Biography of Eric Dolphy

Like many '60s jazz innovators, Eric Dolphy (alto sax, bass clarinet, flute) spent his formative years in the creative cauldron of '50s Los Angeles, nourished on a diet of Charlie Parker and other bop visionaries. Also like so many others, his career was cut short by the rigors and self-neglect of the jazz life. He apprenticed with an R&B band, drummer Roy Porter's big band, and navy bands, and had numerous opportunities to try out his ideas in jam sessions with many prominent Los Angeles progressives. His associations with major figures like John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, George Russell, Ornette Coleman, Booker Little, Max Roach, Gunther Schuller, and many others were always satisfying, vitalized by Eric's relentless search to expand the role of the alto sax, the flute, and the somewhat obscure bass clarinet. In Dolphy's hands each of these instruments gained new personalities and produced absolutely stunning unaccompanied solos; in ensembles his playing had the controlled invention of Parker, but with all the smooth edges broken off and discarded. Dolphy is remembered as an iconoclast, but his performances with Chico Hamilton's easy-going 1958-1959 group, various Latin jazz dates, Oliver Nelson's blues-flavored projects, bebop jams, and the third-stream constructions of Schuller and John Lewis demonstrate the versatility and traditional grounding of this gentle multi-instrumentalist. It is tragic that Dolphy, a well-loved figure throughout the modern jazz community, had to endure the "anti-jazz" epithets of reactionary critics and pursue his career with pick-up bands in Europe, where he died of diabetes in 1964. His Out to Lunch still stands as a definitive statement of the mid-'60s "new thing" avant-gardists. ~ Myles Boisen