When I first heard Eric Dolphy play, I couldn't stand his music. It sounded formless and wild. Now I love and admire it, more than fifty years after the fact. Recently I happened on a great documentary about Dolphy, "The Last Date," which made me appreciate him even more.
I wonder how it is that one's taste can change that way. I also wonder why now, when I'm an old guy, I love the freedom and intensity of his music, and why, as a student, when I ought to have been open to it, I just couldn't go there.
The musicians who were interviewed in the documentary constantly spoke of Dolphy's single-minded pursuit of music. He practiced all the time (like Coltrane), and he was the master of three very different instruments: alto saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet. He was more or less the first musician to use the bass clarinet as a solo instrument in jazz, and his mastery of the instrument was phenomenal.
One of the musicians interviewed in the documentary (which was made in 1991) was a Dutch bass-clarinet player who was working on transcriptions of Dolphy's solos. Not only are they nearly impossible to play, but he would move from one demanding instrument to another during a set.
A couple of the elderly black people who knew Dolphy during his childhood in Los Angeles, who are interviewed in the film, said that he aspired to play clarinet in the Los Angeles symphony orchestra, a path that was blocked to black people at the time (he was born in 1928). Similarly, Nina Simone (before she took that name) was unable to pursue a career as a classical pianist. Lucky for the world that they were thwarted in that direction! Jazz would be much impoverished if they had gone on to become classical musicians. In his lectures on "The Ethics of Jazz" at Harvard, Herbie Hancock also tells how he was blocked as a classical pianist. Notwithstanding these three creative people, who found their way in defiance of discrimination, I'm sure that there were hundreds of talented black kids with great potential as classical musicians who didn't find their way into jazz or another creative musical field.
In my own modest musical practice, I only hope to keep deepening my appreciation of music. Even if I play Handel and Mozart on the flute, and I don't even try to emulate Dolphy's freedom, hearing him also gives me appreciation of classical music.
I recently read a long book of essays by the eminent classical pianist, Alfred Brendel, whose repertoire did not include contemporary musicians, although he was intensely interested in new music and listened to it. You can stick to what your comfortable doing and are good at, and admire what make you feel uncomfortable and inadequate at if you tried it. Though, on the other hand, doing things that make you uncomfortable is a good way to grow.
It appears that Dolphy died of undiagnosed diabetes at the age of only 36 because the doctors in Berlin assumed that a black musician who had gone into a coma was overdosed with heroine - and Dolphy didn't use drugs. What a loss.
I wonder how it is that one's taste can change that way. I also wonder why now, when I'm an old guy, I love the freedom and intensity of his music, and why, as a student, when I ought to have been open to it, I just couldn't go there.
The musicians who were interviewed in the documentary constantly spoke of Dolphy's single-minded pursuit of music. He practiced all the time (like Coltrane), and he was the master of three very different instruments: alto saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet. He was more or less the first musician to use the bass clarinet as a solo instrument in jazz, and his mastery of the instrument was phenomenal.
One of the musicians interviewed in the documentary (which was made in 1991) was a Dutch bass-clarinet player who was working on transcriptions of Dolphy's solos. Not only are they nearly impossible to play, but he would move from one demanding instrument to another during a set.
A couple of the elderly black people who knew Dolphy during his childhood in Los Angeles, who are interviewed in the film, said that he aspired to play clarinet in the Los Angeles symphony orchestra, a path that was blocked to black people at the time (he was born in 1928). Similarly, Nina Simone (before she took that name) was unable to pursue a career as a classical pianist. Lucky for the world that they were thwarted in that direction! Jazz would be much impoverished if they had gone on to become classical musicians. In his lectures on "The Ethics of Jazz" at Harvard, Herbie Hancock also tells how he was blocked as a classical pianist. Notwithstanding these three creative people, who found their way in defiance of discrimination, I'm sure that there were hundreds of talented black kids with great potential as classical musicians who didn't find their way into jazz or another creative musical field.
In my own modest musical practice, I only hope to keep deepening my appreciation of music. Even if I play Handel and Mozart on the flute, and I don't even try to emulate Dolphy's freedom, hearing him also gives me appreciation of classical music.
I recently read a long book of essays by the eminent classical pianist, Alfred Brendel, whose repertoire did not include contemporary musicians, although he was intensely interested in new music and listened to it. You can stick to what your comfortable doing and are good at, and admire what make you feel uncomfortable and inadequate at if you tried it. Though, on the other hand, doing things that make you uncomfortable is a good way to grow.
It appears that Dolphy died of undiagnosed diabetes at the age of only 36 because the doctors in Berlin assumed that a black musician who had gone into a coma was overdosed with heroine - and Dolphy didn't use drugs. What a loss.
