Customer Reviews

Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography And Discography

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It's wonderful that there's finally a book on Eric Dolphy...however, from a musician's point of view, this book is just OK. What bothered me the most was when the authors would analyze Dolphy's playing in terms of "weak" and "strong". I am a musician, and have all of the recordings the authors reffered to, and in most cases I disagreed with their evaluations of his playing. Overall, the strongest parts of this book are the non-music related stories about him. But there aren't too many of those...

Overall, this book is fairly good, but if you're buying it only for the discography, be forewarned that it is still a little dated.

Eric Dolphy, whom Charles Mingus once called a "saint," claims that when he lived in LA, as a young muscician, he used play his horns with the birds, and that the birds would play back with him. Call it an early form of collective improvisation. A form of "inter-being," as Zen thinkers might designate it. Later, Dolphy focused on marvellous collective free improvisations with other creative early avant-garde jazz muscicians like John Coltrane and Charles Mingus.

This intelligent book, an important second edition of an original 1970 text revised in 1992, emerged out of correspondence between authors Simosko (at the time a curator of Jazz) and Tepperman (a medical doctor), on the relevance of Dolphy's substantial contribution to jazz. An incredible set of indexs of Dolphy performances, discography, and songs follows the text. A must for jazz lovers who will fly to free spaces.

I have been a professional jazz musician for as long as I remember. But it wasn't untill the concert in 1964 just before Eric Dol;phy died that I became serious in my approach to practice. The concert took place in Wuppertal in Germany with Charles Mingus. Johnny Coles was on Trumpet, Jacky Byard on piano. The others I forget. Danny Richmond on drums. The audience was so jammed into the town hall that everybody was standing for the entire performance. It was such a moving experience that there was almost no applause. This must have been very disturbing to the musicians. At one point Erics Bass Clarinet fell off its stand and he spent no little time examining it to make sure it was ok. The concert was an experience that I will never forget because it quite literaly changed my life. This was because of one tune that Dolphy and Mingus played as an encore , also as a duet on flute and arco bass. This was "what love" So wonderful was this presentation that people where openly crying with emotion. It is perhaps difficult to explain the impact of musicians who can bring about such feelings in an audience. and it is indeed a rare thing to experience within any artistic performance. To listen to artists on record does not do the true greats justice. Suffice to say that for me I became a serious jazz musician from that day forward. People. myself included where still choked up even after leaving the town hall and walking out into the afternoon sunshine. Little did we know how prophetic our tears were because less than one month later Eric Dolphy died in Berlin. I can only owe this wonderful human being, Eric Dolphy a reason and a shape for all of my life. from that day untill whenever. Grahame Rhodes Jazz Musician Sat 13 march 1999

The Dolphy bio is well written and thorough. I've enjoyed getting to know about Dolphy's life and all the musicians he played with, not to mention, the writing has shed light on the man as much as the musician.

I recommend the book to anyone who wants to learn more about Dolphy and his recordings.