Eric Dolphy

Featuring: Booker Little, Ron Caines, Jaki Byard

1990 release (light wear) ** December 1960: Eric Dolphy and Booker Little's first recorded meeting, with Jaki Byard, Ron Carter and Roy Haynes completing a frighteningly good band - the Five Spot partnership taking its first documented steps, seven months before the club residency made it legend. The Charlie Parker tribute sequence - "Mrs. Parker of K.C.", "Ode to Charlie Parker" - shows exactly where Dolphy came from and how much love he carried forward; "Tenderly", solo alto saxophone, shows where he had already arrived: one of the definitive unaccompanied performances of the era, tender exactly as promised and radical without ever raising its voice, the whole future of solo saxophone quietly implied. Little's lyric brilliance previews the summer to come, phrase by singing phrase. The Original Jazz Classics CD edition puts this cornerstone within reach of every shelf and every budget. Among the strongest single sessions of the Prestige years - a high bar, cleared with room to spare.