The cover of Out to Lunch shows a shop window with a 'we'll be back' sign and a surreal clock with seven hands pointing in every direction. Eric Dolphy recorded the album in 1964 and died a few months later at 36, before it was released, turning a visual pun into a memorial. This episode maps his creative struggles, closest relationships and sudden death through the making of that record. The hosts situate Dolphy between rigid hard bop and swing on one side and the rule-shredding free jazz movement on the other, and explain why he replaced the piano with Bobby Hutcherson's vibraphone to throw away the harmonic map, recruited former roommate Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, nearly telepathic bassist Richard Davis, and an 18-year-old Tony Williams who played the pulse rather than keeping time.

At Van Gelder's New Jersey studio on February 25, 1964 ...