Later he joined Mingus' working band which then also included Ted Curson.
He took part in Mingus' big band recording Pre-Bird (sometimes re-released as Mingus Revisited), and is featured on "Bemoanable Lady". Partnerships Charles Mingus Ĭharles Mingus had known Dolphy from growing up in Los Angeles, and the younger man joined Mingus' Jazz Workshop in 1960, shortly after arriving in New York. Dolphy appears with Hamilton's band in the film Jazz on a Summer's Day playing flute during the Newport Jazz Festival of 1958. With the group he became known to a wider audience and was able to tour extensively through 1958–59, when he left Hamilton's group and moved to New York City.
Career ĭolphy gained his big break when he was invited to join Chico Hamilton's quintet in 1958. Recordings made in 1954 with Clifford Brown document this early period. Dolphy often had friends come by to jam, enabled by the fact that his father had built a studio for him in the family's backyard. Following his discharge in 1953, he returned to L.A., where he worked with many musicians, including Buddy Collette, Eddie Beal, and Gerald Wilson, to whom he later dedicated the tune "G.W.", recorded on Outward Bound. Beginning in 1952, he attended the Navy School of Music. Army in 1950 and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. On these early sessions, he occasionally played baritone saxophone, as well as alto saxophone, flute and soprano clarinet.ĭolphy entered the U.S. He graduated in 1947, then attended Los Angeles City College, during which time he played contemporary classical works such as Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat and, along with Jimmy Knepper and Art Farmer, performed with Roy Porter's 17 Beboppers, He went on to make eight recordings with Porter by 1949. Hawes, father of the jazz pianist of the same name. By 1946, he was co-director of the Youth Choir at the Westminster Presbyterian Church run by Reverend Hampton B. He attended Dorsey High School, where he continued his musical studies and learned additional instruments. At age thirteen he received a "Superior" award on clarinet from the California School Band and Orchestra festival.
While still in junior high, he began to study the oboe, aspiring to a professional symphonic career, and received a two-year scholarship to study at the music school of the University of Southern California. He began music lessons at age six, studying clarinet and saxophone privately. and Sadie Gillings, who immigrated to the United States from Panama. Įarly life, family and education ĭolphy was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.
He used melodic lines that were "angular, zigzagging from interval to interval, taking hairpin turns at unexpected junctures, making dramatic leaps from the lower to the upper register." Although Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, his compositions and solos were often rooted in conventional (if highly abstracted) tonal bebop harmony. His improvisational style was characterized by the use of wide intervals, in addition to employing an array of extended techniques to emulate the sounds of human voices and animals. Dolphy extended the vocabulary and boundaries of the alto saxophone, and was among the earliest significant jazz flute soloists. His use of the bass clarinet helped to establish the instrument within jazz. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the same era.
On a few occasions, he also played the clarinet and piccolo. (J– June 29, 1964) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist and flautist.