js Similar to other especially talented artists whose lives were cut short, Eric Dophy’s brief music career has been given a second life through the addition of countless compilations, re-packagings and similar collections. “The Essential Eric Dolphy” may be a good purchase for someone who owns nothing by Dolphy, and is seeking an introduction to his music, but to the long time fan, this collection is pretty much pointless. Most of the music on here comes from Dolphy’s first three albums, plus a couple cuts he recorded during that same time period with Oliver Nelson. This compilation does get good marks for showing a nice variety of music performed by Eric. The Nelson cuts are straight ahead hard bop with Dolphy getting characteristically wacky during his solo rides, while the cuts from his own albums show Dolphy playing hard swinging modernist abstract post bop, as well as some odd quirky chamber music. Although many of the cuts on here were composed by Dolphy, the cuts composed by Jaki Byard and Mal Waldron fit perfectly with Dolphy’s style. Byard in particular seems to be a perfect accompanist for Eric with his humorous and petulant piano style that falls somewhere between T Monk and Sun Ra. Drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Ron Carter also show up on many cuts and likewise show a great affinity for Dolphy’s musical vision.

As mentioned earlier, this CD does work well as an introduction to Dolphy's music and many of these tracks are excellent, but to the long time fan, the Nelson cuts probably seem a little out of place and the whole sequence of songs is a little clumsy, besides, most fans already have these songs. Since this CD does not contain any tracks from Erik's brilliant final albums, you could hardly call this collection "essential" or complete.