"Help! [Arthur Doyle] has collapsed! I was trotting along [today] and suddenly it started raining and snowing!"
My little paraphrase of Frank O'Hara's "Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed]" rings true, yes. The great Arthur Doyle has passed away at the wise ol' age of 69.
The free-form aficionado may have passed, but he maintains a legacy far beyond those 69 years. His entrance into the jazz world may be more or less undocumented and sparse in recording, as well as much of his later career, which is still hardly accessible via electronic or digital means.
However, as my generation scratches the surface and unearths old treasures from music history, Arthur Doyle is a name that can be found in most of the record piles right outside any Brooklyn doorstep.
One of his earliest recordings, The Black Ark (1969), under alto saxophonist Noah Howard's leadership, ushered him onto the scene, yet subtly so. Though the time between his first and second recordings may not have garnered too much popular attention, his 1978 debut of Alabama Feeling is highly regarded and much sought after in terms of a physical copy.
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