Eric Dolphy - The Berlin Concerts

This is nearing the end of the pile next to the turntable. There is, however, another pile below it that awaits listening. So I'm not worried. And I'm sure you're not. What I'm more concerned about is that Eric Dolphy is a challenge to write about. First of all you can't help but think of his imminent death with a title like Berlin concerts. These recordings were made there in 1961, and Dolphy died there just three years later, a week after his 36th birthday.

On Hot House, the first track, Dolphy is lively and energetic. When Benny Bailey comes in to take a solo, he doesn't have that same jagged vigor. Which is not a criticism. He is smooth, a bit languorous in a hot, humid summer day way. Pepsi Auer on piano is somewhat muffled here. He makes his way through the improvisation relaxed and sure. Dolphy comes back in and banters back and forth with Buster Smith on drums. Again, he is forceful. There's a nice intertwining of him and Bailey at the end. The song is 19 minutes long.

The first song on side II is Benny Carter's When Lights Are Low. Dolphy starts with the main chorus, infusing it with a lot of personality and feeling. The line becomes a humorous chubby guy strolling down the block. But then that guy goes off, because Dolphy is soon improv-ing and there are geese, fast rushing brooks and streams and leaps and hops through the air. Jamil Nasser solos after him. Like Auer on Hot House, his bass is not quite loud enough. He climbs a precipice, tiptoes up and down the side of a rocky mountain wall, then finds a meadow and one note he likes a lot. Then quiet quotes of the chorus. Now Dolphy is back and does another back-and-forth with Smith. He comes back to the chorus on his bass clarinet, but now it sounds totally changed. Is this a different instrument?

Geewee is a Dolphy composition, so it's frantic and fast, there and gone and hard to hold onto.

The first song on side III (there are two records), God Bless the Child, is just Dolphy on bass clarinet. It's beautiful.

Nasser and Smith are back on bass and drums for Hi-Fly, with Dolphy now playing flute. You really get a sense of Dolphy's breath when he plays flute, and you realize how athletic his playing is. His flute is dry, breathy, "vata" in Ayurvedic speak. This is an appealing aspect of him. Thankfully he played multiple instruments. Jamil Nasser's bass can be heard better here. Buster Smith does some mad drumming at the end. Back to the chorus to wrap things up, but the drummer adds some nice crazy raps and taps. Someone says that's it. The flute meanders all over the place, winds down, changes direction, like a kid that doesn't want to go home.

Side IV and two more songs... but I'm not going to write about them. Maybe you'll listen to them and write about it, and then e-mail me: theheretohear@gmail.com