Is “Out To Lunch” jazz’s “Trout Mask Replica”? Even after five months of prominence in my playlists, I don’t feel any closer to untangling it. It’s certainly aptly titled – no default Blue Note label hard bop in evidence here!ERIC DOLPHY Out To Lunch (Blue Note)
Is “Out To Lunch” jazz’s “Trout Mask Replica”? Even after five months of prominence in my playlists, I don’t feel any closer to untangling it. It’s certainly aptly titled – no default Blue Note label hard bop in evidence here!
With its stalking bassline, exotic vibes and clock chime cymbals, “Hat And Beard” sounds, initially at least, like some kind of deranged spy theme, before Dolphy skronks things up with his Coltrane-battering, braying bass clarinet. “Something Sweet, Something Tender” might perhaps constitute a tender ballad in Dolphy-world, bending and twisting expected genre norms ever so slightly out of shape. “Gazzeloni” struts like a swinging thing, albeit one whose repeated riff is all over the shop, until everyone cuts loose, generating an uncontrolled chaos best summarised by Dolphy’s observation that “Everyone’s a leader in this session”. “Straight Up And Down”’s crabwalking swagger gives way to a lot of squealing and honking from Dolphy’s alto sax, and, logically speaking, Bobby Hutcherson’s waterfalling vibraphone work shouldn’t be legally permitted in the same piece of music, but there it is nevertheless.
The personnel includes bassist Richard Davis – famous in non-jazz circles for playing on Van Morrison’s somewhat easier-on-the-ear “Astral Weeks” – and precocious percussion sensation Tony Williams, who was only eighteen at the time of this recording. I don’t think I could’ve even listened to this album when I was that age. As A. B. Spellman’s sleeve notes - unusually hip and groovy for a Blue Note back cover - helpfully point out, “This is not music to roller skate by”.
This reissue emanates from the mysterious but discredited Scorpio organisation. There’s something of a gauzy veil between audience and music, but generally it doesn’t sound too bad, with none of the nasty distortion that plagued their pressing of Kenny Dorham’s fabulous “Una Mas”. In this world of £50+ Blue Note reissue programmes (a Music Matters “Out To Lunch” is imminent, following the rediscovery of master tapes previously thought obliterated) it’s bargainatious, at least.