At the Five Spot

At the Five Spot
Live album by
Eric Dolphy
ReleasedVolume 1: December 1961 (1961-12)[1][2]
Volume 2: November 1963 (1963-11)[3][4] Memorial Album: 1965
Recorded16 July 1961
VenueFive Spot Café, New York, NY
GenreAvant-garde jazz
Post-bop
LabelNew Jazz
ProducerEsmond Edwards
Eric Dolphy chronology
The Quest
(1961) 		At the Five Spot
(1961) 		Memorial Album
(1961)
Volume Two cover
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[5]
AllMusic[6]
Down Beat[7]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide[8]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings [9]

Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot is a pair of live albums by the jazz musician and composer Eric Dolphy. They were released in December 1961 (Volume 1)[1][2] and November 1963 (Volume 2)[3][4] through Prestige Records. They were recorded on the night of 16 July 1961 at the end of Dolphy's two-week residency, alongside trumpeter Booker Little, at the Five Spot jazz club in New York. It was the only night to be recorded. The engineer was Rudy Van Gelder.

A third volume of recordings from the same evening, given the title Memorial Album, was released in 1965, after the premature deaths of both Little and Dolphy, containing "Number Eight (Potsa Lotsa)" and "Booker's Waltz". These two tracks were later released on the Van Gelder remaster of Volume 2.

cover for Memorial Album

All three volumes were reissued, without alternate takes, as a triple LP under the title The Great Concert of Eric Dolphy. Two other tracks, Mal Waldron's "Status Seeking" and Dolphy's solo rendition of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child", were released on the Dolphy compilation Here and There. Dolphy and Little were backed by a rhythm section consisting of pianist Mal Waldron, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Eddie Blackwell.

Dolphy's composition "The Prophet" is a tribute to the artist Richard "Prophet" Jennings, who had designed the covers of Dolphy's earlier albums, Outward Bound and Out There.

  1. ^ a b Ostrow, Marty, ed. (December 16, 1961). "Dec. LP Releases" (PDF). Cash Box. New York: The Cash Box Publishing Co. p. 28.
  2. ^ a b Chase, Sam, ed. (November 20, 1961). "New LP Releases". Billboard Music Week. Cincinnati: The Billboard Publishing Co. p. 10. Retrieved June 18, 2019.
  3. ^ a b Ostrow, Marty, ed. (November 2, 1963). "10 LPs & 4 Singles in Prestige Nov. Release" (PDF). Cash Box. New York: The Cash Box Publishing Co. p. 6. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 9, 2021.
  4. ^ a b Hentoff, Nat (April 1964). "Jazz and Folk Recordings". The Atlantic Monthly. Houghton Mifflin Company.
  5. ^ Nastos, Michael G. "Eric Dolphy Quintet / Eric Dolphy: At the Five Spot, Vol. 1". AllMusic. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  6. ^ Yanow, Scott. "Eric Dolphy Quintet / Eric Dolphy: At the Five Spot, Vol. 2". AllMusic. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  7. ^ Down Beat: August 16, 1962, vol. 29, no. 22
  8. ^ Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. pp. 62. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
  9. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 382. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.