ERIC DOLPHY - Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (RESONANCE RECORDS 2018)

The first official release of previously-unissued Eric Dolphy studio recordings in over 30 years, the project includes 85-minutes of music that's never before been released!

The Deluxe Limited-Edition, 180-gram 3-LP gatefold set will be released exclusively for Record Store Day's Black Friday Event on November 23, 2018.

The deluxe 3-CD and digital editions will be available on January 25, 2019.

Captured after leaving Prestige Records, and just before the timeless classic Out To Lunch! album, this release contains the under-appreciated masterpiece albums Conversations and Iron Man recorded in New York City in July of 1963. Originally produced by Alan Douglas, the tapes had been stored in a suitcase with Dolphy's personal belongings and given to friends Hale and Juanita Smith before he embarked on his fateful European trip in 1964. Five decades later, the suitcase was given to flutist/educator James Newton who then connected with Zev Feldman at Resonance and began working on this definitive edition of Dolphy's 1963 New York studio sessions with the only copies of these tapes known to exist. 

The project features jazz greats such as saxophonist Sonny Simmons, trumpeter Woody Shaw, bassist Richard Davis,  NEA Jazz Master vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, saxophonist Clifford Jordan, along with flutist William "Prince" Lasha, bassoonist Garvin Bushell, bassist Eddie Kahn, and drummers J.C. Moses and Charles Moffett.  The exhaustive 100-page booklet includes rare and previously unpublished photos, essays by Dolphy scholars and interviews with jazz icons.

THE PACKAGE

The LP/CD packages are beautifully designed by longtime Resonance designer Burton Yount and include exhaustive booklets replete with rare and never-before-published photos (several of which are in color!) by Chuck Stewart, Jean-Pierre Leloir, Val Wilmer, Hans Harzheim, Lennart Steen, Roger Marshutz and many others, plus reproductions of the original album covers for Conversations and Iron Man. The five essays cover different aspects of Eric Dolphy and this music, starting with co-producers Zev Feldman and James Newton’s accounts of how this album came to be and what Dolphy’s music means to this world. Newton says in his essay, “Eric Dolphy taught us to listen much more carefully to voices from all around the world, but never to forget that the substantially personal and complex feelings within field hollers remained in the mix.” Jazz scholar and author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Robin D.G. Kelley, gives us the full historical context of these recordings and Dolphy in 1963. Japanese Dolphy scholar Masakazu Sato and Douglas label manager Michael Lemesre give us accounts of Dolphy’s impact in Japan and of producer Alan Douglas’ role in these recordings and relationship with Dolphy.

We’ve gathered a large congregation of voices to reflect, remember and reexamine the person, the music and the legacy of Eric Dolphy. The saxophone colossus himself, Sonny Rollins, recounted first meeting Dolphy when he asked to sit in with Max Roach’s band. Roach liked to embarrass young musicians who asked to sit in by playing a tune at an extremely fast tempo and running them off the stage. Of course, Dolphy was no average musician and he hung in there the whole way through the tune. From that point forward, Rollins knew Dolphy was a serious musician to be reckoned with. The sole living members of the band interviewed for this release, saxophonist Sonny Simmons and Richard Davis, remember Dolphy as being “a Saint” and “angelic” respectively. Close family friend Juanita Smith gives a detailed account of the time she and her husband, Hale Smith, spent with Eric, including the anecdote about how Eric got the enigmatic bump on his head that we see so clearly in photographs from his later years (including our Chuck Stewart photo on the album cover).

The words and thoughts of no less than 17 musicians – from jazz legend John Coltrane to the Pulitzer prize- winning saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadgill – are represented in this deluxe tribute to Eric Dolphy and this archival discovery, and paint a complex portrait of this heralded, loved and misunderstood artist. Acclaimed flutist Nicole Mitchell says, “I don’t know if there’s a better way to start listening to someone improvising on the flute than to hear Eric Dolphy . . . He really was — bar none — one of the greatest flute players of his time, and of any time before him.” Award-winning saxophonist Steve Coleman stated bluntly about Dolphy, “He’s a virtuoso. There’s nothing else to say about that. It’s amazing that he could get that kind of fluency on different instruments. He’s the first guy I heard to play the shit out of the bass clarinet, the saxophone and the flute.”

LP/CD 1 — Conversations 

1. Jitterbug Waltz (7:18)

2. Music Matador (9:37)

3. Love Me (3:22)

4. Alone Together (13:36)

5. Muses for Richard Davis (Previously Unissued 1) (7:39)

6. Muses for Richard Davis (Previously Unissued 2) (8:31)

LP/CD 2 — Iron Man 

1. Iron Man (9:14)

2. Mandrake (4:47)

3. Come Sunday (6:28)

4. Burning Spear (11:59)

5. Ode to Charlie Parker (8:04)

6. A Personal Statement (Bonus Track) (15:02) *

LP/CD 3 — Previously Unissued Studio Recordings

1. Music Matador (Alternate Take) (8:05)

2. Love Me (Alternate Take 1) (2:27)

3. Love Me (Alternate Take 2) (3:43)

4. Alone Together (Alternate Take) (12:14)

5. Jitterbug Waltz (Alternate Take) (9:36)

6. Mandrake (Alternate Take) (6:48)

7. Burning Spear (Alternate Take) (10:31)

Personnel:

