Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was an American jazz musician who played many different instruments, wrote music, and led bands. He was best known for playing the alto saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. Dolphy was one of several musicians during his time who played multiple instruments. His use of the bass clarinet helped make this instrument more common in jazz music. He expanded the ways the alto saxophone could be played and was one of the first important musicians to play the flute in jazz.

Dolphy’s playing style included using large musical intervals and special ways of playing to copy sounds of people and animals. His melodies were sharp and unpredictable, with sudden changes in direction and big jumps between low and high notes. While some people classify his music as free jazz, his compositions and solos often used traditional jazz harmony, even if it was highly complex.

Early life, family and education

Eric Dolphy was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His parents were Sadie and Eric Dolphy, Sr., who moved to the United States from Panama. He started music lessons at age six, learning to play the clarinet and saxophone with private teachers. While in junior high school, he began studying the oboe and wanted to become a professional musician in a symphony orchestra. He earned a two-year scholarship to study at the music school of the University of Southern California. At age 13, he received a "Superior" award for his clarinet playing at the California School Band and Orchestra festival. He attended Dorsey High School, where he continued his music studies and learned to play other instruments. By 1946, he was co-director of the Youth Choir at Westminster Presbyterian Church, which was led by Reverend Hampton B. Hawes, the father of a famous jazz pianist. He graduated from high school in 1947 and then went to Los Angeles City College. During this time, he played classical music pieces like Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du soldat and performed with Roy Porter’s 17 Beboppers, along with musicians Jimmy Knepper and Art Farmer. By 1949, he had made eight recordings with Porter. On these early recordings, Dolphy played the baritone saxophone, alto saxophone, flute, and soprano clarinet.

In 1950, Dolphy joined the U.S. Army and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. Starting in 1952, he studied music at the Navy School of Music. After leaving the Army in 1953, he returned to Los Angeles and worked with many musicians, including Buddy Collette, Eddie Beal, and Gerald Wilson. He later dedicated a song called "G.W." to Wilson, which was recorded on the album Outward Bound. Dolphy often invited friends to play music together at a studio his father had built in the family’s backyard. Recordings made in 1954 with Clifford Brown show how Dolphy was developing as a musician during this time.

Career

Eric Dolphy had his first major opportunity when he joined Chico Hamilton's group in 1958. With this group, he became more widely known and performed many shows from 1958 to 1959. He left Hamilton's group and moved to New York City. Dolphy played flute with Hamilton's band in the film Jazz on a Summer's Day, which recorded a performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.

Charles Mingus had known Dolphy since they grew up in Los Angeles. After arriving in New York in 1960, Dolphy joined Mingus' Jazz Workshop. He participated in Mingus' big band recording Pre-Bird (sometimes called Mingus Revisited) and played on the track "Bemoanable Lady." Later, he joined Mingus' working band at the Showplace in 1960, which was described in a poem by William Matthews. He also appeared on two Mingus albums for the Candid label: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and Mingus. Mingus said Dolphy was a complete musician who could adapt to any musical setting and master all the instruments he played. In the same year, Dolphy worked on the Mingus-led Jazz Artist Guild project and its Newport Rebels recording session.

In 1961, Dolphy toured Europe with Mingus and later performed as a solo artist. He was recorded in Scandinavia and Berlin. Some of these recordings include The Berlin Concerts, The Complete Uppsala Concert, Eric Dolphy in Europe Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (Volumes 1 and 3 were also released as Copenhagen Concert), and Stockholm Sessions. He later worked on Mingus' 1963 album Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus and played on the track "Hora Decubitus."

In early 1964, Dolphy returned to Mingus' working band, which included Jaki Byard, Johnny Coles, and Clifford Jordan. This group performed at the Five Spot, Cornell University, and Town Hall in New York. These shows were recorded on Cornell 1964 and Town Hall Concert. The group later toured Europe, and their performances are documented on Revenge!, The Great Concert of Charles Mingus, and Mingus in Europe Volumes I and II.

Dolphy and John Coltrane met in 1954 when Coltrane was in Los Angeles with Johnny Hodges. They shared musical ideas and learned from each other. In 1961, Dolphy joined Coltrane's band. Coltrane had gained attention with Miles Davis' group but faced criticism when he moved away from hard bop. Coltrane's band with Dolphy, including performances at the Village Vanguard and Africa/Brass sessions, was initially criticized as "anti-jazz" by DownBeat magazine. Coltrane later said the criticism hurt Dolphy and made it seem like they did not understand music.

