Money Jungle: In His Solitude

I used to think of 1962 as Duke Ellington's great period of collaborations. And why not? He did, after-all, complete an extraordinary late summer putting together studio works with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Mingus and John Coltrane respectively - themselves follow-ups on his Louis Armstrong and Count Basie team-ups from '61. I formulated this nice, tidy little theory a few years ago not realising that Ellington was always working in collaboration with someone and, particularly, between his own compositions and his arrangements and his arrangements. Ironically, this period of supposedly frenzied partnerships resulted in the only true solo album of his entire career.

Listeners accustomed to the spotlight being placed on Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster or Clark Terry or Cat Anderson may find it odd to discover that the star of the show is Ellington himself. After decades of composing and arranging for his famed Orchestra - not to mention the many small groups he worked with over the years - it's nice to get the feeling that he might have had himself in mind while composing and arranging the numbers here. Charlie Mingus and Max Roach do a fine job backing Ellington but that is all they're there for: bass solos are kept to a minimum and you just about don't even notice the drumming on some tracks. Ellington plays with a supple lightness in places ('Fleurette Africaine', 'Warm Valley'), a furious, demented pounding of the ivories in others ('Caravan' on which he sounds like Cecil Taylor playing in an Old West saloon) and a wonderful mix of the two elsewhere ('Wig Wise' which also features some of the best bass playing of Mingus' career, no wonder Rhino decided to include it on their Thirteen Pictures compilation). Only on a worn though pleasant 'Solitude' do you get the feeling that he's treading water, particularly when compared to the masterful renditions on both The Great Summit and Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins. Nonetheless, I get the feeling that he chose it - as well as fellow standards 'Warm Valley' and 'Caravan' -as a tribute to himself and his rich legacy.

A vanity project in the best possible sense, Money Jungle is ample evidence that Ellington could go it alone and thrive. The fact that he spent the bulk of his life putting the solo spotlight on his employees when he could have easily put it on himself speaks volumes about his musical generosity and the fact that he waited until his mid-sixties before embarking on a solo project indicates it was a low priority. How grateful we should be, then, that for once he decided to collaborate with himself.

Nefertiti: Development in Progress

I like the idea of an album acting as a way to catch up with what an artist or group has been up to. Not simply a document of what went on in the studio but of what was happening all around them. A creative ensemble without parallel, there's absolutely no way the Miles Davis Quintet wouldn't deliver an aural catch-up session with each release. Nefertiti's running order, in fact, reflects their chronological development since Sorcerer hit the shops half a year earlier. Thus, while a somewhat extreme example of what they'd been up to, the title track kicks things off practically right where 'Vonetta' had concluded Sorcerer.* Many find the repetition of Davis and Wayne Shorter's lines to be unlike anything they did before but, judging by their recordings as far back as E.S.P., it's likely they had this type of thing in mind for quite some time. Sometimes it's impossible to divorce an album from its best known track. The soothing, yet somewhat off-putting 'Nefertiti' frequently fools the listener into the delusion that the entire album is chock full of equally calm tunes. Deeper, more thorough listening, however, reveals that the title track is nothing but a blueprint for the remainder of the sessions.

Shorter's opening numbers - 'Fall' in addition to 'Nefertiti' - provide a nice introduction to what was going on but it's with Tony Williams' 'Hand Jive', however, that 'Nefertiti' really begins to take off. While a lesser composition than those by Shorter or Herbie Hancock, the performance easily compensates. Williams' drumming is positively manic throughout and, not to be upstaged, Davis rises to the occasion to deliver some superlative playing. Hancock's groovy pieces, 'Madness' and 'Riot', provide a less schizophrenic account of the Quintet's energy and, much to his credit, Shorter even responds with the far less meditative 'Pinocchio' to close things out. By this point less than forty minutes have passed but it's hard to believe that this much development has taken place in such a short amount of time. In a way, at least for some who aren't me, this burst of creative energy is the album's own undoing: it simply doesn't hang together as a unified work the way a more coherent but less fascinating record might. In this respect, and in this respect alone, it is the poor cousin to Sorcerer.

filles de Kilimanjaro, recorded a year later, is frequently described as Davis' great transitional album of the period but an equally good case could be made in this regard for Nefertiti.† Not just a showcase for how much his Quintet had developed since Sorcerer but displaying a development in progress over the course of the month or so it took to record. Not since Louis Armstrong cut the Hot Fives and Sevens had the studio been put to such good use as a creative tool and it hasn't proved as effective ever since.

