Label: Limelight – LM 82013
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold cover / Country: US / Released: 1964
Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation
Recorded live, June 2nd, 1964. in Hilversum, Holland.
Rare Limelight LP, in the bottom right corner of jacket states Monaural 82013.
Producer: Radio Jazz Club, Co-producer: Jazz Magazine
Gatefold cover with 8-page booklet
Illustration – Z. Jastrzebski
Photography By – Chuck Stewart, Don Schlitten
Liner Notes – Nat Hentoff
Matrix in dead wax side one: LM 82013A M1
Matrix in dead wax side two: LM 82013B M1
A1- Epistrophy ...................................................................................... 11:15
(Composed By – Th. Monk)
A2- South Street Exit .............................................................................. 7:20
(Composed By – E. Dolphy)
A3- The Madrig Speaks, The Panther Walks ......................................... 4:50
(Composed By – E. Dolphy)
B1- Hypochristmutreefuzz ...................................................................... 5:25
(Composed By – M. Mengelberg)
B2- You Don't Know What Love Is ...................................................... 11:20
(Composed By – D. Raye, De Paul)
B3- Miss Ann .......................................................................................... 5:25
(Composed By – E. Dolphy)
Eric Dolphy – alto sax, flute, bass clarinet
Misja (Misha) Mengelberg – piano
Jacques Schols – bass
Han Bennink – drums, percussion
Recorded at Hilversum, Holland, June 2, 1964 before a selected audience.
Allegedly Eric Dolphy's final recorded performance -- a fact historians roundly dispute -- this session in Hilversum, Holland, teams the masterful bass clarinetist, flutist, and alto saxophonist with a Dutch trio of performers who understand the ways in which their hero and leader modified music in such a unique, passionate, and purposeful way far from convention.
In pianist Misha Mengelberg, bassist Jacques Schols, and drummer Han Bennink, Dolphy was firmly entwined with a group who understood his off-kilter, pretzel logic concept in shaping melodies and harmonies that were prime extensions of Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor. These three Dolphy originals, one from Monk, one from Mengelberg, and a standard are played so convincingly and with the utmost courage that they created a final stand in the development of how the woodwindist conceived of jazz like no one else before, during, or after his life.
Last Date is one of those legendary albums whose reputation grows with every passing year, and deservedly so. While it reveals more about the genius rhythm section than Dolphy himself, it also marks the passing of one era and the beginning of what has become a most potent and enduring legacy of European creative improvised tradition, started by Mengelberg and Bennink at this mid-'60s juncture.
_ (Review by Michael G. Nastos)
Note:
This album was also ripped via Laser Turntable, sound processing in the Studio of Radio Corona. All tracks are placed on two channels, although the original LP monaural. The sound is perfect. Photos borrowed from the LondonJazzCollector, so, I will take this opportunity to thank them.
If you find it, buy this album!