The first release of Coltrane's 1961 Village Vanguard recordings included only one track with Dolphy. A complete version of these recordings was released in 1997 as The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. This set includes Dolphy's work on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, with Dolphy playing the solo on "Naima." A 2001 Pablo box set included recordings from Coltrane's European tours, such as "My Favorite Things," which Dolphy played on flute.

Trumpeter Booker Little and Dolphy briefly worked together. Little's album Out Front for Candid included Dolphy on alto saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. Dolphy's album Far Cry for Prestige also included Little on five tracks, one of which, "Serene," was not on the original release.

Dolphy and Little co-led a quintet at the Five Spot in 1961. The rhythm section included Richard Davis, Mal Waldron, and Ed Blackwell. One performance was recorded and released as At the Five Spot and Here and There. Both Dolphy and Little also played on Abbey Lincoln's album Straight Ahead and Max Roach's Percussion Bitter Sweet. Little died in October 1961 at the age of 23.

Dolphy performed on key recordings by George Russell (Ezz-thetics), Oliver Nelson (Screamin' the Blues, The Blues and the Abstract Truth, and Straight Ahead), and Ornette Coleman (Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation and a Free Jazz outtake on Twins). He also worked with Gunther Schuller (Jazz Abstractions), Ken McIntyre (Looking Ahead), Ron Carter (Where?), and Mal Waldron (The Quest).

Dolphy's career as a leader began with Prestige Records. He recorded 13 albums for the label between April 1960 and September 1961, though he was not the leader for all of them. A 9-CD box set released in 1995 by Fantasy included all of Dolphy's Prestige recordings.

Dolphy's first two albums as a leader were Outward Bound and Out There. Both had cover art by Richard "Prophet" Jennings. Outward Bound was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who shared a room with Dolphy when they first arrived in New York. The album included three Dolphy compositions: "G.W." (dedicated to Gerald Wilson), and the blues "Les" and "245." Out There was closer to third stream music and featured Ron Carter on cello. Charles Mingus' "Eclipse" from this album is one of the few times Dolphy played soprano clarinet.

Dolphy occasionally recorded saxophone solos without accompaniment. He was the first alto saxophonist to do so, following tenor players Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins. The album Far Cry includes Dolphy's performance of the standard "Tenderly" on alto saxophone. During his European tour, he also performed Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child." The earliest known version was recorded at the Five Spot during his residency with Booker Little. He also recorded two versions of a short solo rendition of "Love Me" in 1963, released on Conversations and Muses.

Dolphy was familiar with 20th-century classical music, including the works of Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók, Milton Babbitt, Donald Erb, Charles Ives, and Olivier Messiaen. He owned scores by these composers and had a large record collection. He performed Alban Berg's Density 21.5 for solo flute at the Ojai Music Festival in 1962 and participated in Gunther Schuller's and John Lewis's Jazz Abstractions project. He admired the Italian flutist Severino Gazzelloni and named his composition Gazzelloni after him.

Around 1962–63, one of Dolphy's working bands included pianist Herbie Hancock.

Personal life and death

Dolphy was engaged to marry Joyce Mordecai, a dancer trained in classical styles who lived in Paris. He did not smoke, and he did not use drugs or alcohol.

Before leaving for Europe in 1964, Dolphy gave papers and other personal items to his friends Hale Smith and Juanita Smith. Later, much of this material was given to the musician James Newton. In May 2014, it was announced that six boxes of music papers were donated to the Library of Congress.

On June 27, 1964, Dolphy traveled to West Berlin to perform with a trio led by Karl Berger at the opening of a jazz club named The Tangent. He was very ill when he arrived and could barely play during the first concert. He was hospitalized that night, but his condition worsened. On June 29, Dolphy died after falling into a diabetic coma. While some details about his death are still debated, most people agree that he fell into a coma caused by undiagnosed diabetes. Notes on the back of the Complete Prestige Recordings box set state that Dolphy "collapsed in his hotel room in Berlin and was diagnosed with a diabetic coma. After receiving an insulin shot, he experienced insulin shock and died." A later documentary and notes on another recording suggest a different account: Dolphy collapsed on stage in Berlin and was taken to a hospital. Some say the doctors there did not know Dolphy was diabetic and assumed, based on stereotypes about jazz musicians, that he had overdosed on drugs. In this version, he was left in a hospital bed to let the drugs take effect. Ted Curson recalled, "That really broke me up. When Eric got sick on that date [in Berlin], and him being Black and a jazz musician, they thought he was a junkie. Eric didn't use drugs. He was diabetic—all they had to do was take a blood test and they would have found that out. So he died for nothing. They gave him some detox stuff and he died, and nobody ever went into that club in Berlin again. That was the end of that club." Shortly after Dolphy's death, Curson recorded and released Tears for Dolphy, which includes a title track that honors his friend.