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* This is purely from the listener's perspective, mind you. It matters little that 'Vonetta' wasn't the final track cut for Sorcerer, nor that 'Nefertiti' happened to be the first tune laid down at these sessions. Album track listings create a chronology all of their own.

† Having said that, just what works of Davis' aren't transitional? This is a topic I could go off on but am saving for a future entry.

Color Changes: And I'm Certainly Aware of You

1960 could well be jazz's finest year for studio albums. Sketches of Spain, My Favorite Things, Pre-Bird, Giant Steps, The Big Beat!, Nice 'n' Easy, We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, Change of the Century: all marvellous and - and this is simply a bonus mind you - important works. But there was no better album that year than Clark Terry's Color Changes.

The name Clark Terry kept creeping up on me over the past couple of years before I fully became aware of him. A bit like seeing an actor such as Alfred Molina make one memorable film appearance after another - from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Maverick and onto his unforgettable performance in the otherwise overrated Coffee and Cigarettes - but never remembering his name or where you'd seen him before, Terry was initially an anonymous sessioner who I suddenly realised had been both a leader and sideman on some outstanding recordings. And like Molina, this once uncertain familiarity only makes me appreciate Terry all the more now.

Nevertheless, nothing could have prepared me for Color Changes, a startlingly original record that manages to assimilate just about every style and source familiar to Terry. A crossover artist like few others - one wonders if Charlie Christian might have turned out the same way had he lived to see bop and its progeny in full force- swing and bop merge so effortlessly as to become a genre in and of itself, one that fools the listener into thinking that it emerged from nowhere other than Terry himself. The lovely melodies on both 'Flutin and Fluglin' and 'la rive gauche' underscore some superb soloing courtesy of Terry on the flugelhorn, Julius Watkins on the French horn (and why isn't the French horn more prominent in jazz anyway?) and Yusef Lateef on seemingly anything he felt like picking up. Elsewhere, such on the sinister 'No Problem' and the decidedly morose 'Brother Terry', the octet meshes together to create the kind of aural atmosphere that would've impressed a peak-period Gil Evans.

In some ways this is the best album Charlie Mingus never recorded, mad, relentless waltzes and all - albeit minus the volatility. In fact, the bassist must have been listening for this is a clear forerunner for The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. On the other hand, Terry himself probably had Mingus classics such as 'Haitian Fight Song' and 'Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting' in mind when he pieced together the awesome 'Nahstye Blues'.* After spending the bulk of his twenties and thirties in Count Basie and Duke Ellington Orchestra's it's conceivable that he learned everything he needed to know about composition and arrangement from his employers (although it's significant that he and Mingus were the only protégés of Ellington's in these areas - everyone else was a soloist) and never put these skills to better use here. A pity more people didn't take notice back in 1960: they might have seen that Giant Steps and Change of the Century were missing something.

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* This reminds me of something which is sadly lost from modern music: the response record. Just as Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney and John Lennon and Bob Dylan would communicate with one another on their great sixties albums, jazz artists were doing the same thing only earlier. Few, if any, artists these days listen to contemporaries and become so overcome with jealousy that they become determined to deliver something of even great quality. Don't they see what a driving force competition can be?

Way Out West: I Wanna Be a Cowboy

Virtually everyone comments on the album's cover and I am no exception. Most remark on how funny it is which, in light of some of the all-too serious cover photos of the age (Mile Davis' Round About Midnight being the prime example), is indisputably true. When Thelonious Monk attempted to look quirky on the cover of Brilliant Corners it looked forced; when Charlie Mingus put on face paint and a red nose for The Clown it was done only to heighten the bassist's feelings of being a serious artiste trapped in the guise of an entertainer. In the Way Out West photograph Rollins looks at ease and sincere. Yes, sincere. I suspect more than a few fans and critics think the cover is meant to be ironic, that a black jazz musician would never in all seriousness want to be a cowboy. The truth is pretty much every North American boy of Rollins' generation - egged on by the many Roy Rogers films of the thirties and forties - loved wearing a Stetson, carrying around a toy hand gun and playing Cowboys and Indians with their friends (and, indeed, so did the Baby Boomers, particularly after Gunsmoke became a hit; Generation Xer's never had an any similar cowboy idols barring the odd Yosemite Sam).

