Chico Hamilton & Eric Dolphy

Complete Studio Recordings

PHONO. CD

Envelope-pushing jazz from the late ’50s.

The late Chico Hamilton (who died in 2013 aged 92) was, like Miles Davis and Art Blakey, a perspicacious talent spotter with a penchant for blooding young and up-and-coming jazz musicians in his band. Guitarists Jim Hall and Gabor Szabo as well as saxophonists/ flautists Charles Lloyd and Paul Horn were all his protégés but perhaps his most notable apprentice was Eric Dolphy, the multi-reed player who went on to become a leading light of the avant-garde scene in the early ’60s. Dolphy joined Hamilton's band in 1958 and left a year later but in that time recorded five albums with the drum maestro. They all feature here on this ace 3-CD collection (alongside Hamilton's Newport Jazz Festival performance from ’58) and show how Dolphy's exciting new sound and sensibility shaped the groundbreaking trajectory of the drummer's music.