Eric Dolphy (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) – Serene (1961)

Before racism killed jazz great Dolphy at age 36, he wrote this beautiful track for his seminal second solo LP Out There, feat. Ron Carter on cello and Roy Haynes on drums.

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Racism killed jazz legend Eric Dolphy on this date in 1964, when he didn't receive proper care for a diabetic coma at a Berlin hospital after they wrongly assumed he was a junkie who was overdosing.

See our post from earlier this month on Dolphy for an overview of his life and career.

The exact details of Dolphy’s death are disputed. He left the United States in the spring of 1964 and traveled to Europe, intending to marry his fiancée Joyce Mordecai, a dancer who lived in Paris. On June 27, 1964, Dolphy arrived in Berlin for the opening of a jazz club called The Tangent, to play a date with a trio led by pianist Karl Berger.

According to most accounts, he collapsed onstage due to undiagnosed diabetes and fell into a diabetic coma. He was brought to a hospital, where the attending physicians wrongly assumed that since he was a Black American jazz musician, he must be a junkie who had overdosed on heroin. In reality, Dolphy did not do any drugs or even smoke cigarettes. They did not check his blood sugar, and he was left in a hospital bed to let the supposed overdose wear off. He died instead.

For his seminal second solo album Out There (1961), he wrote the beautiful “Serene,” which featured an all-star lineup of Ron Carter on cello, Roy Haynes playing drums, George Duvivier on bass, and Dolphy on alto sax. It was produced by an uncredited Esmond Edwards, who also produced Dolphy’s recordings on Prestige.

The album was recorded at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ on August 15, 1960 and released in September, 1961 on Prestige sub-label New Jazz. Like Dolphy’s debut LP Outward Bound (1960), it featured surrealistic cover art by his friend Richard “Prophet” Jennings, who also designed covers for Thelonious Monk and Max Roach. Original copies today sell for hundreds of dollars on Discogs.

Jazz historian Mark Werlin observed in a 2018 essay marking what would have been Dolphy’s 90th birthday, “The impact of his death on June 29, 1964 at age 36 is immeasurable. The sudden loss traumatized his closest friends and deprived the world of his gifts.”

It is sadly ironic that on a day when we mourn the loss of one of our greatest jazz voices due to racism, nearly six decades later the current illegitimately selected U.S. Supreme Court struck a blow for white supremacy by abolishing affirmative action in college admissions. Although as writer Michael Harriot reminded us, some affirmative action will continue to be more equal than others:

Further info:

“Eric Dolphy: Gone In The Air,” by Mark Werlin, All About Jazz, June 20, 2018.

“Eric Dolphy: How a jazz original was left for dead by racist stereotyping,” by Patrick Graney, Varsity, August 7, 2020.

#jazz #racism #EricDolphy