American Record Guide
Martin Williams : January, 1962

With jazz moving technically into the areas of contemporary concert music and to atonality, Dolphy emerges as one of the most talented players of “the new thing.” This recital has Ron Carter‘s cello as the other chief solo instrument, but there are beautiful moments from George Duvivier‘s bass (particularly on 17 West) and constantly discreet accompaniments by Roy Haynes‘ drums. It also shows that Dolphy’s decidedly improved bass clarinet and flute are now almost on a level with his alto. One’s chief reservation remains that Dolphy still tends to play his techniques rather than play music, and his phrasing is not yet fully personal. His improvising is admirably free in the title piece, except that he gets badly hung up on a single motif, as he also does on The Baron. The best performance is Feathers, for under the air of ferocious double timing, Dolphy plays with impressive variety in rhythm and phrasing and with increasingly personal warmth.

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Down Beat : 09/28/1961
Martin Williams : 3.5 stars

There is a major revolution now going on in jazz, and Dolphy is obviously one of the most talented, dedicated players of “the new thing.”

This LP shows striking developments in his playing, and at least on track, Feathers, is excellent. Certainly a major improvement is in Dolphy’s bass clarinet work heard here on Serene and Baron, which is far less riddled with bebop clichés than it once was and is now almost as good as his alto. Dolphy’s alto itself has become warmer and, as he wants it to be, more like speech.

The melody of Out There is a bit forced, and both Dolphy, on alto, and Carter get hung up on a single motif in their improvising. Discreetly used, such a device can give order to a solo, of course, but here each man comes rather close to monotony. Both, however, play with commendable freedom on this piece.

Serene, a blues line that sounds surprisingly like a 1930s ballad, has excellent work by Duvivier and Carter. Both pizzicato solos are fine melodic creations. Oddly, Carter’s ideas sound both earthier and more musically sophisticated than Duvivier’s.

Baron is for Charlie Mingus and has a Mingus-like melody. Carter’s solo is rhythmically almost fascinating; Dolphy is very good, but about halfway through he again gets hung up on a single idea.

Both Dolphy’s 17 West, a less forcedly far-out melody, and a good one, and Randy Weston‘s Melba, with a theme statement that is for me somewhat overripe, has Dolphy on flute, and when he applies his ideas to that instrument, he becomes one of the few uncliched flute players in jaz. On 17 West there also is a recurring motif, but it is effectively written into the piece, and the players must improvise around it. Carter (bowed) is good; Duvivier is lovely. Dolphy and Carter skirt sentimentality for strong lyric melody on Melba.

As I say, Dolphy is most impressive on Feathers. There his increasing warmth is most obvious and most appropriate, and under the general air of double-timing, he actually uses and impressive and exciting variety in rhythm and phrasing. An individuality in rhythm and phrasing is the surest sign of a jazzman’s growing maturity.

Haynes‘ participation throughout – and especially his discretion behind the quiet strings – is commendable.

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Liner Notes by Joe Goldberg

It would be best to acknowledge, right at the outset, that this is not the most easily grasped jazz album you are ever likely to hear. And it is also appropriate to say that, like many things which require careful attention, it repays that attention with a greater reward than you might get from music that reveals its total character the first time around.

This is Eric Dolphy‘s second album for Prestige/New Jazz. He has appeared as a sideman on other records (Oliver Nelson‘s Screamin’ the Blues, Prestige/New Jazz 8243; Ken Mclntyre‘s Looking Ahead, Prestige/New Jazz 8247; and the Latin Jazz Quintet’s Caribé, Prestige/New Jazz 8251), but since Eric himself makes a careful distinction between albums such as this, on which his own music is played, and others, it would be best to regard it as the second. This is by no means to disparage those other records, Eric says, “All music is good, and all music is challenge,” and so he gave his best to those other efforts.

I asked him, thinking of rock-and-roll as I did so, if he really believed all music was good. “Yes,” he said, “All music has its own message. Music is just like people and places and things. Everything has a message for someone. And I’m in no position to criticize anything. Take a piece like Bobby Timmons‘ Moanin’. A lot of people are talking against that kind of music, but these people are playing it different, in a modern way. That piece is really a beautiful piece. It’s not really a blues, it just seems to be. It’s got a very beautiful, complex structure. It shows a very good musical mind. I think that if you can play a piece, and get to understand it and what it‘s made up of, then you’re in a position to criticize it.”

Feeling put in my place, I returned to the subject of this record. It is, as I said, his second album as a leader. The first, Outward Bound (Prestige/New Jazz 8236), was asked on the standard bop quintet format – reed instrument, trumpet, and rhythm – and managed to do several things within that context that had never been done before. Many writers, in discussing it, latched onto a certain similarity between Eric and Ornette Coleman, and played it up for all it was worth, possibly as an excuse to avoid discussing the music directly. “I get bugged when people compare us,” Eric said. “I’ve known Ornate a long time, and we agree about a good many things. But I’m just playing myself, the same as he is. Of course, so many people aren’t interested in the music, but in the person, They only talk about the person. Take Beethoven. He was supposed to be a terrible person, and the writers of his time only talked about that. But he created something, and what he created was beauty, and it’s still alive today.”

