The story of “Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet” begins in a suitcase.
It’s 1964, and the Los Angeles born Jazz multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, then living in New York and at the peak of his alto-sax-blowing powers, is headed overseas.
Known for his work as a bandleader and with Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Booker Little and others, Dolphy is embarking on a European tour and has entrusted his effects, including a case full of important stuff, to a friend for safekeeping. Not long after, Dolphy, a diabetic, dies suddenly during the tour in Berlin.
After sanctioned handoffs, the suitcase lands with composer and flutist James Newton and, over a half-century later, recordings within it are loaded onto a reel-to-reel player in the Beverly Hills studios of Resonance Records.
Variations of this story occur on a regular basis at Resonance, a West Adams-based imprint that just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Founded by jazz producer, former studio owner and philanthropist George Klabin, who was eager to invest in what he describes as “a virtual museum” to his lifelong passion, the label will release the Dolphy triple-CD set and digital download package “Musical Prophet” on Friday.
It’s the first unreleased Dolphy recordings to arrive in decades and follows a November vinyl release put out in conjunction with Record Store Day, a marketing promotion designed to spur purchases at independent retailers. Subtitled “The Expanded New York Studio Sessions,” the collection features nearly 85 minutes of previously unreleased recordings as well as the otherwise unavailable monaural tapes of seminal Dolphy albums “Conversations” and “Iron Man.”
Those who follow Resonance have come to expect nothing less, and 2018 was a good year for the Grammy-winning label. It issued two searing live recordings by jazzfunk guitarist Grant Green and a previously unreleased set by jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. On the contemporary front, its Klabin-produced recent studio album by jazz clarinetist Eddie Daniels is nominated for a Grammy in the Latin jazz album category.
Since its birth as a division of Klabin’s nonprofit, the Rising Jazz Stars Foundation, Resonance has earned attention for old and new records from bassist Jaco Pastorius, trumpet-and-drum team Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, pianist Bill Evans, British jazz singer Polly Gibbons, bossa nova collaborators João Gilberto and Stan Getz and others. For the live album, “Wes Montgomery in Paris,” Resonance teamed with France’s National Audio-Visual Institute to issue an estate-sanctioned version of a crucial and oft-bootlegged Montgomery recording.
The label’s mission is straightforward, Klabin said, and has arisen out of necessity. “There’s really no place where you can hear really great mainstream jazz of the nature we do on a consistent basis.”
Describing his team as “curators of really great music — we choose very carefully,” Klabin stressed that in addition to searching for lost recordings, Resonance is equally devoted to finding “true virtuosos of mainstream jazz.”
