Today we celebrate one of the most creative and eclectic personalities in the history of jazz. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of his sudden death this weekend (from complications of diabetes, at age 36) in a (then-West) Berlin hotel, we look back at the life and music of Eric Dolphy. This cat blew rings around other horn-men with ease, and was quite versatile. His main axe was alto-saxophone, but he was also accomplished at flute and bass-clarinet. Charles Mingus, who know Dolphy from way-back to his formative years in Los Angeles, where they both grew up and paid their dues in various bands from Satchmo's, Duke's and Hamp's (Mingus) to Chico Hamilton's and Gerald Wilson's (Dolphy), knew how to hone Eric's gifts into his compositions & arrangements, and the two had a very close & fruitful relationship - so much that Mingus was devastated for weeks when he heard the news of Dolphy's death (barely weeks after leaving the Mingus sextet on tour in Europe) during the summer of 1964. Peeves... I have a few. Censorship over overzealous "enforcement" of copyright-laws. Granted, as a musician, songwriter and photographer I see both sides of this particular issue, but nonetheless any song, image or text can be reproduced under the Berne Convention of 1971 and the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 concerning the "fair use" of 'protected' material as long as it is for non-profit usage (for example, as a blog-comment with an embedded photo provided such an item is used to illustrate or enforce a point of view, or the posting of a video for purely educational &/or entertainment purposes). No beating around the bush, here's Strava data on several recent rides I did:
Early morning on Friday, May 23 Saturday, May 24 Sunday, May 25 Monday, May 26 (Memorial Day) Early morning on Wednesday, May 28 Earl evening on Thursday, May 29 Saturday, May 31 Sunday, June 1 UPDATE: I've posted a pop-up page of my latest Strava ride-data here. This updates automatically whenever I upload new ride-data from my Garmin GPS to Strava). |