Is JIMMY GUIUFFRE this biggest traditor(sic) to WEST COAST JAZZ?

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

was just listening 2 FREE FALL.....

...not only is it on COLUMBIA RECORDS (a non west coast jazz record label), but its crazy ass euro style free improv- no west coast jazz whatsoever. WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM. did he just get sick of writing tasty arrangements for people like anita o'day and the lighthouse all stars and decide to go crazy? or is there more to it than that.

LETS TALK ABOUT IT!!!!

---------------------------------------------------

CHEWYS APPROVED RECORD LABELS FOR WEST COAST JAZZ:

Pacific Jazz

Contemporary

Fantasy

Tampa

Mode

Recorded In Hollywood

Capitol

Liberty

Premier

GNP

Bethlehem

Omega-Disc

Dial

and to whatever im forgetting u can feel free as im sure you will to quickly point out others...

[mikeweil]

Don't know anything about his motivation, but find it a fascinating career development. If you have his Mosaic set covering the Capitol and Atlantic sessions, you can follow the transition very clearly.

I'd say just a great, exploratory spirit who moved on, and following on this path is very rewarding. His way to free style playing was totally different to that of Trane, Taylor, or Ornette, and just as valid.

[king ubu]

Mingus & Dexter & Teddy Edwards were what? Not your typical west coast stuff, no? And Roach-Brown started out west, too...

Free Fall may be Giuffre's greatest record - why would you expect him to do west coast stuff? Was he even from the West Coast? What he did was some kind of folksy version of what Horace Silver did in an urbane way, I think... country funk, whatever - it's warm, swinging music that often had a rootsy feeling (talking of his Atlantic stuff now), but even on his first two Capitols he did things that may be closer to NYC third stream experiments than to West Coast, or so it seems to me. Anyway, I simply don't care if Giuffre is North, South, East or West, or a traitor or traditor or anything - he is a great musician (sadly unable to play for years by now due to health issues, as far as I know).

[king ubu]

traditor, the latinist in me, would translate as "he who spreaded traditions" or something, btw.

and labelling Bethlehem as a West Coast label is a rather strange idea...

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

yea meaybe youre right but bethelehem DID record a lot of w.c.j.

[John L]

Yea, I have never considered West Coast contradictory to crazy ass Euro style free improv.

I think that one of the most interesting points that Ted Gioia makes in his West Coast Jazz book is that the West Coast scene was first and foremost about experimentation and taking chances. They didn't all pay off. But Guiffre is a prime example of someone who always seemed to be looking for something else, and having the guts to do something about it.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

okokokokok if he recorded FREE FALL live at the lighthouse, with shelly manne and leroy vinnagar instead of steve swallow or whomever- then i would like it

[brownie]

I never cared about that East Coast/West Coast controversy.

The music is what really matters! Don't care that much where it comes from!

[Teasing the Korean]

I never cared about that East Coast/West Coast controversy.

The music is what really matters! Don't care that much where it comes from!

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

lol

[(BB)]

I would think it is quite the opposite.

If you listen to the records folks like Jimmy Giuffre, ShellyManne, Teddy Charles, Bob Brookmeyer and Shorty Rogers were making in the early to mid 50's they are already messing around with ideas of free improv. To my ears the traitors would not be those who stopped exploring like Giuffre, but folks like Shorty Rogers. That said you have to have some respect for a guy that titles one of his records, The Swinging Nutcracker.

[ghost of miles]

If you listen to the records folks like Jimmy Giuffre, ShellyManne, Teddy Charles, Bob Brookmeyer and Shorty Rogers were making in the early to mid 50's they are already messing around with ideas of free improv.

Yes--some of those early Manne records (THE THREE & THE TWO) and other LPs by the folks named above have been discussed a number of times here on the board. There was a lot more to the West Coast sound than jammin' at the Lighthouse (nothing against that, either--I have & like a lot of those sides as well).

[JSngry]

Good god Aric, if Free Fall freaks you out, you for darn sure don't want to hear the stuff from the 80s that sorta kinda sounds like Weather Report...

