Eric Dolphy 1963 Sessions

[Jonny Miner]

Whatever you call them, "Music Matador," "Iron Man," or, my personal favorite version, the "Eric Dolphy Sound" double CD on Jazz World, I think these sessions are some of Dolphy's best. Featuring Prince Lasha, Clifford Jordan, Sonny Simmons, Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis...why are these recordings issued so shoddily, why are they often slighted, why aren't they considered classics???

More advanced and experimental than his excellent Prestige recordings, more hearty and soulfull than "Out to Lunch" (excellent also, of course...), good shit indeed.

Whadaya think?

[claude]

Originally posted by Jonny Miner
Whatever you call them, "Music Matador," "Iron Man," or, my personal favorite version, the "Eric Dolphy Sound" double CD on Jazz World, I think these sessions are some of Dolphy's best. Featuring Prince Lasha, Clifford Jordan, Sonny Simmons, Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis...why are these recordings issued so shoddily, why are they often slighted, why aren't they considered classics???

More advanced and experimental than his excellent Prestige recordings, more hearty and soulfull than "Out to Lunch" (excellent also, of course...), good shit indeed.

Whadaya think?

I couldn't agree more, I was listening to a couple of Dolphy CD's from that era this morning and while the music is great, the sound quality left a lot to be desired.

[Nate Dorward]

I've no idea why those sessions have never been reissued properly--indeed, constantly appear on different labels under different names. Great stuff, nonetheless. Rumour has it there's much more from those sessions in existence (they were recorded over several days so you'd think there'd be more than two album's worth of material, or at least some outtakes) but nothing's ever surfaced to my knowledge.

The very late live gig with Nathan Davis & Donald Byrd, too, has been very shoddily issued over the years (I have it spread across two CDs, including 20 minutes of exactly the same material repeated on both discs--a long take of "India") & yet contains very good, underrated music--in fact I think Dolphy's playing there is often much more interesting than on the Last Date session.

[Pete C]

Well, the short answer is that the shoddiness comes from the fact that the masters have fallen into the hands of shoddy operators. I wouldn't agree that Out to Lunch is a lesser work than these, but certainly Iron Man is of the same caliber as OTL.