Eric Dolphy

Featuring: Jaki Byard, Mal Waldron, Ron Carter, Freddie Hubbard, Booker Little

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert and obi included.

Prestige vault archaeology of the best kind: Dash One gathers alternate takes and unissued material from Eric Dolphy's 1960-61 sessions for the label - and with a musician who never played a routine chorus in his entire documented life, the alternates are not curiosities but parallel masterworks, equal citizens of the discography. Hearing Dolphy re-attack the same composition from a completely different angle is a lesson in what improvisation actually means at the highest level: same map, entirely new journey, every single time, no phrase recycled because none needed to be. The title's studio-slate humor suits the archival premise. The Prestige years were his laboratory period, the concepts developing session by session, and this collection opens the laboratory's notebooks to the public.

Japanese pressing on Victor, clean and quiet. For the Dolphy shelf that has the canon and wants the process too - the deep collector's natural next step, and a rewarding one.