The cover, to me, also reinforces Rollins' tacit approval of West Coast jazz, which in many circles at the time had been taking a beating - despite the fact many of these very same individuals were perfectly happy recording and listening to it when it was labelled "cool". I say reinforces because the music itself is the first sign of such an attitude, so much so that the comparatively swift 'Come, Gone' sounds out of place (did Rollins and producer Lester Koenig intend to pull a reverse Blue Note?*). The relaxed drumming of Shelley Manne could not have suited Rollins’ new strolling technique better. One might be forgiven for assuming that the slick rhythm section would compromise the great tenorist's virtuosity but it seems to complement it better than a contemporary hard bop unit would have. There's something nice about the threesome being such a rag tag bunch, seemingly ill-suited to meshing with one another. At a time when Davis' famed Rhythm Section was being courted by jazz soloists on both coasts (including Rollins himself on the vaunted but less interested Tenor Madness) and with units such as the Jazz Messengers and the Modern Jazz Quartet in the picture it's refreshing to discover that perfection could come at a cost.

Far from the perfect album, Way Out West is a success precisely due to its failings. The material chosen isn't exactly first rate but allows Rollins ample space for some solo pyrotechnics. The soloing itself, however, is frequently restrained which suits the West Coast feel. And working as a trio has its obvious failings as well - how isn't a fuller sound preferable to something so sparse? - but it's never as dull as many piano trios of the day. Lighthearted yet never throwaway, funny but never corny, Rollins struck a nice balance of art and entertainment. Look once again at the cover: what really makes it so funny is that he means it. And real artists always mean it, right?

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* Virtually every Blue Note album in my collection features one token, frequently unwanted ballad shoved in the midst of a collection of fast, catchy numbers. Way Out West seems to have taken the opposite tack.

The Young Lions: Exposing the Emptiness

The trouble with having a distinct sound is that it can eventually become staid. I went through a period a couple years' ago where I became obsessed with Blue Note's classic sound, in particular the many albums recorded in the home of engineer Rudy Van Gelder. One listen to the pounding open bars of 'The Chess Players' from Art Blakey's The Big Beat were enough to get me hooked - and I still am in a way: Blakey's sessions at Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio are all magnificent and Lee Morgan's Tom Cat and Jackie McLean's Old and New Gospel are among my all time favorite jazz recordings. The only trouble was it gave some of Blakey's proteges an unwelcome anonymity which proved to be the undoing of Blue Note in my eyes.

The Young Lions, committed to tape just six weeks after the Jazz Messengers laid down The Big Beat, captures the same sort of hot house fire of any RVG session but without the predictability that came part and parcel with the Blue Note/Van Gelder tag. All too often I find that the soloist's quota system ("make sure that Curtis Fuller gets a trombone solo that's just as lengthy as Freddie Hubbard's trumpet but be sure they don't take any attention away from Tina Brooks because he's the leader") could grow tiresome. Far too democratic for the creative process to flourish, there needs to be a competitive tension at the core to spark some truly magnificent solo duels (imagine Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young working under such a system in the thirties: their legendary all night 'anything you can do, I can do better' sax off would have turned into a dull, politically correct display of tenor sax relativism, if it would have occurred at all).

Some praise must be heaped on Frank Strozier for helping to guide this record through the wilderness. As the only Young Lion without prior experience working for Blue Note, it's no coincidence his alto sax provides a welcome layer of grit that only a Memphis-trained bar musician could provide. Wayne Shorter, for his part, seems up to the challenge for once, restraining himself on the all-too slick solos that have defined the bulk of his career and embarking on some booming tenor playing as well. I'll refrain from bowing down to Lee Morgan's alter, however; his concise, bellowing trumpet solos both suited the Blue Note sound and managed to overcome it. That's not to say there isn't some wonderful interplay as well: the three work just as well with as they do against.

I often used to wonder if Rudy Van Gelder and Alfred Lion would meet over coffee the morning of their sessions and choose the day's players the same way that Junior High phys ed students pick teams for floor hockey. I imagined their entire vaunted line-up crowding into Van Gelder's rumpus room, Lou Donaldson getting chosen ahead of Hank Mobley, Blue Mitchell over Donald Byrd. I can still imagine this scenario but I no longer think of it as complimentary to the label's virtues. Rather, it reminds me of just how restrictive Blue Note could be: by carving out a unique sound they unwittingly prevented their charges from developing one for themselves. The Big Beat, in spite of its many charms, could have been recorded by anyone on their roster; The Young Lions could have only been made by the Young Lions themselves.

