14 Comments

Thanks for putting this interview out there for everyone to enjoy, Lewis!

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Thank you Evan!

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Thank you for posting the interview with Eric Dolphy, a terrific artist who doesn't get the full recognition that he deserves.

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I agree--Thanks Sharon!

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Great to hear his voice, and heartbreaking to think how soon he would be gone.

What he’s speaking about critics with an animus against a musician, does he have someone in particular in mind? I wondered if that might have been a veiled way of commenting on Miles Davis’s slams, but I think that Downbeat interview was yet to come. Or perhaps there are other Davis comments about Dolphy I’m not aware of.

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Thanks Michael. No, he's definitely talking about critics, not fellow musicians like Miles. He may be thinking of several, but he's definitely thinking of John Tynan, who called Coltrane's music with Dolphy "anti-jazz" and upset them both so much that they requested, and got, a feature article space to reply to their critics in the April 1962 Downbeat. Hmm--maybe I'll add this info to the post. THANKS!

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Aha — thanks. I just did a little searching and got the gist of it (and realize that I’ve read about it already, in George Lewis’s AACM book). “Anti-jazz” reminds me of a colleague who applied the label “anti-poetry” to Charles Olson and other poets. Sigh. New, yes, but not anti-.

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Exactly!

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THANK YOU LEWIS. Dolphy's voice is so achingly mellifluous makes me think of the last words on "Last Date." "when you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air, you can never capture it again."

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Exactly--very poetic--THANKS HENRY

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Thank you Lewis. ERIC was so ahead of his time that most have not caught up much less understand.

As as as critics are concerned he is right. I've been attacked and written about by journalists who have no right to review me because they don't understand the music but their publishers haphazardly give out assignments

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You said it!

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Wonderful to hear Dolphy's gentle voice, his even-handed response to the critics. A great interview, thanks for posting.

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Thank YOU!

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