Don’t Blame Me: Eric Dolphy And His Judges

Despite the polemics, in 1961, DownBeat critics voted John Coltrane tenor saxophone of the year and Dolphy topped the alto poll in the “New Stars” category. Does everything always have to make sense? The poll results were not enough to silence criticisms, and some writers felt the need to provide Coltrane and Dolphy with a right to reply.
Talking to François Postif, Dolphy had already said that he found it perfectly normal that people didn’t like everything he played, but that even if all listeners fled as soon as he started to blow into his mouthpiece or if no company showed any interest in recording him, he would still play the way he felt.

After appearing at Carnegie Hall on New Year’s Eve, the Coltrane band — with Jimmy Garrison now replacing Reggie Workman — started 1962 at the Showboat in Philadelphia. It then went from one New York club to the other: Jazz Gallery, Village Gate, Birdland. It would be the last moments spent by Dolphy within the unit. Exclusive, the collaboration had only left room for a single infidelity, which took place during those final months. On 16 February, 1962, Dolphy recorded a few slabs of a rather conservative kind of jazz with saxophonist Pony Poindexter, music that what would appear on his Pony Express album. After a final gig with Coltrane at Birdland, Dolphy left with the hope of leading his own band.

Looking back on a privileged relationship, Coltrane would say that Dolphy was the partner who made him to understand the importance of affect in a work that has nothing to gain from being purely technical. “He had an outlook on life which was very, very good — optimistic,” Coltrane told Frank Kofsky. “And he had this sort of thing, friendliness, you know — to everyone, a real friend. He was the type of man who could be — he was as much a friend to a guy he’d just met today as he was to one he’d known for ten years, you know?”

After the Dolphy period came to an end, Coltrane’s playing on occasion carried reminiscences of his partner, large harmonic leaps or sudden dissonances. Emulation and exchange are at the root of innovation, but they can also constitute vices if knowledgeable critics are to be believed. The opportunity given to Coltrane and Dolphy to answer their detractors also allowed them to assess, publicly, their collaboration.

Until then, the two men had refrained from countering in one way or another reproaches that had nonetheless got to them, as Coltrane would reveal after Dolphy’s death. “It just was so absolutely ridiculous, because they made it appear that we didn’t even know the first thing about music — the first thing, [laughs] you know. […] And Eric, man, as sweet as this cat was and the musician that he was — it hurt me, you know… […] seeing him get hurt in this thing.”

While they let others talk, Coltrane and Dolphy might have remembered the attacks directed at Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, or Thelonious Monk, whose music was once described in DownBeat as “ill-advised fanaticism”. Just another error that would need to be amended down the line. John Tynan’s ideas of what amounted to “anti-jazz” were not shared by all writers. AB Spellman, for instance, castigated the term and its creator: “What does anti-jazz mean & who are these ofays who’ve appointed themselves guardians of last year’s blues?”

Worried by the turn taken by events, Don DeMicheal, the editor of DownBeat — who had previously praised the Monterey Jazz Festival concert — gave Coltrane and Dolphy the opportunity to defend themselves. The article resulting from these efforts, “John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy Answer the Jazz Critics” appeared in the 12 April 1962 issue of the magazine. DeMicheal introduced the piece by writing all the good he thought of Coltrane — a competent musician currently going in more abstract directions — and summarised the reproaches recently addressed to the saxophonist and some of his peers who dabbled in what some called the “new thing”.

The two instrumentalists explained themselves point by point, Dolphy discussing instrumental technique and interpretation, Coltrane evoking some aspects of a musical theory tinted with mysticism. Asked first about the extended duration of his improvisations, he said: “They’re long because all the soloists try to explore all the avenues that the tune offers. They try to use all their resources in their solos. […] By the time we finish, the song is spread out over a pretty long time.”

Coltrane — who started to develop his solos without taking into account time limitations at Thelonious Monk’s advice — seems to have been in agreement with what Stravinsky once said: “composing is doing, not thinking.”

When Dolphy’s turn to be interrogated came, he explained his frequent use of quarter tones, notably on flute: “That’s the way birds do. […] Birds have notes in between our notes — you try to imitate something they do and, like, maybe it’s between F and F#, and you’ll have to go up or come down on the pitch. It’s really something! And so, when you get playing, this comes.”

The ultimate question was finally asked: what exactly was the goal of those strange — possibly even disturbing — musicians that were not content to simply use the bebop vocabulary anymore? “What I’m trying to do I find enjoyable,” Dolphy explained. “Inspiring — what it makes me do. It helps me play, this feel. It’s like you have no idea what you’re going to do next. You have an idea, but there’s always that spontaneous thing that happens. This feeling, to me, leads the whole group. When John plays, it might lead into something you had no idea could be done.”

To conclude, Dolphy complained about the methods employed by the critics and thanked Don DeMicheal for his initiative: “The critic influences a lot of people. If something new has happened, something nobody knows what the musician is doing, he should ask the musician about it. Because somebody may like it; they might want to know something about it. Sometimes it really hurts, because a musician not only loves his work but depends on it for a living.”

An honest discourse, now hackneyed after having been repeated too many times by artists having as few qualities as they have scruples. In a private letter sent on 2 June 1962 to Don DeMicheal, Coltrane revealed another source of his determination:
“You know, Don, I was reading a book on the life of Van Gogh today, and I had to pause and think of that wonderful and persistent force — the creative urge. The creative urge was in this man who found himself so much at odds with the world he lived in, and in spite of all the adversity, frustrations, rejections, and so forth — beautiful and living art came forth abundantly… If only he could be here today. Truth is indestructible.”

The explanations provided by Coltrane and Dolphy could not convince critics hanging on to their truth perhaps even more frenetically than they did to their role. But the DownBeat article had the great merit of threatening with immediate obsolescence attacks other zealots could think up. To enshrine an armistice, let’s turn to writer André Suarès: “The musically deaf swear they’re being laughed at when chords they can’t hear are unveiled; they do not think of curing their ears or even that they could be the culprits. They jeer at the new musician, and their sons will jeer at them for having jeered.”

Eric Dolphy: Biographical Sketches (English language edition) is available from Wolke Verlag. The original French edition is available from Lenka Lente.