Eric Dolphy – alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet

William "Prince" Lasha – flute

Huey "Sonny" Simmons – alto saxophone

Clifford Jordan – soprano saxophone

Woody Shaw – trumpet

Garvin Bushell – bassoon

Bobby Hutcherson – vibes

Richard Davis – bass

Eddie Kahn – bass

J.C. Moses – drums

Charles Moffett – drums

Resonance Records is a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning label (most recently for John Coltrane’s Offering: Live at Temple University for "Best Album Notes") that prides itself in creating beautifully designed, informative packaging to accompany previously unreleased recordings by the jazz icons who grace Resonance's catalog. Headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA, Resonance Records is a division of Rising Jazz Stars, Inc. a California 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation created to discover the next jazz stars and advance the cause of jazz. Current Resonance Artists include Polly Gibbons, Eddie Daniels, Tamir Hendelman, Christian Howes and Donald Vega.

Ahmed Abdullah and the Solomonic Quintet featuring Charles Moffett (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"The overwhelming impression I took from this most interesting recording was one of mellow warmth. A fine, inspiring release." 

Michael Tucker, Jazz Journal, June 1989

First impressions of Ahmed Abdullah's Solomonic Quintet: the deftly shifting rhythms of the dance, the soulful inflection of the song, and, always, clarity and balance. At first it was the Solomonic Quartet – trumpet, tenor, bass and drums, a drier, more brittle sound.

But the essentials were there. Charles Moffett's crisply articulated drumming, soft shoe pitter-pat circling in a ring dance inside your head, pivoting on the earth-bow throb of Fred Hopkins' bass. Ahmed Abdullah's trumpet, the clean bright call of shining brass echoing the proud lineage of Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, but singing of today. The gruffer linearity of the tenor, played by Chico Freeman at those early gigs, then the passionate but deliberately paced talespinning of David S. Ware. A band chanting the ancient wisdom of African diaspora with the immediacy of today's media-saturated, computer-linked global dialogue.

If you hear the horns as voices, and the bass and drums as impulse and motion, then Masujaa's electric guitar is the spark that jumps from synapse to synapse, resonating the voices and the motive rhythms, facilitating dialogue and dance. It's the most recent addition to a music that's been germinating awhile now, and it has brought further clarification, a sense that each element has found its proper place. The music of the Solomonic Quintet is still volatile, still ripe with discovery, but there is also a sense of setting, a certain hard-won sufficiency. The musicians and the music sing as one voice now. One voice with many stories to tell, many points of view. 

Each of these musicians has tempered his training and inclinations and God-given talent in working situations where one is consistently called on to play at or beyond one's peak capacity, where the impulse to transcend becomes internalized, if not routine. Ahmed Abdullah's trumpet has been heard in big bands and small groups led by some of the most celebrated and discerning composer-players on the New York scene. Most recently, he has been a motivating force in The Group, a cooperative unit that also includes Marion Brown, Sirone and Andrew Cyrille. But he has been heard to best advantage with his own bands, which have consistently been characterized by balance, directness, and sense of purpose; the present Solomonic Quintet brings his gifts as a composer and improviser into even sharper focus.

David Ware, playing both tenor and stritch in this context, is a former member of the ensembles of Andrew Cyrille, Milford Graves and Cecil Taylor. Masujaa, notable for the breadth of his musical interest, recorded with Ahmed Abdullah in the early 70s on a section of Douglas Records' Wildflower Series. He has recorded more recently with Ronald Shannon Jackson's The Decoding Society, and currently plays with his own group, X Factor. Fred Hopkins has appeared on more than 60 recordings, always bringing warmth and wit to a unique style of playing bass, which is both percussive and richly melodic. This, delivered with an extraordinary exactness of timing, can be heard to great advantage here on El Canto.

Charles Moffett grew to musical maturity in Fort Worth, Texas, where he played in teenage bands alongside future giants such as Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, and Prince Lasha. Some years later, he helped Coleman and bassist David Izenson redefine the most basic notions of group playing, in a trio documented most enduringly on the two Blue Note LP's "Live at the Golden Circle," recorded in Stockholm. Any account of his subsequent contributions would have to include the raising of a very musical family that includes his son Charnett, now a recording artist in his own right. Charles Moffett is the creator of a unique approach to polyrhythmic percussion, combining dexterity, precision, and heart. Each part of the drum kit has its own role to play in a shifting, mercurial, light-handed, sure-footed dialogue of rhythms. At the same time, all the parts cohere, so that Moffett's drumming speaks with brisk, sharply-defined authority.

The Solomonic Quintet manages to be more than the sum of its very considerable parts, and that in itself is no small achievement. But the most impressive thing about this music is the way it feels. The depth-of-field you find in the blues is wedded to the improvisational freedoms of jazz and the plainspeaking-but-highstepping immediacy of African and Caribbean rhythms and song forms, all without a hint or artifice or strain. The music is sinewy, substantial, easy to listen to and hard to forget. It satisfies on every level, and that is rare indeed. 

Robert Palmer

1. African Songbird 07:08

2. Gypsy Lady 05:00

3. The Search 06:52

4. Canto II 04:57

5. Khaluma 07:19

6. The Dance We Do 07:29

7. Wishbone Suite 05:34

8. The Dance We Do (Take 1) 08:42

Ahmed Abdullah trumpet, fluegelhorn, voice

David S. Ware tenor saxophone, stritch

Masuhjaa el. guitar

Fred Hopkins bass

Charles Moffett drums