Out To Launch 50 Years Later

February 25^th marks fifty years since the recording of Eric Dolphy’s most famous recording, Out to Lunch.  Kevin Whitehead has a glowing and penetrating tribute to the document at eMusic.  I have scarcely anything to add except this: the first time I listened to the album it weirded me out.  This is the thing that jazz, and especially avant garde jazz, does.  It puts the soul off balance, leaving one to grasp at the nearest hand hold. 

We all like music that we can fall into, the way one falls into a warm bed or a glass of single malt scotch.  Fundamental music has almost the opposite effect, at least at first.  It tilts us out of bed.  If you have a taste for that, you will never be bored. 

In Out to Lunch, everyone seems to be twisting out of their skins.  Dolphy plays alto sax, flute, and bass clarinet.  Richard Davis plays bass, Freddie Hubbard trumpet, and Bobbie Hutcherson vibes.  Tony Williams is on drums.  There is a lot of voodoo spirit in that lineup. 

This is one essential recording for your library.  It will keep you on the path.  I am playing the title cut and ‘Something Sweet, Something Tender’. 

Some Andrew Hill

I go back from time to time to Andrew Hill.  His marvelous work for Blue Note ought to be part of any jazz collector's treasure chest.  Today I acquired Pax, a fine set with the following lineup:

• Bass – Richard Davis (2)
• Cornet – Freddie Hubbard
• Drums – Joe Chambers
• Piano, Composed By – Andrew Hill
• Tenor Saxophone – Joe Henderson

 Anything with Joe Henderson and Freddie Hubbard on it is worth a listen.  There is a serious intensity to pretty much every note that Hill plays.  He insists on directing your attention to the narrative.  Everything here is good.  I am playing 'Calliope' and 'Eris'. 

I am also playing 'Refuge' from Hill's magnum opus, Point of Departure.  This ranks as one of the most important jazz recordings.  Here is the lineup:

• Alto Saxophone, Flute, Bass Clarinet – Eric Dolphy
• Bass – Richard Davis (2)
• Drums – Tony Williams*
• Piano, Written-By – Andrew Hill
• Tenor Saxophone – Joe Henderson
• Trumpet – Kenny Dorham

 Those are the usual suspects, along with Eric Dolphy and Tony Williams, two heroic geniuses plucked from the board obscenely early by jealous gods. 

Sonny Simmons' Unsung Genuis

There are a lot of Sonny’s in jazz.  It takes more than few clicks to scroll through my IPod library from Sonny Clark to Sonny Stitt.  Tonight I added a couple of albums by alto sax man Sonny Simmons.  Simmons has by God paid his dues.  He was born in 1933 and played with a number of jazz greats in the 1960’s, including Mingus, Dolphy, and Elvin Jones.  Then he disappeared for a couple of decades, apparently living on the streets for a spell.  He reemerged in the mid 90’s. 

Simmons is described in the Penguin Guide as one of the most underappreciated jazz masters.  From what I have been listening to, I am inclined to agree. 

I am playing cuts from the two albums both recorded in 1966.  The Penguin Guide suggests Music from the Spheres as the first Simmons album you ought to have.  It is certainly a robust new thing document, leaving no doubt that you are listening to an alto virtuoso and a compositional genius.  I am playing ‘Zarak’s Symphony’ and ‘Dolphy’s Days’.  The latter is a superb bit of chameleon jazz.  You want Eric Dolphy?  I can be Eric Dolphy!  From Discogs, here is the lineup:

1.       Alto Saxophone, Written-By – Sonny Simmons

2.      Bass – Juney Booth*

3.      Drums – James Zitro

4.      Piano – Michael Cohen (2)

5.      Trumpet – Barbara Donald

I am also playing ‘Metamorphosis’ from Staying on the Watch.  If Simmons was very explicitly channeling Dolphy in the other album, here he is evidently channeling Ornette Coleman. 

1.       Alto Saxophone – Sonny Simmons

2.      Bass – Teddy Smith

3.      Percussion – Marvin Pattillo

4.      Piano – John Hicks

5.      Trumpet – Barbara Donald

This is very energetic, compelling avant garde jazz.  The piano work by Hicks has to be noted as brilliant.  I haven’t yet heard any of Simmons’ later work.  I will be hunting. 

Eric Dolphy in Europe

I really need to do another serious post on Eric Dolphy.  I think that Dolphy is one of the great geniuses of his period and that, had he lived longer, he might have rivaled Trane.  Here is a previous post that might be of interest to anyone interested in Dolphy. 

