Eric Dolphy

Recorded at the Swedish Broadcast station in Stockholm on two visits in 1961, in September on the same European trip that produced the Copenhagen Prestige volumes and in November while he was touring with John Coltrane, the Stockholm Sessions document a different mode: more exploratory, less finished, with a ragged energy that captures the in-between state of a musician who is still discovering what his music sounds like in an unfamiliar city with unfamiliar players.

The Enja label did right by this material: the release is presented without apology for its informality, and the rough quality is part of its value. This is not a polished document. It is a document of a musician at work, which is sometimes more revealing than the polished records. The alto playing has an edginess here that the more sympathetic Copenhagen rhythm section smoothed out somewhat; Stockholm gave him players who were responsive but less practiced at following, and his playing adapts accordingly.

Best heard after the Prestige volumes, as a complement rather than an alternative.

Archival recordings assembled from multiple sessions, with the familiar strengths and limitations of the assembled archive. The performances are genuine. The documentation is valuable. But the overall experience is more fragmentary than the focused studio albums and live documents. This is a collection of alternate takes, not preliminary passes: three of the four tracks are fully realized alternate takes of pieces already issued on other Dolphy LPs ("G.W.," "245" and "Bee Vamp"), with different improvisations from the familiar versions. The fourth, "Serene," was cut at the Far Cry session but left off that LP, and first came out on a 1974 Prestige anthology.

For the committed Dolphy listener it yields moments that are not available elsewhere in the discography. A phrase here, a transition there, that clarifies something about how he thought through a problem. The value is real. It is the value of the archive rather than the finished work, and it should be heard as such.

Essential for completists. Not essential for anyone who has not yet heard the primary records.

Documents Dolphy in larger-ensemble settings from 1962-1963, including material with arrangements for expanded instrumentation that represents ambitions not fully documented in the primary discography. The larger format gives his alto saxophone playing a context different from the small-group sessions: a string quartet, a harp and vibes, or a ten-piece band provides both more support and more friction, and Dolphy's lines sound different when they emerge from a denser harmonic texture.

Some of the material here suggests how his music might have developed toward larger forms had he lived beyond thirty-six. Three of the pieces, "Densities," "Night Music" and "Abstraction," are Gunther Schuller's compositions rather than Dolphy's, so the chamber writing here shows him inside someone else's larger forms. Whether this represents an actual direction he was moving in or simply the possibilities that are visible in retrospect is impossible to know. What is clear is that his imagination was not limited to the small group, even if the small group was where his greatest work happened.

Rewarding for listeners who have absorbed the main discography and want the fuller picture.

A Blue Note compilation of material recorded between 1960 and 1964, including some unaccompanied and duo performances that are not available elsewhere in the discography. The unaccompanied flute recordings are essential. Stripped of rhythm section, Dolphy plays without a net: his lines move through the instrument's full range with the total freedom of a soloist who needs no support to find his way, and the result reveals something about how he actually heard music that the accompanied recordings, by necessity, partially obscure.

The duo with Ron Carter, "Dolphy-N," approaches the same openness from a different angle: two instruments, minimal harmonic structure, maximum trust. Blue Note understood what they had in this material and presented it with appropriate care. The decision to release it in 1987 rather than let it remain in the archive was the right one.

The solo and duo material here is among the most revealing recordings in the entire Dolphy catalog.

The Candid label documented a concentrated period of important jazz in 1960-1961, recording sessions with Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and others who were pushing jazz in directions the major labels were not always willing to follow. Dolphy appears on several of these sessions as a sideman, and this compilation draws on those appearances to present him in the company of peers who were working in the same general territory.

The sessions with Booker Little and with Mingus are particularly strong. The Mingus context is instructive: Dolphy played with Mingus for a sustained period and the influence was mutual. Mingus's compositional ambitions and his use of extended instruments pushed Dolphy toward compositional thinking; Dolphy's harmonic freedom pushed Mingus toward allowing more space in the arrangements. Hearing Dolphy in the Candid context places him in the company he actually kept during this period.

A useful complement to the solo leader recordings. The sideman context shows a different register of his abilities.

Further Five Spot material from the July 1961 residency, issued by Prestige in 1965 as a memorial album for both Dolphy and Little, both of whom were gone before the decade ended. Booker Little died on October 5, 1961, of uremia, aged twenty-three. Eric Dolphy died on June 29, 1964, of a diabetic coma, aged thirty-six. The title is a memorial but the music is not elegiac. Both men were too fully engaged in what they were doing in July 1961 to be playing elegies for themselves.

What you hear is two musicians at the absolute peak of their powers finding each other note for note, night after night, in a small club in New York in the summer before everything changed. The knowledge of what followed does not add sorrow to the music so much as it adds weight. You hear both what was there and what was taken away. Both of those things are audible at once, and the combination is something that listening to jazz rarely produces with this particular quality.

Essential alongside the two Prestige Five Spot volumes. Together they constitute the most important document of what Dolphy and Little were.

Recorded at the University of Illinois in Champaign in March 1963, about a year before Dolphy left for Europe on the tour that would end with Last Date and his death. The college concert setting produces a particular kind of performance: Dolphy is in full command, stretching out over more than twenty minutes on "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise."

Herbie Hancock's piano provides a harmonic foundation that is fully engaged with the territory Dolphy was mapping, and the quartet is joined by the university's brass ensemble on "Red Planet" and its big band on "G.W.", while "God Bless the Child" is Dolphy alone on bass clarinet. A Blue Note release that deserved to come out in 1999 rather than when it was recorded.

Essential as a document of the quartet he led in the year before Out to Lunch.

The definitive edition of the 1963 New York studio sessions that produced both Conversations and Iron Man. Resonance Records assembled the sessions with the kind of scholarship this material deserved: the Conversations and Iron Man programs plus previously unissued alternate takes, presented with full documentation of what had previously been released and what had not. The result transforms what were fragments into a complete picture.

Bobby Hutcherson's vibraphone appearances here are a direct preview of what he would contribute to Out to Lunch the following year. The complete presentation makes it clear that Dolphy was working through a set of compositional ideas with absolute deliberateness: these are not loose jam sessions but focused recordings of specific musical proposals. The expanded context makes the music more legible as a body of work and more impressive as a sustained statement of artistic purpose.

The essential companion to Conversations and Iron Man. Supersedes the original releases as the definitive document of the 1963 studio work.