Charles Mingus said shortly after Dolphy's death, "Usually, when a man dies, you remember—or you say you remember—only the good things about him. With Eric, that's all you could remember. I don't remember any drags he did to anybody. The man was absolutely without a need to hurt."

Dolphy is buried in Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. His headstone has the inscription: "He Lives In His Music."

Legacy

John Coltrane mentioned Dolphy's influence in a 1962 interview with DownBeat, saying: "After he joined the group, we started playing ideas we had only discussed before. His presence helped us try new things. This made me play more freely than before." Coltrane's biographer, Eric Nisenson, wrote that Dolphy's impact on Coltrane was significant. Coltrane's solos became more adventurous, using musical ideas he might not have explored without Dolphy's influence. In his book Free Jazz, Ekkehard Jost described how Coltrane's playing changed during the time he worked with Dolphy. He noted that Coltrane began using larger musical intervals, such as sixths and sevenths, and focused on blending sound colors and techniques like multiphonics into his solos. Jost compared Coltrane's solo on "India," recorded in November 1961 when Dolphy was in the group, to his earlier solo on "My Favorite Things," recorded about a year earlier. He observed that on "My Favorite Things," Coltrane followed the musical mode more strictly, while on "India," he played more freely around the mode, similar to Dolphy's style.

Dolphy's musical influence also reached many young jazz musicians who later became famous. He worked with Ron Carter and Freddie Hubbard at different times in his career. Later, he hired Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson, and Woody Shaw to perform in his live and studio groups. The album Out to Lunch! included drummer Tony Williams, and Dolphy's participation in the Point of Departure session connected him to tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.

A celebration at Le Moyne College, called "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue," is inspired by a song by Frank Zappa.

Carter, Hancock, and Williams later became key members of a famous rhythm section of the 1960s, both on their own albums and in Miles Davis's second great quintet. This is ironic because Davis once criticized Dolphy's music. In a 1964 DownBeat "Blindfold Test," Davis joked, "The next time I see [Dolphy], I'm going to step on his foot." However, the rhythm section of Davis's group had all worked with Dolphy, meaning their style was strongly shaped by him.

Dolphy's skill and unique style of jazz, which was deeply emotional and free yet rooted in traditional and structured music, influenced many musicians, including Anthony Braxton, members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Oliver Lake, Arthur Blythe, Don Byron, and Evan Parker.

Awards, honors, and tributes

Eric Dolphy was inducted into the DownBeat magazine Hall of Fame after he died in 1964. John Coltrane honored Dolphy in an interview, saying, "Whatever I say would not be enough. My life was made better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I have ever known, as a person, a friend, and a musician." After Dolphy's death, his mother gave Coltrane his flute and bass clarinet. Coltrane kept Dolphy's photograph with him, hanging it in his hotel rooms, and played the instruments on several recordings later.

Frank Zappa mentioned Dolphy as a musical influence in the notes on his 1966 album Freak Out!. Zappa also included a song called "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" on his 1970 album Weasels Ripped My Flesh.

Pianist Geri Allen studied Dolphy's music for her master's thesis at the University of Pittsburgh. She honored Dolphy in songs like "Dolphy's Dance," which appeared on her 1992 album Maroons.

In 1989, Po Torch Records released an album titled The Ericle of Dolphi, featuring musicians Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Dave Holland, and Paul Lovens.

In 1997, the Vienna Art Orchestra released Powerful Ways: Nine Immortal Non-evergreens for Eric Dolphy as part of its 20th anniversary box set.

In 2003, to celebrate what would have been Dolphy's 75th birthday, a performance of an original composition by Phil Ranelin was held in his honor at the William Grant Still Arts Center in Los Angeles, his hometown. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors also named June 20 as Eric Dolphy Day.

