Eighteen months after Eric Dolphy's untimely death, Jazz Monthly published a comprehensive Dolphy retrospective by Jack Cooke, an excellent writer who has several other featured pieces in the Blog. His very detailed extensive retrospective has encouraged me to review some of my own thinking on the Dolphy output I own. Photo of Eric Dolphy by Bill Wagg Eric Dolphy BY JACK COOKE ONE THE CURRENT exploratory scene in jazz-the new wave, the avant-garde or what one likes to call it-is notably different from the music that immediately preceded it in that it is essentially a group music. In the early 1960's Ornette Coleman, George Russell, Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Max Roach, Don Ellis were all essentially bandleaders as much as musicians; they didn't usually turn up on other leaders' dates. There were exceptions, of course, like the George Russell-Don Ellis partnership of 1961, and these days there is a great deal of polarised activity in areas where a definite leader doesn'...
Jamo Spingal