Eric Dolphy - Berlin Concerts (1977 German Enja 2LP enja Vinyl)

Eric Dolphy - Berlin Concerts | Vinyl 2LP - 1977 German Enja (enja 3007+9)

Berlin Concerts documents one night, 30 August 1961, when Eric Dolphy played two Berlin sessions for German radio during his second European tour. It is Dolphy at his most approachable, which is not a word often attached to him. He works through standards here, "Hot House", "Hi-Fly", "When Lights Are Low" and "I'll Remember April", rather than the open forms of his studio records, and the settings shift from full quintet with trumpeter Benny Bailey to piano-less trio. Across the two discs he moves between all three of his horns: the darting alto, the flute lines critics kept comparing to birdsong, and the bass clarinet he had almost single-handedly turned into a solo jazz instrument. The high point is "God Bless The Child", played entirely alone on bass clarinet, a performance radical for 1961 and one of the pieces he is still remembered for. Even on familiar tunes his phrasing goes places no one else's did, wide interval leaps and a vocal, speaking quality that sounds like an argument being won.

Berlin would take on a darker meaning for Dolphy. Three years after these concerts, in June 1964, he collapsed in the city from undiagnosed diabetes and died at thirty-six. He left an enormous gap. He had played with Mingus, Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and was only starting to be understood on his own terms, and this cheerful, standards-based date now reads as the document of a musician with far more still to give.

This is the original 1977 German pressing on Enja, a two-LP set drawn from the 1961 radio tapes, catalogue number enja 3007+9.