In 2014, 50 years after Dolphy's death, Berlin-based pianists Alexander von Schlippenbach and Aki Takase led a project called So Long, Eric! to celebrate Dolphy's music. The project included musicians such as Han Bennink, Karl Berger, Tobias Delius, Axel Dörner, and Rudi Mahall. That year also saw a Dolphy tribute by a Berlin-based group led by Gebhard Ullmann, who had previously formed a quartet named Out to Lunch in 1983. In the United States, the arts group Seed Artists held a two-day festival titled Eric Dolphy: Freedom of Sound in Montclair, New Jersey.

Dolphy's music inspired many tribute albums, including Prophet and Dedicated to Dolphy by Oliver Lake, Hidden In Plain View by Jerome Harris, Otomo Yoshihide's re-imagining of Out to Lunch!, Potsa Lotsa: The Complete Works of Eric Dolphy by Silke Eberhard, and a duo album Duet For Eric Dolphy by Aki Takase and Rudi Mahall.

The ballad "Poor Eric," composed by pianist Larry Willis and included on Jackie McLean's 1966 album Right Now!, is dedicated to Dolphy.

A 1991 documentary titled Last Date, directed by Hans Hylkema, written by Hylkema and Thierry Bruneau, and produced by Akka Volta, focused on Dolphy. The film included video clips from Dolphy's television appearances, interviews with members of the Misha Mengelberg trio (with whom Dolphy recorded in June 1964), and commentary from Buddy Collette, Ted Curson, Jaki Byard, Gunther Schuller, and Richard Davis.

Discography

• 1960: Outward Bound (New Jazz, 1960)
• 1960: Caribé with The Latin Jazz Quintet (New Jazz, 1961)
• 1960: Out There (New Jazz, 1961)
• 1960: Far Cry (New Jazz, 1962)
• 1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 1 (New Jazz, 1961) – recorded live
• 1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 2 (Prestige, 1963) – recorded live
• 1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe (Debut, 1962) – recorded live
• 1963: Conversations (FM, 1963) – also released as Music Matador (Affinity)

• 1959–60: Hot & Cool Latin (Blue Moon, 1996)
• 1960–61: Here and There (Prestige, 1966)
• 1960–61: Candid Dolphy (Candid, 1989) – alternate takes from sessions as a sideman
• 1960–61: Fire Waltz (Prestige, 1978) [2LP] – reissue of Ken McIntyre’s Looking Ahead (New Jazz, 1961) and Mal Waldron’s The Quest (New Jazz, 1962)
• 1960–61: Dash One (Prestige, 1982) – unreleased recordings and previously unissued material
• 1960–64: Other Aspects (Blue Note, 1987) – recorded in 1960 and 1964
• 1961: Memorial Album: Recorded Live At the Five Spot (Prestige, 1965) – recorded live
• 1961: The Berlin Concerts (enja, 1978) – recorded live
• 1961: The Complete Uppsala Concert (Jazz Door, 1993) – initially unofficial
• 1960–61: Here and There (Prestige, 1966) – recorded live
• 1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 1 (Prestige, 1964) – recorded live
• 1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 2 (Prestige, 1965) – recorded live
• 1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 3 (Prestige, 1965) – recorded live. Also released as Copenhagen Concert with Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 1.
• 1961: Stockholm Sessions (Enja, 1981)
• 1961: 1961 (Jazz Connoisseur, 1977–78) – recorded live in Munich. Also released as Live in Germany (Stash); Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (Natasha Imports); Munich Jam Session December 1, 1961 by Eric Dolphy Quartet with McCoy Tyner (RLR).
• 1962: Eric Dolphy Quintet featuring Herbie Hancock: Complete Recordings (Lone Hill Jazz, 2004) – also released as Live In New York (Stash); Left Alone (Absord); Gaslight 1962 (Get Back)
• 1963: The Illinois Concert (Blue Note, 1999) – recorded live
• 1962–63: Vintage Dolphy (GM Recordings/enja, 1986) – recorded live
• 1963: Iron Man (Douglas International, 1968) – both Conversations and Iron Man were released as Jitterbug Waltz (Douglas, 1976) [2LP]; Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (Resonance, 2019) [3CD].
• 1964: Out to Lunch! (Blue Note, 1964)
• 1964: Last Date (Fontana, 1965) – for radio program at Hilversum
• 1964: Naima (Jazzway/West Wind, 1987) – for ORTF radio program at Paris
• 1964: Unrealized Tapes (West Wind, 1988) – recorded in 1964 for ORTF radio program at Paris. Also released as Last Recordings and The Complete Last Recordings In Hilversum & Paris 1964 (Domino).

With Orchestra U.S.A.