[JSngry]

Butcha' know - Free Fall has Paul Bley on it, and Paul Bley gave Ornette his first break - in Los Angeles, where Bley led a house band for a good while. And that gig led to Ornette's recording debut for - Contemporary. So when you hear Free Fall, you're hearing 2/3 West Coast of some sort.

[king ubu]

well, aric called Bley "whoever" above, so I guess that's not a reason to convince him of anything!

[B. Clugston]

Giuffre was already innovative in the 1950s. His Capitol albums provided a different role for the drummer, and then he got rid of the drummer altogether in his trio and even dropped the bass for a bit. Certainly people like John Lewis, Ornette Coleman and Monk were influences by the time Giuffre hit Verve. Giuffre was there when Coleman and Don Cherry were at the Lenox School of Music.

[RDK]

Who added the (sic) to the mispelled title? If Chewy did that from the start, then he's a funnier/smarter dude than I thought!

[king ubu]

Who added the (sic) to the mispelled title? If Chewy did that from the start, then he's a funnier/smarter dude than I thought!

you can read his "maybe you're right" reply that way, too...

[flat5]

I'll let Jimmy speak for himself. Sorry, I don't have a link to this so am posting it. Hope many of you (who have not seen this) find it interesting.

---

-edited from "Jimmy Giuffre Talks and Plays" on CELP Musiques-

EARLY YEARS

I was born in `21 and I started playing in 1930. And I started with Mr.

Holman. He was my teacher. He had a kind of a band at the YMCA and I took up

the clarinet because my mother had been told by all her friends that a young

boy should be able to play an instrument. And I decided on clarinet. I was so

small that I couldn't close the holes on the E-flat clarinet and I changed

over to B-flat very quickly, then I switched over to tenor. I remember the

first tenor I got out of a hock shop. This was an old Conn tenor and it was

probably a great horn. And I played tenor and doubling clarinet in some of the

bands that I played with around Dallas. We played country clubs, weddings and

things like that. It came a time where we were all looking forward to going

into service, 'cause the war was on. But if you volunteered you could choose

what you wanted to do and I wanted to play in a band so that got me into a

band. Later on they came looking around for some clarinet players to send to

the Battle of the Bulge and I didn't have to go because I'd volunteered. But

anyway I was there and we played reveille in the morning, we played taps at

night, and practiced... But we had a lot of groups, probably had some effect

on me. We had a small group with xylophone, not vibraphone but xylophone, and

guitar, tenor, bass and snare drum with brushes. And we played for officers'

lunch every day. But it was a swinging little group.

I wrote quite a bit and practiced a lot and the music was pretty easy, pretty

soft. Later on when I was with Woody Herman's band, he was asked by the

college to have his arranger write a march or a football song for them to

sing. So I did that and they played it, l don't know if they kept it or not. I

had a lot of experience marching. I was four years in high school four years

in college, four years in the army. So if I haven't got a beat yet, I guess I

won't ever get one.

I went to school at North Texas State in Texas and we played in a band called

stage band. There was a stage show every Saturday night with somebody who

would be a tap dancer and another one a musician, and it caught on with the

colleges to have these bands as part of their curriculum, and it built up and

built up and now it's very big. Like it's visited the White House and Moscow

and all kinds or different things. But it came from the band that we had

there. A bunch of us all lived in the same house: Herbie Ellis, the guitar

player, Harry Babasin, the bass player, and three or four others. I had one

room and an enclosed porch belonged to me, and I had a stove and a

refrigerator and I tried to cook for myself once in a while. But I lived out

in that little room, studied and... We played in the front room, we played

constantly, had sessions. Then we had some small groups that we went out to

play for dancing. And we used to go hear all the great bands that came

through, at Dallas: Basie, Lunceford, Lunceford was my favorite. And Duke

Ellington, Lionel Hampton. He had Dexter [Gordon] and all these different

people. We'd go there and stand for hours watching them. It was in a big place

called Automobile Show and you could look as far into the distance and you

couldn't see the end of it. And it was a black dance and there were hundreds

of people and they were all wearing zoot suits and dancing a particular dance.

I think it had a big influence on us.