Under the Jasmin Tree / Space: What You Have to Deal With

It's the Modern Jazz Quartet all right. Couldn't possibly be anyone else. But listening to this period it's impossible to imagine that this is the MJQ recorded, as they usually seemed to be, in a vacuum. The connections with the times, the place, the people and the record label cannot be divorced from what they were recording. Even if it's all in my imagination.

Thus, I hear in Under the Jasmin Tree's opening track 'Blue Necklace' a merging of the MJQ's classic sound with a psychedelic underpinning, particularly when Milt Jackson's vibes collapse into themselves twenty-one seconds into the piece and then again a few seconds later, Connie Kay's drums pounding gently yet in an uncharacteristically tribal manner. John Lewis and Percy Heath remain restrained, which, far from harming the number, manages to give it a nice tension as both factions fight for control, albeit as delicately as possible. The fact that Lewis and Jackson weren't on the exact same page was nothing new to the MJQ but where else could one find such a subtle power struggle? On Django? Conchorde? Even if this battle is entirely the product of my own imagination it's an alluring proposition for such a contemplative ensemble, particularly considering the parallel struggle occurring at the same time with their bosses Lennon and McCartney.

Reigned in by Lewis, Under the Jasmin Tree nonetheless remains mostly free of sixties rock clichés (uncharitably, one could argue that they instead were happy to partake in their own clichés). 'Three Little Feelings' is a suite in the tradition of Django's 'La Ronde Suite', the sort of thing Lewis in particular excelled at. The title track which closes out the album, however, is about as raucous as you'll ever hear the MJQ sound, further proof they slice their way through a good pop song as well as anyone.


Space, from early 1969, ups the psychedelia factor a touch more and, ironically, from the unlikeliest of sources: John Lewis! Whereas the Van Heusen-Burke standard 'Here's that Rainy Day' returns the MJQ to their fetish for Gershwin and Broadway and 'Adagio from Concierto de Aranjuez' explores third wave beautifully, it is the Lewis originals, 'Visitor from Mars' and 'Visitor from Venus', that have them grasping at space rock and raga like never before. Just as warring factions Lennon and McCartney conceived a veneer of unity on Abbey Road from the same year, these tracks display a coalescence of the MJQ's wild cards and their more sedate counterparts. Jackson and Lewis no longer sound like they're battling for control over their group's direction but in complete agreement - for the time being. The remainder of the album acts to remind us that this psychedelic direction was nothing more than a passing fancy, just as it had been for the Beatles themselves.

(Interestingly enough, The Beatles' Anthology series fails to mention the premiere outfit they signed, either an indication of how little jazz music meant to the Fab Four or simply a careless oversight on the part of the producers. Or perhaps a bit of both. Nevertheless, there's something oddly appropriate in ignoring the MJQ. Whereas Badfinger and Mary Hopkin needed the Beatle association (but struggled to escape it), John Lewis and co didn't then and don't now. The mere fact they were signed to Apple seems like an afterthought - not unlike James Taylor, the only other act on the label who managed to carve out a career that didn't need the Beatles connection)

I want to think that being signed to Apple was merely incidental and that the MJQ would've delivered the same albums had they been signed to Atlantic at the time. But I cannot. Tied to the most influential act of the decade and their oh so hip record company, I can't fathom them performing without. But it's equally impossible to imagine anyone else recording these albums. This is, after-all, the MJQ.

The Complete RCA Victor Recordings: Did Pops Get Better Over Time?

Since finally succumbing to the vast allure of Louis Armstrong late last year, I've begun to think of him as a box set artist - the kind of performer who needs to be digested in huge quantities. I frequently listen to my two Armstrong sets (Hot Fives and Sevens and this) back to back, making for an eight hour marathon of Satchmo. I initially assumed that the earlier set would completely overshadow what he later did but I couldn't have been more wrong on that one. The Complete RCA Victor Recordings: twenty years of never ending development.

