Jazz needs Eric Dolphy more than ever. A virtuoso on saxophone, clarinet and flute, his work bridges the two sides of a debate that dogs jazz fans and performers today. To oversimplify, the neoconservatives argue that jazz must be profoundly grounded in tradition, that new developments are little more than a gloss, and that history stops with Miles Davis and modal jazz in the middle '60s, with bare whispers of Ornette Coleman and nothing from swingless radicals like Cecil Taylor. The rebels (most now older than the neocons) counter that jazz loses its essence by going backward, that the titans revered by the neocons were fearless innovators, and that the whole reactionary movement reduces jazz to a museum music with a self-righteous fence around it. Dolphy could have listened to both sides, picked up his horn, and showed the way out in a dozen choruses. But he died in 1964, barely 36, struck down by complications stemming from undiagnosed diabetes.
Dolphy, who studied classical flute with Elise Moennig (and brought the instrument into jazz more forcefully than anyone before him) and founded the bass clarinet as an improvising horn, flourished in a jazz scene far more turbulent and riven than today's. A Los Angeles native who honed his chops for years on the local scene, he gained national attention as a member of the Chico Hamilton band, and went out on his own at the end of 1959. By then, Taylor and Coleman had already dropped the bombshells that ignited free jazz, and the response to their challenge would dominate the next 10 years of the music. Dolphy began with a blast of creativity: he would never record as much for the rest of his life as he did in 1960-61. Many key parts of those sessions are gathered together for the first time on the 9-CD box "Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings" (Milestone).
No acquaintance ever had a bad word to say about Eric Dolphy the person. All describe him as calm, kind, witty, humble and introspective. The mercurial bassist and band leader Charles Mingus, a harsh judge of character, called Dolphy "a saint." He needed the internal fortitude to withstand the resistance his work met not only with the public but with more traditional jazz players. Financially strapped his whole career, Dolphy had to scramble for gigs. He never touched drugs or alcohol. His only addiction was constant practicing -- in the bathroom between sets, next to the record player at parties.
The sound-blip version of Dolphy is that he was freer than John Coltrane but more traditional than Ornette Coleman. He met both men in the middle '50s and later played crucial dates with them, as well. But Dolphy's technique and soul stand apart.
Next page: A more disciplined poet than Trane or Ornette
