Re: Possible influence of Marshall Allen on Eric Dolphy

On Wed, 6 Jul 1994, Robert L. Campbell wrote:

Vlad, Before 1963 there aren't too many ways Eric Dolphy could have heard Marshall Allen with Sun Ra. Marshall joined Ra in late 1957/early 1958. Before the band left Chicago, he appeared only on Jazz in Silhouette and a couple of Saturn singles. After the exodus to New York, he could have been heard on the Savoy album and by 1963 probably on When Sun Comes Out, but that's it. Most of the early Saturn LPs were not released till 1965, after Eric's death. So--was Eric Dolphy in Chicago at any time between mid 1957 and early 1961? Or in Montreal in mid 1961? If not, his first encounter with Ra would have had to be in New York, from October 1961 onward. rlc

Hi --

Yes, Dolphy could well have caught Ra & Marshall in Chicago as he was on tour with Chico Hamilton from early 1958 up to 1960, and (altho I never bothered to track down a list of gigs) they went across the country playing all the major jazz rooms, many times, back & forth; this certainly must have included Chicago a few times! And, given Chico's prominence and unusual musical focus at the time, and Ra's legendary esotericism (as a middle-class white kid in Pittsburgh, even I was curious about these guys at the time), it seems extremely unlikely they'd fail to have checked each other out. (Well, that's my theory, anyway!)

This is supported by Artie Shaw's stories of pilgrimages to Chicago in the late 1920's when he was gigging in Cleveland but curious about cats like Louis, Earl Hines, the white Chicagoans, etc. If guys made pilgrimages like that THEN, why would they fail to go dowwn the street to catch each other in Chicago in the late 1950's? Dolphy certainly had the reputation of checking out everything rumored to be musically interesting....

vladimir simosko music library, university of manitoba email: libmu1@ccu.umanitoba.ca snailmail: Music Library University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2 CANADA