Tonight I chanced to listen to 'Laura' from Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 2.  I am playing it on my station.  Here is the lineup: 

• Alto Saxophone – Eric Dolphy
• Bass – Erik Moseholm
• Drums – Jorn Elniff
• Piano – Bent Axen

The band is lackluster, but that hardly matters.  Dolphy's playing is all that one could imagine and more.  

Elvin Jones & Empirical

I have just acquired a marvelous box set: The Complete Blue Note Elvin Jones Sessions.  It contains eight CDs with the contents of maybe nine original LPs recorded between 1968 an 1973.  I've posted a couple of cuts from this collection but I have only started listening to it.  

I also purchased a recording by Empirical: Opt' n' In'.  This is a tribute to Eric Dolphy.  I have posted one cut on the recording: 'Hat & Beyond', an obvious nod to Dolphy's 'Hat & Beard', from his seminal recording Out to Lunch.  If I have time, I'll write more on these recordings. 

Bobby Hutcherson on Blue Note pt. 1

I have had very little time for this blog over the last few months and I confess that I have not really found a satisfying way to combine it with my Live365 site.  This was a lot more fun when I was posting links directly to sample cuts, but that was more risk that I was willing to continue taking. 

The original purpose of the blog was to share my love of jazz collecting, so I am going to try to return to that purpose.  Who knows?  Perhaps I can draw some audience back.  

I have been rounding out my collection of vibe man Bobby Hutcherson recordings.  In the mid '60's, Hutcherson did a series of recordings for Blue Note that ought to be in anyone's jazz library.  Here is a list of these recordings with some notes.  

1. The Kicker (63)  Joe Henderson (ts); Duke Pearson (p); Grant Green (g); Bob Cranshaw (b); Al Harewood (d).  This might as well have been marketed as a Henderson album.  Maybe then Blue Note wouldn't have kept it in the vaults for more than thirty years (1999)!  It is a rock solid hard bop date, with fine displays by Henderson and Hutcherson and Pearson.  Kicker* may be heard on my Live365 site.  
2. Dialogue (65) Freddie Hubbard (t); Sam Rivers (ss, ts, f); Andrew Hill (p); Richard Davis (b); Joe Chambers (d).  Likewise, this might have been marketed as an Andrew Hill recording, as the pianist composed three of the cuts and it has a very topography.  This is Hutcherson's most interesting and inventive recording.  It invites obvious comparison with two very great recordings.  Hill's Andrew!!! has the same Hill-Davis-Chambers rhythm section.  Hutcherson, Hubbard, and Davis appeared on Eric Dolphy's earth shaking recording, Out To Lunch.  Hill's 'Les Noirs Marchant' could easily have fit on that album.

Don't misinterpret my remarks about marketing.  These are both Hutcherson recordings.  If his subsequent Blue Note recordings were less adventurous than Dialogue, they are nonetheless squarely on the path of the new thing.   In pt. 2, I'll cover Happenings, Stick Up, and Oblique. 

ps.  I have relied heavily on A Bobby Hutcherson Web Site.  What a resource!  Would that every jazz artist had this kind of attention paid to him or her. 

My Evening With An Avant Garde Fan

I had the pleasure last night of a long discussion about jazz with a friend and former student. J.G. is a more serious collector than I am, and has a mastery of knowledge about musical labels that puts me to shame. He is also much more fond of edgy avant garde than I am. J.G. is a fine abstract painter, and that may have something to do with the difference in our tastes. I like J's paintings very much, precisely because they are challenging.

Well, free jazz is all about challenge. J.G. and I agreed about a lot. We are both very fond of Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin. But he expressed skepticism about David Murray and Wayne Shorter, and we almost had to fight about that. It seems to me that there is a taste in jazz and art that is almost allergic to theme and coherence and anything else that might draw in a larger audience. I am trying to recruit J. to blog for Jazz Note. Keep your fingers crossed. He has a lot to say.

J.G. recommended two artists who I knew of but hadn't explored much. Inspired, I downloaded a recording by Dave Douglas. Douglas is a trumpet man, with a strong classical swirl in his ice cream. I am not yet persuaded by Convergence, though it is part of the Penguin Guide core collection. But here is a sample:

Dave Douglas/Bilbao Song/Convergence

William Parker was the other jazz man that J. suggested. I got a hold of the bassist's Painter's Spring, and it was captivating. Page Four Jazz to be sure, but unlike Churchill's famous pudding, it doesn't lack a theme. Here is a good sample of the disc, blues based and maybe that make the difference. Daniel Carter is featured on sax, and he is magnificent. This is simply delicious jazz. Boy will I buy more of this!

William Parker/Blues for Percy/Painter's Spring

There is deep heart in that one. Give it a listen, buy the recording, and let me know what you think.

