16 Comments

Are you sure that's Dolphy?

Just kidding! This is WONDERFUL to see, thank you so much for sharing. Mesmerizing. You can practically hear the music. I think that's a picture of Dizzy behind Dolphy?

I love seeing Dolphy take the bass clarinet mouthpiece out of his mouth between phrases. Then he grabs a breath and dives back in, like a gladiator.

And you sure can see Coltrane playing his heart out, "leaving it all on the stage".

Something tells me the film is running fast, maybe 15%, but a sax player would have a better intuition than I about this.

2024 can't come fast enough! Well, Reference-wise, anyway. Godspeed!

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Thanks John--Yes, I wondered about the speed, but I decided not to mess with it, as that would have happened when the 8mm was transferred and I would only be guessing. Thanks for the comments and for the good wishes on the Reference. I hope you and yours are doing great!

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Thank you! This is wonderful and then some!

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Thank you!

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Ooh... should we add our own soundtrack?

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Ha ha--I suspected from the start that one or more people will do that. Maybe you will?

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This was great. Thanks for posting.

I personally think that JC hired Dolphy is because needed to learn more and what better teacher than EC

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Yes, he once said something like "I enjoy working with Eric because it exposes me to new ideas."

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Thanks for sharing!

It would be a massive, yet historical, task for someone to couple the film to existing recorded music from this gig. Although difficult but maybe not altogether out of the question?

I had the blessed fortune, coming from Sweden and at 17, to hear the quartet 5 nights running at Birdland in late May-early June ’62. Those nights they did’t share the bill, it was all Trane until early mornings. Euphoria, if you know what I mean.

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Hello Bertil! Yes, I am curious to see if anybody tries to put music to the video. We will see.

That is amazing that you saw the quartet for 5 nights! The dates of that gig were May 31–June 13, 1962 (but not Mondays). There was a radio broadcast around midnight on June 2 (as I mentioned, the last song on one of the audio links is from that broadcast, and there are two more tunes). All of this info and much more is in our Reference book. THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR MEMORIES!

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Lewis,

I wrote 3 articles on the allaboutjazz.com website some years back about my relation to Coltrane and Elvin and about the above mentioned gig. If interested search for my name there and they’ll show up. In one of them I included a description of the Birdland club from memory which, I am embarrased to recognise, came out wrong. For all years I was sure the club entrance was from 52nd St. but my older brother corrected me recently. He had been there for the Monday night jam sessions (he wasn’t into Coltrane at all) so I guess I’ll have to abide!

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I see the three articles--I look forward to reading them! That's interesting about your brother--our memories do play tricks on us sometimes!

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Eric was such an unbelievable musician. So much to learn from him

Thanks Lewis

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Absolutely! You saw my post on his origins, right? A few months ago--scroll down.

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Great film clip, Lewis! And it encouraged me to listen to all the 62 material.

Thanks, Gerard

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Great! Hope you and Bobbie are doing great!

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