Few masterpieces in jazz history have become as enigmatic as Eric Dolphy’s “Out to Lunch”: Videos, Photos

In my listening career, few masterpieces in the history of jazz have proved to be as enigmatic as “Out to Lunch”, the work by Eric Dolphy recorded in February 1964 in Rudy Van Gelden’s studios with the quartet of Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams and published by Blue Note four months after the death of its author, at only 36 years old.

Placed in the drawer of the CD player after a few years, for circumstances that I will explain shortly, trusting in the benefits of the maturity of listening, I rediscovered an incredibly original and unique music – today, and imagine for the time of its creation – not as inaccessible as I remembered, but above all supported by a clearly identifiable sound project. Autographed compositions whose elusive and indefinable nature has produced theories about Dolphy’s dualism, holder and at the same time subverter of the hard bop canons, also by virtue of previous collaborations in both traditional and avant-garde fields, and fueled legendary auras on the execution methods, long believed to be entrusted to a totally improvised session, today called into question by the recent discovery of some alternate takes published in Japan.

The recent more astute approaches with “Out to lunch” have then allowed me to focus on at least two elements.

The first concerns the influence on the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist, exercised by Thelonius Monk. Evident in the affectionate initial dedication of “Hat and beard“, hat and beard, two characteristic traits of Monk, but even more in the angular and crooked thematic parts of the same piece, which deals with repeated precipices and climbs, in the chimes of the vibraphone of the title track that magnificently break the elaborate declamation of the wind instruments, in the “crooked” progress of the conclusive “Straight up and down” that the author himself compared to the walk of a drunk man. Dolphy multiplies the alienating effect of the thematic material with his own style in the solos on the bass clarinet, tangled and twisted on “Hat and Beard“, on the flute, excited and aggressive in “Gazzelloni” dedicated to the famous classical instrumentalist, on the alto sax poised between tradition and rupture of “Straight up and down“.

The second element concerns the total identification of the quartet in the leader’s project. It is unthinkable to imagine “Out to lunch” without the beat marked by Richard Davis’ strings, the pulsation of Tony Williams, who invents a totally new approach to the drums without “keeping time”, the unisons between the leader’s wind instruments and the young Hubbard’s trumpet, razor-sharp and cutting in the solos, Hutcherson’s sly and essential vibraphone that opens up the sound horizons and plays down the sharpest corners of the compositions. One of those circumstances that rarely happen in the life of a musician, conceiving music of explosive originality and managing to share every aspect of it with traveling companions from different experiences, gathered for the occasion.

Actually, there is a third element and it bears the name of the band leader with whom Dolphy collaborated for a long time, Charles Mingus, whose influence envelops the cadenced and ceremonial theme of “Something sweet, something tender“, a composition that originates from the duet between Dolphy and Richard Davis and develops chorally while keeping that core of feeling intact.

Over time, after its release, many musicians have admired, and some have attempted to scale this “sixth degree of jazz” as my friend and companion Milton says. The opportunity to rediscover it that I mentioned above was provided to me by the news of a 2005 album by guitarist and conductor Otomo Yoshihide who, leading a large ensemble called New Jazz Orchestra, composed entirely of musicians from the Land of the Rising Sun with the exception of baritone Mats Gustafson, has re-proposed the album in its entirety, published by a label with the appropriate name of Doubtmusic, with a cover faithful to the colors of the original, except for the setting in a Tokyo subway car.

Otomo’s approach maximizes the original’s explosive charge in a free orchestral key, arriving at proposing a jazz punk version of “Gazzelloni“. The long final coda of “Straight up and down” aims to represent in over twenty minutes of ambient and electronic sounds the meaning of Dolphy’s absence from this music, alluding to that supposedly premonitory sign of the original cover: “Will be back”, which marks all the hours and none at the same time.

More recent, from last year is “Nexus plays Dolphy”, an album published by Red Records that is reaping success in the referendums of the best of 2024. At work the historic Italian group with variable geometry led by Tiziano Tononi and Daniele Cavallanti, here supported by the wind instruments of Achille Succi, the violin of Emanuele Parrini, the trombone of Alessandro Castelli, the vibraphone of Luca Gusella and the bass of Andrea Grossi. In the setlist, together with four other pieces from the Dolphy repertoire, including a torrential “Jitterburg Waltz” by Fats Waller, three songs from “Out of lunch”, “Hat and beard“, the title track and “Straight up and down”, excellently rendered, with great respect and “affection” for the originals and some significant timbre variations brought by the instruments not present in the original recording.

As happens to great masterpieces, sixty years after its release, “Out of lunch” is still the object of attention, listening and inspiration.