[TR24][OF] Eric Dolphy - At The Five Spot, Vol. 2 - 1961/2014 (Hard Bop)

In mid-July of 1961, the New York Times reported that the city-home of the Five Spot, where this short-lived quintet played its one and only engagement-was experiencing warmer than usual temperatures. Pianos hate extremes of temperature. In addition, heavy rainstorms had pummeled the metropolitan area the day before this recording, with clouds and scattered storms continuing the next few days; we can guess that the humidity played its part in sapping the piano strings of their necessary tension. Whatever the reason, Mal Waldron found himself playing what may be the most ferociously, obtrusively, and at times comically out-of-tune piano on any major jazz recording of the last 60 years.
That night at the Five Spot, the Dolphy-Little quintet recorded ten tunes. Four of them (including one alternate take) appeared on the New Jazz label as Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot. The first two tunes heard here arrived later as Volume 2 on Prestige; "Number Eight (Potsa Lotsa)" and "Booker's Waltz," included here as bonus tracks, first appeared on Memorial Album; and the remaining two, "God Bless the Child" and "Status Seeking," were issued posthumously on Dolphy's Here and There, also on Prestige.