...A tribute to Jimmy Giuffre, who passed last year just before his 87th birthday.
The Train And The River, with Jim Hall and Jim Atlas, from The Sound Of Jazz, 1957.
Giuffre on tenor saxophone with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars (Shorty Rogers, Maynard Ferguson, Milt Bernhart, Frank Patchen, Howard Rumsey, and Shelly Manne), Four Others and Creme de Menthe, Los Angeles, 1953.
Giuffre with Herb Ellis, featuring Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Richie Kamuca, Lou Levy, Jim Hall, Joe Montdragon, and Stan Levey, A Country Boy, Hollywood, 1959.
The Jimmy Giuffre 3, with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, Divided Man, 1962.
...and with Shorty Rogers, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Bill Perkins, Pete Jolly, Monty Budwig, and Shelly Manne, What Is This Thing Called Love, Aurex Jazz Festival, Japan, 1983.
In my opinion, Giuffre was a criminally unheralded innovator and writer of modern improvising music.
If you call yourself a Jazz aficionado and don't have one or two of his works in your collection...you don't have a collection, baby.
;>)
5 comments:
Geebuz, I've never heard of this cat.
The first track sounds like a hint of blues, a hint of bluegrass, and sounds like some americana stuff out there with bands from Nova Scotia, other parts of Canada and down here, with a cello in the mix.
Just phreakin amazing this was in the early 50's!
Bluegrass was just starting, and blues was a hidden secret 'cept among the pro's.
Damn, DB, you know yer stuff, I bow to that wow!
The rest is insane, thanks for all the vids.
Never heard of him! (repents)
Crooked Still, with Rushad Eggleston, is one band I was thinking of.
Their new grouping, without Rushad, Still Crooked, has the flav.
Brittney Haas. Natalie Haas.
Scrooge McDuck another one, here's their wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrooge_McDuck
The Duhks, a revamp of The Scrooged . . . lol
And so many more from up there, to down here.
Your cat who passed nailed me, I'm just suffering and smarting from the fact I've never heard of him. The cats he played with , , , , wow.
And still that first vid, it hits me. I hear it, I hear it, the grass, the blues.
Increible. I was born that year. *G*
HI Larue-
db is pretty amazing in his knowledge of music, isn't he?
Yeah, VG, he sure is . . . .
Thank you both for your kind words.
In all candor, Larue, I only became aware of the depth of Mr. Giuffre's oeuvre a few years ago - before that, I knew of him merely as the author of the jazz standard Four Brothers popularized by Woody Herman, which the Manhattan Transfer among many others covered.
As I got into more arcane expressions of music (specifically the 'free jazz' movement of the 1960's), projects with his involvement came to my attention and I was struck by the broad contrasts that such an omnivorous approach could provide.
I regard him as someone who worked 'with' form rather than attempting to discard it utterly, which many of his peers did and which could be construed as a 'form' in and of itself in spite of their protestations to the contrary.
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