Oliver Nelson/Eric Dolphy

[fasstrack]

I was with a friend today and mentioned that I thought the quintet stuff w/Nelson and Dolphy was smokin'. He pulled out an LP 2fer w/Straight Ahead and Screamin' the Blues (the 2nd actually a sextet w/Richard Williams, trumpet). We listened to Straight Ahead and it knocked me on my ass as usual, the group, the writing, the solos. For some reason I thought there was another quintet date. My friend looked it up. There isn't, BUT he found all 4 recordings Nelson and Dolphy made together (the above plus Blues and the Abstract Truth and a big band Lockjaw Davis date) sold together for as low as $16 and change. I didn't see the site, and anyway can't post links from a cell phone, so would someone do the honors for this ridiculously good deal?

[J.A.W.]

It's a 2CD-set: Oliver Nelson - Eric Dolphy: Complete Recordings, an unauthorized release from European public-domain label Essential Jazz Classics. They have no access to original sources like mastertapes; the set is probably taken from (official) Original Jazz Classics and impulse! CDs.

Edited October 3, 2012 by J.A.W.

[fasstrack]

Well I'm not going to tell people to buy inferior or especially unauthorized recordings. I guess they can do what they want, and it's there. But thanks for telling me, and no, don't anyone post the link, it's against the rules here anyway. Administrators, you can remove this thread w/my blessing and apologies. I meant well. A drag. Guess it was too good to be true.

[Brute]

I love "Straight Ahead" it's a great album.

[BillF]

I love "Straight Ahead" it's a great album.

I agree - all four albums are great. And I'm not getting into buying controversial material, as I have them on a mixture of CD, vinyl and audiotape.

[fasstrack]

I love "Straight Ahead" it's a great album.

The swinging stuff is kick-ass on there, w/Eric eating up everything Oliver wrote and making Oliver dig deep too-w/the safety net of that world-class rhythm section. But my favorite moment is Images. The mood it creates is almost eerie, and nocturnal or otherworldly. Oliver's vibrato makes it sound REALLY strange. Just great writing the way the melody and changes rise an fall in an arc while the rhythm players bring the mood he created all the way out. Beautiful work by Richard Wyands there, in support and esp. his solo.

[king ubu]

"Straight Ahead" is fantastic - maybe the best of the three (the Lock don't count, but it's a fine album in its own right, which probably I wouldn't have heard if not for the great Dolphy Prestige box). I never quite understood why most people seem to hold "The Blues and the Abstract Truth" in such high regard, while hardly anyone mentions "Straight Ahead". Both are classics. True, there's Bill Evans and Freddie Hubbard on the Impulse ... and there's Oliver Nelson's (pre-conceived?) avantgarde solos, too (I love them!) - but the more spontaneous feel of "Straight Ahead" ultimately grabs me just as much.

The first of the bunch has Richard Williams (one of Mingus' favourite trumpet players - good enough for me!), but it's not as dense and not as successful as the later two, I think. Still a wonderful album.

[colinmce]

Worth noting here that Leroi Jones initially grouped Nelson in with the New Thing saxophonists, largely on the basis of this stuff. That always made me consider his earlier work in a different light.

FWIW, the relevant article contains an addendum that some players' later trajectories didn't quite hew to the avant garde.

[JSngry]

Worth noting here that Leroi Jones initially grouped Nelson in with the New Thing saxophonists, largely on the basis of this stuff. That always made me consider his earlier work in a different light.

FWIW, the relevant article contains an addendum that some players' later trajectories didn't quite hew to the avant garde.

As per his usual, Jones/Baraka is good about the music as far as he goes. He just doesn't go far enough in too many cases, and this is one of them.

No "jazz critic" that I've ever read acknowledges (or even seems to be aware of) the strong influence of Oliver's "classical" saxophone studies on parts of his jazz playing. That thing he gets into with the harder-edge-removed tone, legato lines, even, highly controlled vibrato, and exactness of timbre in even the widest interval leaps, that's all coming from straight "legit" studies. Unambiguously so, if you've ever spent any time in that world (willingly or otherwise...).

His "Patterns For Improvisation" book has been used by more than a few such players over the years, and not to garner improvisational skills.

Oliver Nelson fit no one "bag" with any significant deal of comfort. No matter at what table he was sitting, even the uber-commercial ones, he always brought something "else" to it. I think Jones/Baraka mentioned something along those lines in another essay, something about Oliver Nelson bringing the sounds of blackness to the Land Of The Marlboro Man, or something like that.