Out to Lunch! - Eric Dolphy

Eric Dolphy died only a few months after recording this album. He fell into a diabetic coma; a German doctor mistook it for a drug overdose and did not give him the right treatment. He was only 36. This was 1964.

Out to Lunch! was Dolphy’s last studio album as a leader and one of the most radical works in Blue Note’s history. All five pieces are his compositions, and none can be described with conventional jazz terms. There is no piano or fixed harmonic framework. Bass and drums no longer serve as mere accompaniment; they compete for space on equal terms with the horns. The whole sound feels like a building being taken apart.

Dolphy’s choice of instruments is unusual in itself: alto saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet—the last of which had rarely been used as a lead instrument in jazz. Its sound seems to rise from a basement, dark and wavering, with startling leaps from the lowest notes to the highest overtones. In the opening “Hat and Beard,” Dolphy’s bass clarinet and Bobby Hutcherson’s vibraphone form an uncanny dialogue. The vibraphone’s metallic shimmer and the clarinet’s dark woodiness seep into each other, creating a texture that belongs to no familiar style.

The young Freddie Hubbard plays trumpet on this album. Elsewhere he can sound polished and mainstream, but Dolphy’s world forces him to abandon prettiness for urgency. His solo on “Gazzelloni” sounds almost like a cry for help, as the trumpet struggles to survive Dolphy’s piercing flute.

The most astonishing piece is “Something Sweet, Something Tender.” The title sounds gentle, but the music is not sweet at all. Dolphy’s bass clarinet and Richard Davis’s bowed bass weave layers of dark texture, while Hutcherson’s vibraphone provides an occasional glint of light on the surface. The music seems ready to collapse into silence at any moment, yet it never does.

Out to Lunch! offers no comfortable place for the listener. It does not flatter, explain, or care whether you “get it.” Dolphy made the music he wanted before he died, then was gone. This album remains like a door he opened but never had time to walk through.