nsp, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything by Mobley that I didn’t like. Great player and great record!
You’re right, Dolphy was the first in jazz to play bass clarinet with that level of proficiency. Harry Carney played it in Duke’s band quite a bit before Dolphy came on the scene, but it was mostly in the context of Duke’s great orchestrations and he didn’t improvise on it that much. The great clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and a couple of other contemporaries of Dolphy flirted with the bass clarinet, but not seriously like Dolphy did:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BFinfHYnOCQ
You’re right, Dolphy was the first in jazz to play bass clarinet with that level of proficiency. Harry Carney played it in Duke’s band quite a bit before Dolphy came on the scene, but it was mostly in the context of Duke’s great orchestrations and he didn’t improvise on it that much. The great clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and a couple of other contemporaries of Dolphy flirted with the bass clarinet, but not seriously like Dolphy did:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BFinfHYnOCQ