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  The exhaustive 100-page booklet includes rare and previously unpublished photos, essays by Dolphy scholars and interviews with jazz icons.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.

Joel Futterman Quartet - Vision in Time (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"Futterman's piano sound is the result of having the strongest left hand technique in the business coupled with a unique three-hand technique developed while working in isolation for the past two decades. For me, though, the beauty of Futterman's approach is that his technique is always contained within the music, serving as a conduit for the development of ideas, and not used as a display of Lisztonian fireworks." 

Paul Niles, Jazz Review and Collector's Discography, March 1992

Improvised music is a warehouse full of paradoxes. Among them is the sense that this music, which promotes freedom and personal expression like no constitutional amendment ever did, is nevertheless governed by a set of clubhouse rules that often seem downright draconian.

Joel Futterman, who has been making music for a long time, with a 23 year involvement in New Music alone, is an individual whose career is well delineated by a healthy neglect for those rules. Currently working in theVirgina tidewater area, having forsaken the prototypical urban center, he is continually forging a music that is made with an early Ornette-like sense of separation from the neighborhood of creative and nurturing forces. As with Coleman, Futterman's music is indelibly his own, and has clearly and of necessity been reached through a continual and deeply-held belief in himself. 

It cannot be simple or easy to develop the urgent, frankly communal forms often found in New Music, while maintaining such a creative life apart. In truth, Futterman is not entirely alone in his work, for he enjoys a luxury almost as dear as his self reliance – that of a close and constant collaborator, Robert Adkins, who is the drummer on this recording. The bond that these two have achieved through their years of work together would be precious in any setting, but is especially focused, vital and well-kept in its own context.

Getting to hear the output of this collaboration is as great an opportunity as that of the two being able to bear down consistently on a shared vision, in lieu of working more intermittently with a wider circle of musicians. 

If anything, though, this work is under-documented. Vision in Time represents the first recorded venture forth for the pianist and drummer since 1984's Inneraction, made with bassist Richard Davis and the late altoist Jimmy Lyons.

That record proved to be Lyons' last date, a turn which had a deep effect on both Futterman and Adkins. Both speak of Lyons, to this day, incredulous that they encountered such a touchstone and kindred spirit, let alone that he's now departed. He is remembered here with the dedication of "There is a Smile". 

Having established a working closeness on his last recording, Futterman met with producer Philip Egert in 1988 and set about recapturing that quality in a follow-up quartet session, again with bassist Davis. The leader then contacted fellow former Chicagoan, Joseph Jarman, having written the music for this date with tenor sax and bass clarinet in mind, both prominent weapons in Jarman's arsenal of things great and small. Adkins, of course, was equally committed to recording in this setting.

He had met up with New Music when he met up with Futterman in 1974, after years of paying a surprising variety of straightahead dues with well knowns at home and abroad. He hasn't spared any effort in his development since. And, as is now especially evident, he has mastered the rigors of playing free time with purpose.

The way in which the quartet was formed for this recording is a measure of the acknowledgement given Futterman, despite his years of removal from the larger music making community. Jarman, a man of keen insight and curiosity, became interested in the project despite his being unfamiliar with Futterman's most recent work, and was furnished scores in advance of the date.

Davis, with customary elegance and assurance, agreed to fly in for the recording the moment the subject was broached. His admiration for Futterman's abilities and his offer of artistic support and fellowship (which is not lightly given) date back to his musical introduction to the leader some years ago. As to the present day, the ease of wresting Davis from the embrace of the American heartland for this recording was likely occasioned by a warm remembrance for the freedoms of the previous quartet project, and by his continued appreciation for the company of a player who shares his breadth of experience and length of service to the foundations of improvised music.

Indeed, as Futterman warms up the studio piano, it's clear that he is the master of many possibilities, some familiar; some, as Jon Hendricks would say, "unforeheard". When an artist of such range focuses on making a music that is continually new to his vision and capabilities, it's clear that such art is completely of necessity, and that it will be made regardless of the opportunity to record it. The pianist, who has miles of ideas waiting to be brought to sound, nevertheless has made the most of this occasion, and has fashioned the music into a distinct and evolutionary statement by changing some parameters from past work.

Vision in Time represents a more fully compositional effort for Futterman, and the compositions are of a relatively concise and discrete nature, as opposed to the extended format of Inneraction. Some multiple takes were made during the recording (running the risk of countering the freshness of the first take), and if the ensemble sounds close enough to have had the privilege of rehearsals, it is because the vital axis of this quartet, Futterman and Adkins, have been in rehearsal for all those years near the shore.

This undisturbed unity between the two men is clearly the great reward for their having kept faith apart from the bigger climates. They navigate the charged, dense structures of these New Music forms with complete and singular clarity, which should be a revelation to the listener. This clarity, obviously hatched from a distinction of purpose, is an empowerment that can help clear the way to higher ground for both artist and listener.

Thankfully, New Music is still the riskiest music in town to create, and when the risks are taken with such care and experience, they can be made irresistable to us. When the fruit of the risks is expressed with such clarity, we can be certain that when the notes have disappeared, as Dolphy said, into the air, we will have heard and been affected by them all.

William Tandy Young
November 8, 1989

1. Reality on Edge 09:45

2. Talking with You 10:14

3. Vision in Time 08:05

4. There Is a Smile 08:52

5. I Never Knew Her Name 04:31

6. I Remember 15:29

7. Round Two 12:31

Joel Futterman piano

Joseph Jarman tenor sax, bass clarinet

Richard Davis bass

Robert Adkins drums