Listening to Prestige 386: Latin Jazz Quintet/Eric Dolphy

This is the second outing for the Latin Jazz Quintet and a Prestige star, following their July 8 outing with Shirley Scott.  The lineup is 4/5 the same, with a bongo player dropped and vibist Carlie Simons added. I talk more about the other members of the group in the Scott entry, and I can't find any information at all on Simons, not even after plowing past all the Carly Simon links that Google starts you out with. Another source gives his name as Charlie Simmons, but I can't find anything under that name either.

The LJQ was primarily Juan Amalbert's group, with the rest of the personnel given to fluctuation. They made a second recording with Dolphy for United Artists a year later, and only Amalbert and Bill Ellington remained of the original group.

Critics have described this session as a mismatch, with Dolphy and the quintet paying little attention to each other. I've seen the same criticism leveled at Charlie Parker's collaborations with Machito (and for that matter at some of the Prestige recordings featuring Ray Barretto). I don't buy it. Bird in his day, and Dolphy in his, were far too aware, and far too appreciative of a wide range of musical styles and voices, to come into a session so contemptuous of their fellow musicians that they wouldn't listen to what was being put down, or to simply not be able to follow Latin rhythms. I don't buy it, and they sound good to me. The Quintet have a busy, agitated style of playing for the most part, and Dolphy gets with them and then takes them in directions that are his own. He's a better, more inventive musician than they are, but he's a better and more inventive musician than almost anyone, and he works with them to create something that's musically satisfying to this listener, at any rate. And it must have been sufficiently musically satisfying to all concerned that they agreed to do it again.

I particularly liked Dolphy playing flute on Gene Casey's "Sunday Go Meetin'," which also features some impressive piano work by Casey, a versatile composer who is responsible for three of the tunes on this album, the others being "Caribé" and "First Bass Line." "Blues in 6/8" and "Mambo Ricci" are co-credited to Amalbert and Jose Ricci, a sometime member of the Quintet who is not in their lineup for this session.

As always, it's good to hear the new sounds and new approaches that come out of one of Weinstock's Mis and Match sessions.

Caribé was a New Jazz release, Esmond Edwards producing.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 3, 1957-58 now includes, in its Kindle edition, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. Available from Amazon.