MUSICAL CONSTRUCTION

I met Dr. Wesley La Violette, he was there in Los Angeles in late forties and

I studied with him fourteen years. I was in the army and there was first this

one guy named Scott Sealy. I noticed he used to write arrangements for the

band and it always sounded different and I asked him how he voiced his chords.

He says. "I don't voice, I write my line". And it was hard for me to

understand because I hadn't been given any training in college in North Texas.

In North Texas State, we were given one semester of counterpoint and form

analysis and that was the strict counterpoint, coming from the classical side.

In fact, there were very, very few people who were into... care about

counterpoint in jazz. Some people were beginning to be interested in it

whenever I captured them [and] explained it. But counterpoint, I think the

official definition is that the melody forms the harmony, and the harmony fits

to the melody.

I was arranging long before I took up counterpoint. It should have been the

other way around, but most people consider counterpoint just a device to use

when you can't think of anything. But I see counterpoint as organic, the whole

piece is lines, that... there are many ways they can work together but they

are horizontally conceived. You can't just write two lines. You can't write

line by line until you have gone a certain pattern, with a guide, and you

start with very simple phrases and you go ahead. And go through this step by

step. You get to a certain place, it doesn't take too long, you get to a

certain place and you're able to play all right two-part counterpoint which is

the basis of everything.

The way my teacher taught and the way I teach is, there are two paths. One

path is melody writing and you study how to write a good melody. The first

step is to write four-bar phrases and they have to be complete within

themselves. That is to say that... it just fulfills you. If you can learn that

skill, then you can put it into larger things. The second lesson, you study

extension: how to turn a four-bar phrase into a five-bar phrase, naturally,

with nobody realizing it, or a six-bar phrase. It's the art of extending, like

taffy. It's candy, and you can pull it and it goes into different shapes. So

that's what you have, that ability.

First, you begin by being very clear [about] the obviously balanced form: a

question, an answer, a question, an answer, very simple. The next step is to

extend and make it sound odd and strange instead of very obviously straight,

now you go and learn how to pull it apart and make it a little unusual and

that provides you with the basis of melody writing. And you also begin to use

orchestration. You choose... maybe the first few things you write are just for

nothing, not for a particular instrument, but very early in the game I start

the students to write for a specific instrument, to study encyclopedias about

it, and what it can do with range, its sound, listen to it on records. I like

to have records that give you the sound of every instrument in the orchestra.

And so, you're studying orchestrations at the same time, and you move along,

you go to 8-bar phrases and so on, till you get to 32 bars. This is all single

notes, no harmonies, no other line.

At the same time you get counterpoint in the other path, [and the other]

counterpoint is to write two lines together. So, in counterpoint you have

short little motifs, one or two bars, maybe three, and that starts, and you

imitate it, from time to time, and then in between you have what they call

episode in which you use parts of the theme and develop them. And at times you

come back and you write the theme, and everybody can hear there's a theme

'cause a lot of flags go out and everything, there's the theme, 'cause the

rest of the piece is all little pieces of the theme, chopped up. And you go

from there, you start writing eighth notes against quarter notes, one line is

eighth notes, the other quarter, and you learn how to do that, and you move

along, you take up syncopation and modulation, that's the one that's tough,

And you keep expanding, three notes, two notes, four notes, two notes and you

arrive at the end of that and you start writing inventions, which is a very

simple form that Bach invented, where you have a motif and repeat, an episode

of development, and then again the theme, but maybe in another key, or upside

down, or whatever, I have given the students all kinds of tables of ideas,

like the devices of imitation, where you have a motif and then you imitate it,

repeat it or you turn it upside down, or you write a sequence to it which is

the same thing on a different note, starting on a different note. And by the

time you have reached the two-part invention, you have also in the other path

reached the 32-bar song, which most of our popular songs are 32 bars.

Counterpoint creates the new harmonies and you don't even know what they are,

you don't need to bother if you want to forget that there is harmony after you

write the piece. But if you write counterpointedIy you don't think of chords,

you actually really think of intervals. Some intervals are peaceful and

resolved, some are unresolved and you have to work with those two things and

you can put together the whole orchestra. But the arrangers, GiI Evans, for

instance, and Gerry Mulligan and George Russell, I feel they use their own

style of counterpoint which I would say is possibly harmonic counterpoint or

counterpoint harmony because they mix the two together, and as I must say if

you want to write an arrangement for a standard there are certain places in

most standards, they're written harmonically and there are certain places

where there is a harmony change there. So what you have to do in that case if

you are a counterpoint writer, you have to adapt yourself to those changes.

