berlin) At the end of June he went to West Berlin (then West Germany, today Germany) for a concert and collapsed, and on June 29 he died at thirty-six. The cause was complications of undiagnosed diabetes. A widely told story holds that the hospital suspected a drug overdose and delayed his treatment, but the exact circumstances vary from account to account. His remains were buried in Los Angeles. Coltrane recalled that knowing him had made his own life better.

♪Out to Lunch!1964 (age 36)

Made as a leader two months before he left for Europe, it is regarded as the album that most fully captures the music he had in mind.

The opening track, “Hat and Beard,” takes its title from Thelonious Monk's hat and beard. Over an unfamiliar meter that counts nine beats to the bar (9/4), the bass clarinet speaks in clipped, offbeat phrases, much as Monk did.
Instead of a piano, Bobby Hutcherson's vibraphone handles the harmony. The ring of its metal bars spreads out long or is cut short, leaving wide spaces open between the sounds.
Eighteen-year-old Tony Williams's drums do not mark the beat steadily but scatter it. Richard Davis's bass moves freely in and around them, holding up the floor.
In “Gazzelloni” he plays the flute on a piece named for the Italian flutist he admired. The album was recorded in a single day, February 25, 1964, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio.

♪Last Date1964 (age 36)

A broadcast recording he made with Dutch musicians after deciding to stay in Europe. His own voice, placed at the end, makes the record sound like a kind of farewell.

He plays Monk's tune “Epistrophy” on the bass clarinet. It is a delight to hear Dolphy twisting Monk's already crooked melody even further, at play.
In “You Don't Know What Love Is,” the flute sings the long introduction almost entirely alone. A line of high, slender notes follows, recalling the way he used to practice by imitating birdsong.
The pianist Misja Mengelberg and the drummer Han Bennink would go on to become central figures in Dutch improvised music. You can feel the tension of a first meeting with an unfamiliar rhythm section, each side feeling the other out.
Recorded for radio broadcast on June 2, 1964, at a broadcasting studio in Hilversum in the Netherlands.

Lesser-known stories

The cover of Coltrane's 1961 album “Olé Coltrane” lists a player named George Lane. This was a pseudonym Dolphy used because he was under contract to another label. It was common practice in the jazz world at the time, but since his real name is missing from the credits, many listeners still hear the record without knowing he is on it. The 1954 sessions Clifford Brown played with Dolphy in Dolphy's backyard practice room survived only on private tape until they were finally released decades later. Because the two men's friendship had come down to us only in brief recollections, these tapes became a rare document that let us confirm the relationship in sound. The title “Last Date” led people to remember this recording as his final performance, yet he went on to play in Paris in mid-June. It is a case of a posthumous title fixing a record's meaning in symbolic terms. His scores and composition notes are said to have been entrusted to his friend the composer Hale Smith, then to have passed through the flutist James Newton before entering the Library of Congress in 2014. As these materials came to light, he, long known only as an improviser, was newly revealed as a composer who wrote and organized his pieces steadily. After her son was gone, his mother, Sadie, gave his flute and bass clarinet to Coltrane. It is said that these keepsakes lie behind Coltrane's flute playing on his late recordings. Through the instruments, the two men's friendship was carried on once more.

Notes on terms 📚🔎

Bebop

(Literal sense) The name bebop is said to come from the sounds people made with their mouths to imitate fast, sharply bending melodic lines. (In jazz) The jazz created in the 1940s by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others, closer to music for listening than music for dancing. Over fast tempos, densely shifting chords and small ensembles, players spin out long, intricate improvisations. It is like jumping rope to a steady rhythm while working in more and more difficult tricks, such as double unders and crisscrosses. Dolphy took the language of bebop as his roots and moved out beyond it.

Intervallic leaps

(Literal sense) Eumjeong (音程) ('interval') means the distance (程) between two notes (音), and doyak (跳躍) means 'leaping up.' (In jazz) It refers to a melody that, instead of moving step by step to the neighboring note, jumps in a single bound to a distant one. It is like bounding up a staircase three or four steps at a time instead of one. Dolphy strung such wide leaps together at speed, creating distinctive melodies that, to a first-time listener, sound like a bird darting here and there.

Chorus

(In jazz) The unit that runs once through a tune's form from beginning to end. In a twelve-bar blues, twelve bars make one chorus, and a soloist keeps going for a number of choruses. It is like running laps around a track: you circle the same course again and again, each time at a different speed and in a different stride. (Elsewhere) In everyday use, chorus means a group singing together or the refrain of a song.

Free jazz

(Literal sense) Free means unbound, and the name signals jazz released from fixed frameworks. (In jazz) A way of playing in which musicians do not strictly keep to set chord progressions, bar counts or a steady meter, but build the music on the spot by listening and responding to one another. Ornette Coleman's 1960 album “Free Jazz” spread the name, and Dolphy played on that recording. Think of improvised theater, where actors pick up each other's lines with no script. It is not playing any old way; it is playing that demands the ears be opened even wider.

Third stream

(Literal sense) Third stream means a third current. The name, coined by the composer Gunther Schuller in the late 1950s, describes a new flow formed where the two currents of classical music and jazz meet. (In jazz) It refers to music that sought to unite, within a single work, the structure and instruments of classical composition with the improvisation and rhythm of jazz. Like fusion cooking that blends two national cuisines into a new dish, it aimed for a flavor neither side could produce alone. Classically trained and at home on flute and clarinet, Dolphy was often called upon for this work.

Bass clarinet

(In jazz) A large clarinet that sounds an octave below the ordinary clarinet, its bell curving upward like a saxophone's. It began as an orchestral instrument for propping up the low register and was almost never heard in jazz, until Dolphy became the first to establish it in earnest as a solo voice. It was rather like the bass section of a choir, forever holding down the bottom, stepping forward alone to sing the lead. His playing was marked by its vast range, roaming from deep, thick lows to piercing highs.

Odd meter

(Literally) byeonbak (變拍) means a meter (拍) that differs (變) from the usual. (In jazz) Jazz is mostly played in four, each bar counted out in four beats, but the term refers to counting in less familiar numbers such as five, seven or nine, or to switching the count partway through a piece. “Hat and Beard” counts each bar in nine. Jumping rope to a chant of one-two-three-four and suddenly switching to a chant that runs to nine is a sure way to tangle your feet, yet musicians practice until that strange gait feels like a natural walk.