tellcliff.com

My wife and I gave each other iPods for Christmas. So ended a three-year period when, in terms of how I listened to music, I had one foot in the 21st century and the other back in the 20th: I would download stuff from iTunes, and then . . . burn it to CDs. (My friends laughed at me.)

I have to say, I’m digging this iPod. The most surprising thing about it is the Shuffle feature — not that it exists, but that it actually enhances the experience of hearing some tunes. When you play an album knowing when a particular tune is coming, part of you doesn’t even listen, taking for granted that you know what it sounds like. But hearing music unexpectedly can be like hearing it for the first time.

And then there’s the pleasure of hearing something you haven’t listened to in a while and might not have thought to put on yourself. Something like . . .

Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot, Volumes 1 and 2, from 1961. Man, what great jazz records. You know Dolphy? He played alto sax, bass clarinet, and flute; whatever he played, he was instantly recognizable, his style showing through like the same muscular body under different clothes. His sound had a touch of eccentricity, to my mind prefiguring the last records of Coltrane and the chaos of Albert Ayler. Mostly, though, it was dazzling — quick, wild, exciting. Here, Ed Blackwell’s martial-sounding drums give the tunes shape; Mal Waldron on piano (whom I also have on the great album Teddy Charles Tentet) adds some sweetness; Richard Davis’s bass is in there somewhere; and then . . . there’s Booker Little on trumpet. Little died four months after this performance, at the tender age of 23. (Dolphy died in 1964, at 36.) That is a great shame, because, I want to tell you, Little smokes on these records.

After hearing these, I got a record Little made as a leader, Out Front, which I didn’t like as well. It reminded me of when a funny supporting character on a sitcom gets his own series and falls flat. But that probably means I just need to listen to it some more, look into its mysteries. Maybe it’ll come up on the Shuffle . . .