Certainly the RCA sessions sound better: the hiss that occasionally threatens to drown out the Hot Fives is almost entirely gone and, working with an orchestra on a regular basis, it has a fuller sound. But the earliest of these sessions date from the early thirties when he may well have missed his old Hot Five cohorts. Mere advanced studio technology could not obscure just how ill-prepared Armstrong's employees were. So how does the man himself sound so fantastic? Could he simply have improved? While his solos on the Hot Five recordings are incredible still, his playing through the thirties and forties (and the remainder of his career) saw no notable drop off in quality but there's far greater authority and confidence than before. This is all the more obvious with his singing which all too often sounds tentative in the twenties. Listeners coming from a rock background (such as myself) tend to find the singing to be a distraction at best and irritating at worst but on these recordings it becomes abundantly clear that his vocals are as vital his cornet. It's nice to think, too, that he sacrificed his trumpet playing in order to sing more often but his lines simply get better and better with each passing decade (my favorite solos are on disc three from the mid-forties: 'Snafu', 'Joseph 'n' His Brudders', 'Where the Blues Were Born in New Orleans' and a definitive rendition of 'Mahogany Hall Stomp'; it's notable that the first three numbers are otherwise inconsequential, proof that Armstrong didn't need a great composition to run roughshod over a tune). Could it be that his playing and singing got better in tandem? On the final disc Armstrong revisits his some of his old Hot Fives classics, such as 'St. James Infirmary' and 'Ain't Misbehavin', to an appreciative New York audience. But it's a far cry from an aging Paul McCartney churning out 'Yesterday' or 'Hey Jude' to crowds that wanted to see the Beatles play thirty years earlier. These barely seem like classics at all: they exude creativity which manages to keep the music as contemporary as ever.

Unique among jazz musicians, Armstrong seemed to just get better and better (only until the sixties does it feel like he's riding the coattails of his former glories). Ellington tirelessly reworked his material but never quite topped the zest and exuberance of his earliest recordings. Davis spent the bulk of his career in flux but it was never about improving his technique or skills as a performer. Parker showed everyone his supreme talent in around 1942 and then spent the remainder of his life attempting to remind everyone of this fact. Only Charlie Mingus and Thelonious Monk managed a similar feat to Armstrong and even they could only sustain the self-improvement for ten to fifteen years; neither of them came close to making an entire career of it. It was never about reinventing the wheel either; he took his sound and spent the rest of his life making it better.

Neither a singles nor an albums act as we regard them to be now, Louis Armstrong is the ultimate box-set artist. And what better a complement to pay to a man whose greatest achievement was having the career he had.

Ben Webster at Ronnie Scott 1964: The Punch: über-Improvisation

He travelled alone, spurning a permanent touring band for financial reasons but managing to benefit creatively from this. House bands throughout Europe awaited his arrival wondering how they could adapt themselves to suit the great Ben Webster. But they needn't have worried: Ben Webster was there to adapt to them.

The audiences, too, changed wherever he went. In some parts of Europe they'd offer up the most ghostly rounds of applause; elsewhere the commotion would be such to cause the riot police to descend upon a basement bar. Nothing could prepare him for how the crowd would react. In America, they all used to dance to jazz, now they treat it like some intellectual experience; here they do whatever they please. There's an audience.

And as for Ben himself, he never ceased improvising either. Familiarity acts as a disincentive. How can a jazz musician be expected to improvise when they're playing the same old songs with the same old people in the same old towns to the same old audiences? And whatsmore, just how can a soloist be expected to be spontaneous when his private life remains tepid and dull and predictable? How can anything less than an imrpovised life suffice to suit an improvised medium?

The Avant-Garde / My Favorite Things / Coltrane Plays the Blues: Atlantic Ocean

In the John Coltrane mythology, the great saxophonist learned his trade in some wartime big bands playing blues numbers before establishing his popularity as a soloist with some pop standards and, finally, moving on to completely altering the boundaries of jazz forever. This nice, tidy little story makes Coltrane hero #1 to all the Wellsians out there.

Recorded all in 1960, The Avant-Garde, My Favorite Things and Coltrane Plays the Blues represent a time-compressed piece of Coltrane's progress. But note that they were in fact recorded in opposition to history: he began by working on an attempt at radicalism and culminated with some blues: the anti-Wells, where ECM's back catalogue progresses for the next seventy years into the Hot Fives.


