Eric Dolphy

Flute Player

Eric Dolphy was born in Los Angeles, California, United States on June 20th, 1928 and is the Flute Player. At the age of 36, Eric Dolphy biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.

Other Names / Nick Names
Eric Allan Dolphy
Date of Birth
June 20, 1928
Nationality
United States
Place of Birth
Los Angeles, California, United States
Death Date
Jun 29, 1964 (age 36)
Zodiac Sign
Gemini
Profession
Clarinetist, Composer, Jazz Musician, Saxophonist
Eric Dolphy Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 36 years old, Eric Dolphy has this physical status:

Height
Not Available
Weight
Not Available
Hair Color
Black
Eye Color
Not Available
Build
Not Available
Measurements
Not Available
Eric Dolphy Religion, Education, and Hobbies
Religion
Not Available
Hobbies
Not Available
Education
Los Angeles City College
Eric Dolphy Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
Spouse(s)
Not Available
Children
Not Available
Dating / Affair
Not Available
Parents
Not Available
Eric Dolphy Career

Dolphy gained his big break when he was invited to join Chico Hamilton's quintet in 1958. With the group he became known to a wider audience and was able to tour extensively through 1958–59, when he left Hamilton's group and moved to New York City. Dolphy appears with Hamilton's band in the film Jazz on a Summer's Day playing flute during the Newport Jazz Festival of 1958.

Charles Mingus had known Dolphy from growing up in Los Angeles, and the younger man joined Mingus' Jazz Workshop in 1960, shortly after arriving in New York. He took part in Mingus' big band recording Pre-Bird (sometimes re-released as Mingus Revisited), and is featured on "Bemoanable Lady". Later he joined Mingus' working band which then also included Ted Curson. They worked at the Showplace during 1960 (memorialized in the poem "Mingus at the Showplace" by William Matthews), and recorded two albums together, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and Mingus at Antibes, the latter featuring Booker Ervin on almost all tracks and Bud Powell guesting on "I'll Remember April". Dolphy, Mingus said, "was a complete musician. He could fit anywhere. He 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.... 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."

During this time, Dolphy participated in other recording sessions with Mingus for the Candid label and took part in the Newport Rebels session. In 1961, Dolphy left Mingus' band and went to Europe for a few months, where he was recorded in Scandinavia and Berlin. (See The Berlin Concerts, The Complete Uppsala Concert, Eric Dolphy in Europe Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (1 and 3 were also released as Copenhagen Concert), and Stockholm Sessions.) He was later among the musicians who worked on Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus in 1963, and is featured on "Hora Decubitus".

In early 1964, he returned to Mingus' working band, now including Jaki Byard, Johnny Coles, and Clifford Jordan. This sextet worked at the Five Spot before playing at Cornell University and Town Hall in New York (both were recorded: Cornell 1964 and Town Hall Concert) and subsequently touring Europe. The short tour is well-documented on Revenge!, The Great Concert of Charles Mingus, Mingus in Europe Volume I, and Mingus in Europe Volume II.

Dolphy and John Coltrane knew each other long before they formally played together, having met when Coltrane was in Los Angeles with Johnny Hodges in 1954. They would often exchange ideas and learn from each other, and eventually, after many nights sitting in with Coltrane's band, Dolphy was asked to become a full member in early 1961. Coltrane had gained an audience and critical notice with Miles Davis's quintet, but alienated some leading jazz critics when he began to move away from hard bop. Although Coltrane's quintets with Dolphy (including the Village Vanguard and Africa/Brass sessions) are now accepted, they originally provoked DownBeat magazine to brand Coltrane and Dolphy's music as 'anti-jazz'. Coltrane later said of this criticism: "they made it appear that we didn't even know the first thing about music (...) it hurt me to see [Dolphy] get hurt in this thing."

The initial release of Coltrane's residency at the Vanguard selected three tracks, only one of which featured Dolphy. After being issued haphazardly over the next 30 years, a comprehensive box-set featuring the music recorded at the Vanguard was released on Impulse! in 1997, called The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. The set features Dolphy heavily on both alto saxophone and bass clarinet, with Dolphy the featured soloist on their renditions of "Naima". A 2001 Pablo box set, drawing on recordings of Coltrane's performances from his European tours of the early 1960s, features tunes absent from the 1961 Village Vanguard material, such as "My Favorite Things", which Dolphy performs on flute.

Trumpeter Booker Little and Dolphy had a short-lived musical partnership. Little's leader date for Candid, Out Front, featured Dolphy mainly on alto sax, though he played bass clarinet and flute on some ensemble passages. In addition, Dolphy's album Far Cry, recorded for Prestige, features Little on five tunes (one of which, "Serene", was not included on the original LP release).

Dolphy and Little also co-led a quintet at the Five Spot during 1961. The rhythm section consisted of Richard Davis, Mal Waldron and Ed Blackwell. One night was documented and has been released as At the Five Spot (plus a Memorial Album) as well as the compilation Here and There. In addition, both Dolphy and Little backed Abbey Lincoln on her album Straight Ahead and played on Max Roach's Percussion Bitter Sweet. Little died at the age of 23 in October 1961.

