It's easy to hear why Dolphy shook up so many folks, circa 1960: the bop-based tunes were familiar, but not the bubbling, raucous sound he got from bass clarinet. His leaping alto sax packs a punch, too.
Eric Dolphy is represented on a lot of records despite to his early death. If you have to choose - why not take this one? Ron Carter on cello makes it also worth.
Within ten months of this recording Booker Little is dead and one of the greatest front lines in jazz history is lost--"Far Cry" is not a session to be missed. Dolphy's unaccompanied alto solo on "Tenderly" rivals his legendary unaccompanied bass clarinet solo on "God Bless the Child" (recorded during the Five Spot dates and available on the album "Here and There"). Dolphy often mentioned that listening to songbirds influenced his playing--this is evident in his astoundingly beautiful flute solo on "Ode to Charlie Parker" and elsewhere on this date. Charlie Parker's influence informs his music, of course, though Dolphy had long since transcended this for a freer, more open vision. Essential early Dolphy.
When Jaki Byard was with Charles Mingus in the 1960s, audiences would laugh when, mid-solo, Byard would burst into 1920s-style stride piano — the revved-up ragtime offshoot where the left hand bounds back and forth over the lower half of the keyboard. Its archaic quality struck listeners as comic — in that avant-garde age, stride was for antiquarians. Nowadays every hip outside or inside pianist will drop a little stride science once in awhile — like… more »