Best Live Jazz: Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot

Another Five Spot live recording that was dead spot on has Eric Dolphy and trumpeter Booker Little joining forces in 1961. If you follow this blog, you will know that I am a great admirer of Dolphy. He shows up at a lot of critical moments. Trane's works with Dolphy on board come to mind. His presence on Andrew Hill's marvelous Point of Departure is another. I would also add his appearance on George Russel's Ezz-thetics, and Oliver Nelson's magnificent Blues and the Abstract Truth. I find Dolphy's corpus, remarkably large for the small time (about four years) that he had in the spotlight, to be a rich vein in the corroding cliff face of modern music. He was a virtuoso on three instruments: flute, alto sax, and bass clarinet. I am especially attracted to the latter. I suspect that, had he lived a longer life, we would be putting him on the first shelf of jazz history. Maybe we will do that anyway.

The Five Spot recordings are jazz gems. Booker Little's trumpet takes second billing. Little also played on Dolphy's best single work, in my humble opinion, Far Cry. Like Dolphy, Little died very young, about three months after the Five Spot date. He left just enough work to whet an unrequited appetite. This was no ordinary horn.

If Dolphy and Little weren't enough, Mal Waldron plays piano. I have given a lot of attention to Waldron's later duets. I think that these latter works establish Waldron's position as a jazz genius of the first rank. He is not given prominence on the Five Spot recordings, but he certainly supports the show. Richard Davis joins him on bass, and Ed Blackwell plays drums.

The Five Spot date was documented on three albums: Eric Dolphy and Booker Little at the Five Spot, Volumes 1 and 2, and Eric Dolphy and Booker Little Memorial Album. Go ahead and invest in the set. All can be had at eMusic.

Here is a sample:

Eric Dolphy/Aggression/Eric Dolphy and Booker Little at the Five Spot, Vol. 2.

eMusic we hardly knew ye 2

I have benefited tremendously from my membership in eMusic. I owe this to my friend and benefactor, Ken Laster, who got me enrolled. Over the last year I have subscribed to eMusic's most generous plan. For just short of two hundred dollars, I got 75 downloads a month. That means 75 cuts off of a great selection of classic jazz. I have expanded my jazz library beyond my earlier, wildest dreams.

But recently eMusic has tightened the screws. The good news is that they acquired the Sony catalog, which means that I can get a lot more great jazz from such artists as Miles Davis. But the bad news is rather worse. The new music is more costly, for the most part. Miles In The Sky has six cuts on it, and eMusic counts that as 12 downloads. Worse still, after my current subscription runs out, I'll get only 35 downloads a month for about $171 a year. That's less than half the downloads for sometimes twice the price.

But tempted though I am to complain, eMusic prices are still way below what I would pay at any other source. Here, if it works, is a chart I made on Excel:

191.99	75	12	0.21	2.56
171.99	35	12	0.41	4.91

The first line represents what I pay now. For 191.99 a year, I pay 21 cents a song, or $2.56 per twelve song album. I certainly can't beat that anywhere else. And a lot of jazz albums have fewer than 12 cuts.

Under the new plan, I pay 41 cents a cut and $4.91 a 12 song album. That ain't nearly as inviting, but it's still better than iTunes.

I am working on my laptop battery right now, and I am running out of juice. I'll finish this post as soon as I can, with a clip or so for hungry jazz fans.

Well, I'm back and still discombobulated, as my Arkansas relatives sometimes say. It's one thing to charge more than one credit per download for music newly available. But it looks to me as if some previously available discs have risen in their credit price. I can't be sure about this, but I believe that Eric Dolphy's Stockholm Sessions was there before, and now it's twelve credits for eight cuts.

Still, that's $2.56 under my current plan and five bucks if I wait until after next February. Right now the disc is available at iTunes for $5.99. You can get the plastic on Amazon for $17! Perhaps the most infuriating thing about eMusic's big price increase is that they still have the best deals around, so their fans are going to have to swallow it. Well, I guess they ain't in business to be loved.

Dolphy's Stockholm album is one of a marvelous set of albums recorded in 1961. How many Dolphys were there? The gems of this collection are his incomparable Five Spot recordings with Booker Little. But the rest of the bunch all represent vintage Dolphy live.

A similar case is the aforementioned Miles in the Sky. This is one of the string of recordings made by Miles' second quintet. All of these recordings demonstrate brilliance and moments of breathtaking beauty. But they are wildly uneven overall. E.S.P. is the best of them. In fact, I would rank it as one of Miles' ten best recordings. Miles in the Sky is a work that is valuable chiefly because it is part of this string. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the first listen and I will listen again. But it is a series of rambling, unstructured solos. It is one of those albums that would trigger the key words: workshop, exploration, and transitional, if a computer were grading it. I don't believe I have ever seen a copy in a record bin. In short, this is the kind of thing interesting mostly to collectors like myself. If anything ought to be available at a discount price, this is it.

