John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy's fearless experiment sets a new album ablaze

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/31/ [login to see] /john-coltrane-eric-dolphy-village-gate-1961-lost-album
A little over 60 years ago, the editor-in-chief of DownBeat magazine asked John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy a deceptively simple question: What are you trying to do? He rephrased slightly: What are you doing? The two saxophonists sat for a long 30 seconds before Dolphy broke the silence. "That's a good question," he said.

The DownBeat editor, Don DeMicheal, printed this exchange in the April 1962 issue, as part of a fascinating article headlined "John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy Answer the Jazz Critics." Regular readers of the magazine would have known precisely what provoked this gesture: a scathing review of Coltrane's quintet with Dolphy, decrying "an anarchistic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz."