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ERIC
DOLPHY
alto saxophone / flute / bass clarinet
LIFELINE
1928-1964
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1928
Dolphy is born in Los Angeles. He studies music at Los Angeles City
College, and serves his long musical apprenticeship playing in bebop
bands on the West Coast and in army bands (1950-52). He joins Chico
Hamilton's band in 1958, and settles in New York in 1959, working
with Charles Mingus.
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1958-59
Dolphy leads his own groups, and, for someone so neglected for the
previous decade, is much recorded in the early 1960s in numerous groups
and settings. He records with Coltrane
in 1961, joining his group in 1962, and tours with Mingus
in 1964. His sudden death from a heart attack is brough about by diabetes. |
STYLE
Dolphy was, perhaps, the first persuasive
multi-instrumentalist, and gave credence to two hitherto
under-used instruments in jazz, the bass clarinet and flute. Dolphy
was as at home with traditional jazz idioms as he was with European
'art' music or the 'third-stream'. His playing drew from varied sources,
from Parker to Coleman
(with whom he recorded in 1960 and 1961), but perhaps mostly from
bird song or the human voice, which with his dissonant harmonies and
angular phrasing and intervals, he sought to imitate. His 1964 album
Out To Lunch is considered a masterpiece of the modern jazz
canon. |
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