Eric Dolphy

Gunther Schuller ran a concert series at Carnegie Hall in the early 1960s called Twentieth-Century Innovations, and he kept the tapes. Vintage Dolphy, which he produced for his own GM label in 1986 and which Enja licensed for Europe the following year, is what he had of Eric Dolphy.

Three different settings. The first is Dolphy's own quartet at Carnegie Hall on 18 April 1963, with Edward Armour on trumpet, Richard Davis on bass and J.C. Moses on drums, playing Iron Man, Mandrake and a Jaki Byard tune; this is three months before the Alan Douglas studio sessions that became Conversations and Iron Man. The second is Schuller's own music: Night Music, from Syracuse on 10 March 1962 with Dolphy on bass clarinet, Barry Galbraith on guitar and two basses; and Densities and Abstraction from Carnegie Hall, 14 March 1963, with a string quartet, Jim Hall, Davis and Barre Phillips. The third is a jam on Donna Lee from the April concert with Phil Woods, Benny Golson, Don Ellis, Nick Travis, Jimmy Knepper, Hall, Lalo Schifrin, Phillips and Charli Persip.

Dusty Groove hears some of the most striking Dolphy they know, with an ESP-like intensity on the open tracks. All About Jazz calls these important recordings, worth more than any number of European radio shots, and reads them alongside the Resonance box of the 1963 New York studio sessions.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's Enja Jazz Master Works series.