Similar to contemporaneous works like Coltrane's Sound and Coltrane Jazz, there's an implication in the title that Coltrane Plays the Blues is a minor effort (unlike Miles Davis, whose punular, rather jokey albums - Miles Ahead, Milestones, Miles Smiles, Miles in the Sky - betrayed a certain monumentalism; perhaps Davis was better suited to vanity projects; even Blue Train and Soultrane seem like he was stretching it). There's something novel about it too; as if standard blues fare wasn't something his work wasn't rooted in. Still, even if you aren't convinced by the virtues of the twelve bar, just listen to the soloing: "Blues to Elvin" and "Mr. Day" are as powerful as anything on the awesome Giant Steps; "Mr. Syms" and the then-unreleased "Untitled Original (Exotica)" represent some of the loveliest playing of his career. Easily one of his most underrated albums,Coltrane Plays the Blues could well be exhibit "A" for anyone trying to make a case for the theory of less is more.

If any work can be considered minor it is The Avant-Garde, a well-intentioned but hugely flawed attempt at responding to Ornette Coleman's advances in free playing. Sharing the billing with Don Cherry is a nice gesture and an acknowledgement that the cornetist's star had risen to the extent that by 1966 he merited a co-headline but seems like nothing more than a gesture. Then you realise that it is Cherry himself who steals every solo break. Coltrane is simply in over his head, doing his utmost to prove that he was Coleman's equal but, ultimately, only pushing him further into his rival's shadow. No wonder it was buried for half-a-dozen years before it was finally released.


As for My Favorite Things, what can be said? Critics point to the title cut's brazen influence on the remainder of Coltrane's life and his desire to frequently return to it even as he moved deeper into his chaotic Impulse! era. Few, however, seem to acknowledge that this is as much due to the magnificence of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein's composition (and, by extension, Coltrane's own faltering songwriting skills) as anything else. The same goes for Cole Porter's "Everytime We Say Goodbye" and the Gershwins' "Summertime" and "But Not for Me", which, alas, he did not return to. This is now interpreted as gimmicky, that the serious artiste in Coltrane would never have taken on such a project in earnest. Indeed not. But the Coltrane who placed value on performance and swing and melody probably didn't mind. A pity he wasn't around much longer.

It seems, then, that Coltane was better off being somewhat kooky and lighthearted and focused rather than being caught up in getting too serious, a side he either failed to recognize or ignored altogether as he entered his crucial Impulse! period a couple years' after these recordings. As for the Wellsian myth, as a true artist, Coltrane used his time on Atlantic to shift, to change pace, to delve into every nook and cranny and his music was all the better for it. Isn't that progress?

Far Cry: It Takes Two

Parker and Gillespie. Ellington and Hodges. Davis and Coltrane. Ellington and Strayhorn. Coleman and Cherry. Ellington and Carney. Dolphy and Little? There have been a great many marvellous duos over the course of jazz's peak period, many of whom remain indelibly linked together in the collective consciousness. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's solo works still seem to have each other present, as if acting as consultants to the recording. But beyond the renowned pairings, there were numerous jazz tag teams that fell through the cracks. In But Beautiful, Geoff Dyer writes of the seemingly infinite number of potential collaborations that never occurred (I've long wondered what Lester Young and Miles Davis would have been like together) but what about those superb duos that existed only fleetingly?

Far Cry is regarded as a transitional album, a work that allowed Eric Dolphy to rid himself of his long held Charlie Parker fetish at long last, thereby allowing him to move on towards becoming a leading light of the avant garde jazz movement. As such it's a tribute album: a tribute to Parker and his massive influence, a tribute to the driving spirit of hard bop, a genre on its last legs by 1960, a tribute to Dolphy himself as this represented his coming-out as a leader and a tribute to his ultimately doomed collaboration with trumpeter Booker Little.

The sixties brought forth a more solitary approach to jazz. John Coltrane began to operate within the confines of a quartet, spurning the saxophone-trumpet double team that had served - among others - he and Miles Davis so well. Pianists such as Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans rarely utilized anything beyond the piano trio format. Even Charlie Mingus took a kind of singular tack: his groups remained large but his line-ups were ever changing. (For someone who supposedly found figures like Dolphy and Roland Kirk to be musical kindred spirits, it's odd that he didn't use them more often) With jazz splintering it's probable that potential musical soul mates were often laying eggs in vastly different hen houses.

One can listen to Far Cry and lament that the duo of Dolphy and Little wasn't able to piece together a run of at least four studio recordings in tandem. Little's death less than a year later snuffed out any further collaborations but it's easy to imagine the two never working together again even if they both hadn't met with untimely ends. The heyday of the duo had passed and individualism had taken over.