Dolphy also performed on key recordings by George Russell (Ezz-thetics), Oliver Nelson (Screamin' the Blues, The Blues and the Abstract Truth, and Straight Ahead), and Ornette Coleman (Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation and the Free Jazz outtake on Twins). He also worked and recorded with Gunther Schuller (Jazz Abstractions), multi-instrumentalist Ken McIntyre (Looking Ahead), and bassist Ron Carter (Where?).

Dolphy's recording career as a leader began with Prestige. His association with the label spanned 13 albums recorded from April 1960 to September 1961, though he was not the leader for all of the sessions. Fantasy released a 9-CD box set in 1995 containing all of Dolphy's recorded output for Prestige.

Dolphy's first two albums as leader were Outward Bound and Out There; both featured cover artwork by Richard "Prophet" Jennings. The first, sounding closer to hard bop than some later releases, was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who shared rooms with Dolphy for a time when the two men first arrived in New York. The album features three Dolphy compositions: "G.W.", dedicated to Gerald Wilson, and the blues "Les" and "245". Out There is closer to third stream music, which would also form part of Dolphy's work, and features Ron Carter on cello. Charles Mingus's "Eclipse" from this album is one of the rare instances where Dolphy solos on soprano clarinet (others being "Warm Canto" from Mal Waldron's The Quest, "Densities" from the compilation Vintage Dolphy, and "Song For The Ram's Horn" from an unreleased recording from a 1962 Town Hall concert).

Dolphy occasionally recorded unaccompanied saxophone solos; his only predecessors were the tenor players Coleman Hawkins ("Picasso", 1948) and Sonny Rollins (for example "Body and Soul", 1958), making Dolphy the first to do so on alto. The album Far Cry contains his performance of the Gross-Lawrence standard "Tenderly" on alto saxophone, and, on his subsequent tour of Europe, Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" was featured in his sets. (The earliest known version was recorded at the Five Spot during his residency with Booker Little.) He also recorded two takes of a short solo rendition of "Love Me" in 1963, released on Conversations and Muses.

Twentieth-century classical music was also part of Dolphy's musical career. He was very familiar with the music of composers such as Anton Webern and Alban Berg, had a large record collection that included music by these composers, as well as by Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Bartók, and owned scores by composers such as Milton Babbitt, Donald Erb, Charles Ives, and Olivier Messiaen. He visited Edgard Varèse at his home, and performed the composer's Density 21.5 for solo flute at the Ojai Music Festival in 1962. Dolphy also participated in Gunther Schuller's and John Lewis's Third Stream efforts of the 1960s, appearing on the album Jazz Abstractions, and admired the Italian flute virtuoso Severino Gazzelloni, after whom he named his composition Gazzelloni.

Around 1962–63, one of Dolphy's working bands included the pianist Herbie Hancock, who can be heard on The Illinois Concert, Gaslight 1962, and the unissued Town Hall concert with poet Ree Dragonette.

In July 1963, producer Alan Douglas arranged recording sessions for which Dolphy's sidemen were emerging musicians of the day, and the results produced the albums Iron Man and Conversations, as well as the Muses album released in Japan in late 2013. These sessions marked the first time Dolphy played with Bobby Hutcherson, whom he knew from Los Angeles, and whose sister he dated at one point. The sessions are perhaps best known for the three duets Dolphy performs with bassist Richard Davis on "Alone Together", "Ode To Charlie Parker", and "Come Sunday"; the aforementioned release Muses adds another take of "Alone Together" and an original composition for duet from which the album takes its name.

In 1964, Dolphy signed with Blue Note Records and recorded Out to Lunch! with Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams. This album features Dolphy's fully developed avant-garde yet structured compositional style rooted in tradition. It is often considered his magnum opus.

After Out to Lunch! and an appearance on pianist/composer Andrew Hill's Blue Note album Point of Departure, Dolphy left for Europe with Charles Mingus' sextet in early 1964. Before a concert in Oslo, he informed Mingus that he planned to stay in Europe after their tour was finished, partly because he had become disillusioned with the United States' reception to musicians who were trying something new. Mingus then named the blues they had been performing "So Long Eric". Dolphy intended to settle in Europe with his fiancée Joyce Mordecai, who was working in the ballet scene in Paris. After leaving Mingus, he performed and recorded a few sides with various European bands, and American musicians living in Paris, such as Donald Byrd and Nathan Davis. Last Date, originally a radio broadcast of a concert in Hilversum in the Netherlands, features Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, although it was not Dolphy's last public performance. Dolphy was also planning to join Albert Ayler's group, and, according to Jeanne Phillips, quoted in A. B. Spellman's Four Jazz Lives, was preparing himself to play with Cecil Taylor. He also planned to form a band with Woody Shaw, Richard Davis, and Billy Higgins, and was writing a string quartet, Love Suite.

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