[PREORDER] Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch! (Blue Note Essentials Series)

Blue Note Essentials Series - 140 Gram Vinyl

Eric Dolphy booked one session as a leader for Blue Note. On February 25, 1964 he brought Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone, Richard Davis on bass and the eighteen-year-old Tony Williams on drums into Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with Alfred Lion producing, and cut five of his own compositions. Dolphy plays alto saxophone, flute and bass clarinet across them.

The record reached shops in August 1964 as BLP 4163. By then Dolphy had died in West Berlin on June 29, at thirty-six. It remains the only Blue Note album issued under his own name. Hutcherson's vibraphone occupies the chair a piano would normally take, which leaves the harmony open underneath the horns and accounts for the suspended quality the quintet carries from the Monk tribute that opens the record, "Hat and Beard," through to the closing "Straight Up and Down."

The Penguin Guide to Jazz placed the album in its Core Collection at a perfect score. Reid Miles designed and photographed the sleeve - the shuttered storefront, the clock, the "WILL BE BACK" card - and A. B. Spellman wrote the original liner notes.

Blue Note launched the Essentials Series on International Jazz Day 2026 to return catalogue titles to a lower price. Essentials pressings are mastered from hi-resolution digital masters and pressed on 140 gram vinyl, which makes them a different proposition from the label's all-analog Classic Vinyl and Tone Poet editions of the same albums.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Hat and Beard
2. Something Sweet, Something Tender
3. Gazzelloni

Side B

4. Out to Lunch
5. Straight Up and Down

Complete the Collection

3 Eric Dolphy titles at Evergreen Vinyl:

• Far Cry
• The Complete Uppsala Concert Vol. 1