Eric Dolphy - Last Date (US Limelight Stereo Vinyl LP)

Eric Dolphy - Last Date | Vinyl LP - US Limelight Stereo pressing (LS-86013), in shrink with Japanese import sticker (IMPF-11012)

By the middle of 1964 Eric Dolphy had left the United States for Europe, worn down by the struggle to make a living at home. On 2 June, in Hilversum in the Netherlands, he recorded a session with three young Dutch musicians: Misja Mengelberg on piano, Jacques Schols on bass and Han Bennink on drums. Dolphy moves across flute, bass clarinet and alto, opening on bass clarinet with a lunging read of Monk's "Epistrophy" and taking in his own "Miss Ann" and "South Street Exit", Mengelberg's knotty "Hypochristmutreefuzz" and a long, aching "You Don't Know What Love Is" on flute. Mengelberg and Bennink were barely known then and would soon help found the Instant Composers Pool at the centre of European free improvisation, but here they already push Dolphy hard. The record closes with his speaking voice, saying that music, once it is over, is "gone in the air. You can never capture it again".

Twenty-seven days after the session, on 29 June 1964, Dolphy collapsed in Berlin and died, only thirty-six, from complications of diabetes. That timing has given Last Date its title and its weight, a farewell nobody planned and one of the most fully realised things he left behind.

This copy is the United States Limelight stereo pressing, still in its original shrink wrap and carrying the Japanese import sticker (catalogue IMPF-11012) that Nippon Phonogram put on copies it distributed in Japan, with the original Nat Hentoff liner notes on the back sleeve.