Dolphy's career began to take off in 1958, when he played clarinet in drummer Chico Hamilton 's quintet. The next year he moved to New York and joined the Charles Mingus Quartet . However, regular employment was difficult to find. Dolphy devotees say this was because he was far ahead of his time, playing outside the accepted boundaries of bop and swing.
Dolphy's playing on alto and bass clarinet sounded closer to human speech than to conventional methods of playing...