Here are a couple of samples from the discs under inspection. Given 'em a listen, and if you like them bite the bullet and get the recordings. They're still cheap from the folks at eMusic.

Eric Dolphy/Miss Ann/Stockholm Sessions

Miles Davis/Black Comedy/Miles in the Sky

More than a dollop of Dolphy

More than a dollop is what you will get if you get your ears around Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings. This box set consists of 9 discs, and when you have got it you have by God got Dolphy. It doesn't include his most famous recording, Out to Lunch. But it does include Far Cry, perhaps his second most famous album. Far Cry is what first interested me in Dolphy.

The Prestige Box also includes the justly famous Five Spot sessions, with trumpeter Booker Little. The latter might be Dolphy's finest hour. The Prestige Box has a lot more. About six complete albums, by my count, with a lot of pieces from other stuff, like four cuts from Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' Trane Whistle. It also has Ron Carter's Where?, and Mal Waldron's The Quest. Oh, and there are two discs with Oliver Nelson as lead.

That is a lot of solid if frequently challenging jazz. I have written before of the problems that jazz box sets present to the collector. One new problem is very evident here: when the collection includes several sets recorded under someone else's name, they get scattered all over your iTunes library. In this case I decided to change the album information on the tracks to reflect what was originally issued, and file it under the leader's name. This means that I have several partial albums, since no tracks were included from the Lockjaw Davis disc that Dolphy wasn't on. It's really great that I can pop a disc into my computer and iTunes will get the track names for me. But we really need some better conventions for file tags.

Dolphy had a short but magnificent career. His first recording listed on the Jazz Discography Project is in 1948, when he was twenty. He died in 1964 from undiagnosed diabetes. In between, he records a lot of very basic music, and shows up on a lot of seminal discs by other jazz giants. He is on Andrew Hill's Point of Departure, Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, George Russel's Ezz-Thetics, and Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard and the Africa/Brass Sessions. He was equally adept at the alto saxophone, the flute, and the bass clarinet.

I think it was the latter that should have been in his funeral boat when it was shoved out to sea. The deeply hollow sound, sucking up all reality around it, was what Dolphy was about. He is clearly associated with free jazz, and sits behind Ornett Coleman on, well, Free Jazz. Dolphy's Out to Lunch is a basic document of that movement. It's pretty chaotic and occasionally down right mysterious. Almost all of it has the character of a machine producing a lot of noise as it does one is not quite sure what. But I find I can listen to it now with interest.

Dolphy was clearly a genius of improvisation. He has a persistant fondness for a slightly sour, unexpected sound; but his compositional weaving mostly produces a tapestry that is coherent and compelling. I have loaded three Dolphy pieces onto the current drop.io site.

http://drop.io/jazznotesdp2

One is the title number from Far Cry. Dolphy's opening presents the sound mentioned, but the tune as a whole is mainstream hardbop. Booker Little plays trumpet, Jackie Byard piano, Ron Carter bass, with Roy Haines on drums. "Fire Waltz" is a classic Dolphy composition, recorded at one of his live sessions at the Five Spot Cafe. Booker Little again on trumpet, Mal Waldron on piano, Richard Davis on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums. Waldron's solo is especially worthy of note. Live at the Five Spot 1&2, and the Memorial Album, might be Dolphy's best recordings.

"God Bless the Child" is a solo piece, with Dolphy playing the bass clarinet, also recorded in 1961 at the Five Spot. It is included on a hodge podge album, Here and There, which is all in the Prestige box. Dolphy spins the powerful, buzzing and sqeaking horn so fast at times, it's a wonder he wasn't being followed by storm chasers. But then he spins it out slow and thoughtful, as if to wonder what all the action was about.

Eric Dolphy is worth investing in. I can recommend without reservation: Far Cry, Live at the Five Spot 1&2, and The Memorial Album. One more recording that in the box set but, mysteriously, doesn't appear in the Penguin Guide, is Mal Waldron's The Quest. Booker Ervin is on that one, and that can't be bad. A fine version of "Fire Waltz" is also there.

There are two stories about Dolphy's death. One has it that he collapsed into a diabetic coma in his hotel room, and died from insulin shock at the hospital. Another is that he collapsed on stage, and when they brought him to the hospital, the doctors assumed it was drugs. They left him in bed to sleep it off. If the latter is true, chalk up one more jazz fatality to heroin.