Far Cry [Original recording reissued]

Eric Dolphy, Booker Little | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 1, 1991)
• Original Release Date: 1960
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued
• Label: Ojc
• ASIN: B000000YMC
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,382 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The complete original album Far Cry (Prestige/New Jazz 8270), featuring Eric Dolphy in a quintet format with another star who passed away before his time, trumpeter Booker Little. Among the many highlights are an outstanding version of the Billie Holiday-Mal Waldron ballad "Left Alone" and Dolphy's unaccompanied alto sax reading of "Tenderly". As a bonus, two tunes originally issued under the name the Jazz Artists Guild, both of which were recorded on the same date on November 1, 1960, and each featuring one of the stars of Far Cry: Dolphy on "T'Ain't Nobody's Business if I Do", and Little on "Cliff Walk". --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two young masters, November 14, 2001

By 

N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Far Cry (Audio CD)

This is the first of several collaborations between Eric Dolphy & the fated trumpeter Booker Little; it was recorded in December 1960, though it was oddly released only belatedly--in fact, it has a later catalogue number than the Five Spot recordings from July 1961. (The other date recorded by Dolphy & Little was _Out Front_, recorded under Little's name for a different label, Candid.) Listening to it again, I find it hard not to meditate a bit on Dolphy's ill-starred career. He was certainly recording at a ferocious pace in 1960-61, both as a leader & sideman--this is the best-documented period of his career, aside from the 1964 concert recordings with Mingus--& yet it's hard not to feel that Dolphy never really got a chance to create a music commensurate with his talent. He was a great _soloist_: but unlike Coltrane or Coleman, he never really got the chance to develop his music as a group music. Every disc of his has completely different personnel, often containing both bop players like Haynes & Persip & nascent radicals & innovators like Little, Carter, Byard &c. (in this Dolphy's output is comparable to early Charlie Parker discs, which mixed boppers with swing-era players). Prestige was clearly not an ideal base for his talents: they were perhaps hoping to get music in the vein of the extremely popular Chico Hamilton band, of which Dolphy was an alumnus, not a player whose inclinations were to the increasingly radical experiments of the 1960s avantgarde. Dolphy's most unconstrained work on Prestige was on the live Five Spot albums; after he was dropped by the label, he recorded almost nothing under his own leadership, but did turn out his most fully-achieved album at Blue Note (_Out to Lunch_, his most experimental album) & two other interesting dates for United Artists, which are again much more robustly experimental than any of his Prestige discs. As the oeuvre stands, it is as frustratingly but enticingly incomplete as Bix Beiderbecke's or Herbie Nichols': what remains is essential & terrific music, but it could have been much more.

Anyway, back to _Far Cry_. It's an album that's oddly organized, as it's split in three (slightly overlapping) sections. Tracks 1-3 are a loose meditation on the legacy of Charlie Parker, beginning with two Byard originals, a blues called "Mrs. Parker of K.C. (Bird's Mother)" (on which Dolphy plays bass clarinet) & the ballad "Ode to Charlie Parker" (flute). Both tracks are if anything features for the brilliant trumpet of Booker Little, who gets the most solo space. The 3rd track is "Far Cry", which Dolphy in the liner notes says is a summing up of Parker's legacy & how it stood 4 years after his death. This is a brisk, angular line played on alto--curiously it's exactly the same theme as "Out There", the title track of his previous Prestige LP. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with the first version?

"Far Cry" & "Miss Ann" are closely related, as slashing uptempo numbers for alto sax, & thus might be considered the 2nd part of the album. At this point the album takes a mysterious left turn: Booker Little, who up to this point has been if anything more prominent than Dolphy, doesn't play on the rest of the album, which is turned over to three standards. "Left Alone" is given a lovely flute rendition, & "It's Magic" is given a rather exaggerated, almost satirical reading on bass clarinet. The masterpiece here--& what really pushes this album into the front rank of the Dolphy canon--is "Tenderly", a 4-minute acappella alto-saxophone improvisation. It is not given a conventional chords-based reading, but instead treated almost like a classical cadenza: Dolphy hews fairly closely to the melody, but it is stated only in tiny fragments which open up into soaring arpeggios, loops & trills. This is one of the key tracks of the 1960s. I still find it tremendously moving after years of listening.

The CD reissue also includes a version of Dolphy's blues "Serene" (again, this was recorded earlier for Prestige, suggesting Dolphy was not happy with the previously released version). It's as strong as anything on the original album, & I don't know why it was left off the first time around.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magic Duo, October 18, 1999

By 

"bregt" (Belgium) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Far Cry (Audio CD)

Booker Little and Eric Dolphy, two explorers in Jazz who left this world far too soon, join together for the first time on this cd. Wonderful tunes, very interesting solos, good rhythm section. This album is certainly as good as the acclaimed Dolphy & Little recordings at the Five Spot. Mal Waldron is indeed a more interesting piano player than Jaki Byard, but on the other hand Waldron's piano was way out of tune at the Five Spot. Too bad that there is on this page no sound sample of 'Tenderly', the wonderful Dolphy solo on alto.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Dolphy's best, July 4, 2002

By 

dig-it-the-most "dig-it-the-most" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Far Cry (Audio CD)

This is Dolphy at his best with up-beat energy that blows away the dolldrums. Listeners should immediately grasp its optimistic searching outlook.

Bird's Mother is wonderfully angular with great humor. The flute on Left Alone is as bluesy as a flute can be. What a wonderful tribute to the great Billie Holiday, who as we know sang nothing but the Truth.

Booker Little is one of the tragic losses that jazz endured, an immensly talented trumpet player who died in his early 20s. You can hear some of his best work here and he was the perfect horn player to work with Dolphy. And unfortunately, Dolphy was to die tragically a few years later.

Dolphy was a positive spirit that is always valuable when represented in music.

This is music that no music lover can afford to ignore.