Which is a good enough place to talk about what Eric has created here, with his second album. It is the mark of an artist that he takes what he needs, from whatever source, and turns it into something much deeper and more meaningful than it was before. Eric has made fresh use of some of the things he learned about orchestral sound when he was with the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Chico Hamilton, of course, is the man who combined the many reed instruments of Buddy Collette, the cello of Fred Katz, and the guitar of Jim Hall into one of the most unique sounds jazz had ever heard. But the music he created with that sound was, in many respects, quiet, placid, and not too venturesome. As each of the men in the group became well known, some of them left the group, and Hamilton began looking for replacements. One of the men he found was Eric Dolphy. Since Eric could play alto, flute, and regular and bass clarinets, he was ideal for the group. He also found a young bass player named Ron Carter, who had played with the Eastman Rochester Symphony. Eric’s ideas about music were a little different than Hamilton’s (“I could play what I wanted,” Eric says, “with restrictions”), and a record he made with the quintet was never released, because the recording company officials felt that “the group had lost its sound,” It was later redone with a more conventional reedman, and everyone, presumably, was happy. Ron Carter never played cello with the group, but he would jam on the instrument whenever he got the chance, and Eric was highly impressed with what he heard – he had found, if you wish, a soulmate in the group.

Time passed, both Eric and Ron were in New York, and when the time came to do his second album as a leader, Eric decided to put the reeds-and-cello sound, which he loved, to more personal use. This album is the result. It could be discussed endlessly and technically, and probably will be, but Eric cautioned me, “Don’t try to tell anybody what the guys are saying,” and he is probably right. What he does want said, and he is right here, too, is that Ron Carter contributes here what is probably the best jazz use of bowed cello that has ever been heard. George Duvivier, he says, is one of the best bassists in jazz, but since he works mostly on recordings, his reputation is somewhat limited to the profession. “He’s the bass on Lena Horne’s record of Mood Indigo,” Eric said. “And musicians always ask for him again. That’s the real reputation. (And it should also be noted that the one plucked solo of Ron’s, on Serene, achieves an enormous degree of fascination and complexity with George’s plucked bass behind it.) Roy Haynes, Eric feels, solved to perfection the problems in dynamics presented by a quartet with two stringed instruments.

Quickly, about the tunes themselves:

Out There is Eric’s composition, and he plays alto.

Serene is also Eric’s. It is a lovely, austere blues, and he plays bass’ clarinet.

The Baron is Eric’s portrait of former employer Charles Mingus, who used to call himself Baron Mingus several years ago in Los Angeles. I fell into the trap of discussing the man rather than the music, and tried to get some information about the controversial Mingus from Eric. “He writes very strong, daring music, and it’s a ball to play with him,” Eric said, ending that part of the conversation. The instrument is bass clarinet.

Eclipse is Mingus’ own composition. Eric feels that, while this is perhaps not representative of Mingus’ best writing, it most closely approximates the way Eric feels about him, and so he chose to play it, The instrument is regular Bb clarinet.

17 West, by Dolphy, is part of a former Manhattan address. He plays flute.

Sketch of Melba, again on flute, is pianist Randy Weston‘s impression of trombonist Melba Liston.

The final composition, Feathers, which I find almost painfully haunting when Ron Carter backs Eric‘s poignant alto with a guitar-like use of cello, is by Hale Smith. Smith has recently been commissioned by BMI to write a composition commemorating that organization’s twentieth anniversary. Eric was particularly impressed with this piece when it was in Chico Hamilton’s book. When the quintet played Cleveland, Ohio, where the composer lives, Eric asked to meet him. They have since become good friends.

It should be said that, while the basic conception remains the same, there are differences in style in Eric’s playing from one instrument to another. That is because he is highly conscious of the particular characteristics and capabilities of each one, and tends to shape a solo along those lines. An ambition of his, which he has not yet realized, is to someday play sets in clubs which would consist of the same tune played on the various horns.

His most basic ambition is rather a simple one. As he puts it, “I just came to New York to play.” And that is what he’s been doing. He is about to go into rehearsal for a Jean Genet play, The Blacks. The music has been written by Max Roach, and Eric will be part of Max’s pit band. He has also been associated with some of the so-called “third Stream” experiments of Gunther Schuller and others. “It’s just music,” he says, “and it’s good music. I wish people would quit saying jazz musician, and just say musician. If you can play jazz, you can play other things. There’s so much good music that isn‘t being heard, Schoenberg and Berg and Bartók and Webern, they’re just beginning to be heard. And so many other things that haven‘t been heard at all.”

About his own work, and the work of the men he‘s been associated with, he has a final comment to make: “Something new’s happening. I don’t know what it is, but it’s new, and it’s good, and it‘s just about to happen, and it’s wonderful to be here in New York, right in the middle of it.”