Search - Eric Dolphy :: Complete Memorial Album Sessions

Dolphy, a sure candidate for musical sainthood

Dylan Groves | Kitchener-Waterloo, ON CA | 12/09/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In a musical genre laden with tragedies, I've always found Eric Dolphy's to be the most affecting. Here was a musician so proficient, so captivating, so fearless -- and yet, all one ever hears from the survivors around him is how kind and generous the man was. And then, to be felled by undiagnosed diabetes -- just awful.



As far as I'm concerned, just about everything in the man's discography is essential, including the disc in question. There may be other, "more essential" albums ("Out to Lunch", "Out There", Mal Waldron's "The Quest", "Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus" to name a few) but there's no question that this collection is a major work from a major artist. Every note is so *alive*. Listen to "Music Matador". Eric injects such passion, such anguish into the deluge of otherwise familiar calypso notes that I can't help but twitch in sympathy. Or "Alone Together", an epic bass/bass clarinet duel performed with the help of the great Richard Davis -- this piece is so deeply involving and intense it almost caused me to rear-end a fellow in front of me.



Perhaps best of all is another in the string of the man's brilliant solo alto efforts, "Love Me", which closes the disc, but there's really not a dull moment in the entire hour and fifteen minutes. Such notes, such passion. There'll never be another."