You have to, but you can do it horizontally in between those changes and you

have the unknown and then you hit this one place where everybody expects it

and that's the way the tune goes. If you don't hit that there it sounds wrong.

So you do it, but in between those, perpendiculars we call them, you learn to

lead into those places in a surprising way, unusual way, as long as you hit

those changes that they call for. It embodies all the music, and if it is a

standard it calls for those things. That's all you can do, to work to them but

conceive horizontally in between.

COMPOSITIONS

Well, the [Four Brothers] thing came about at Nola studio, which was a place

on Broadway, in New York, where everybody hung out and exchanged jokes, got

gigs and rehearsed and recorded and whatever. Everybody was always there and

Gene Roland was the first one there. And there were a whole bunch of Lester

Young influenced tenor players: Brew Moore, Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Allen Eager.

it just went on. So he got this idea of writing for four tenor saxophones. So

he wrote some arrangements and they played them and it worked out to his

satisfaction and he told me about it and I was in Los Angeles. And he came out

to Los Angeles and we got a band together with Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Herbie

Steward and myself. And we rehearsed a lot and recorded on a wire recorder,

there must be some place out there with wire recordings of our rehearsals. And

we got this job down at Pontrelli's ballroom and poor Gene he was sort of

ushered out and this guy Tommy DeCarlo, a trumpet player, he got the job, so

he played the job.

But in the meantime Woody Herman's band had just reunited into the Second Herd

and he hired Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Herbie Steward and instead of four

tenors, three tenors and a bari `cause they used a regular five-man sax

section. So Herbie Steward switched to alto for most of the music and then I

went to rehearsal and they had told Woody about this sound and he asked me if

I'd write a piece featuring it and I did. And in writing the Four Brothers I

was trying to write a combination of Charlie Parker and Lester Young. I wrote

it and gave it to Shorty Rogers who took it in and they rehearsed it. They

seemed to instantly like it, but it didn't get by that easy `cause Woody was

really in tune with Caldonia and real fast killers and this was a relaxed

piece. As a matter of fact the band still plays it now which is some 40 odd

years [after] and they seem to try to play it fast every time they play it.

And most bands that do play it play it too fast. The original feeling was, you

know [he sings Four Brothers]. It's easy to play but it's.

Everything was just right with that band. It [was] a great band and all the

soloists were major. So they started playing the piece but not very often. But

the band liked it and Woody sometimes the last set of the night would visit

with people and turn the band over to his straw boss and the band requested

Four Brothers. And they finally worked it out to where it started sounding

real good and they could stand up and belt it out. And Woody started hearing

it and he was telling Shorty about the fact that they did all these recordings

because the union strike was coming up and there was no recorded music for two

years. So they recorded everything in the book. It took 18 takes to get the

ending on Four Brothers. So anyway, he began to play it and for some odd

reason, people seemed to go for it. It would be hard put to find something

that would give me as much mileage as I've got on that one piece. Lots of back

slaps and congratulations and stuff like that. It didn't pay me that much for

arranging but the royalties have been there.

At the beginning of The Train and the River was the fact that it was

originally called Finale 'cause it was written to be a piece which had fast

moving [pedal] notes and could serve as a last piece on a concert. But I

cannot tell you how The Train and the River came about in the title. I just

listened to the music and it just sounded like that. I'm sure a lot of people

identified with that. It sort of was a hit, or a minor hit, and people seemed

to like it. It has that quality that you want to "get aboard," like a train,

everything is smooth. It had this twang and this sound of the South which

maybe comes from my background, I don't know. But the good thing about it is

that it just sets up this music that is not intended to be, but it turned out

to be, kind of folk music.

There's a certain style of composing that Beethoven used a lot. He used it

usually on his scherzandos or scherzos. At the third part of his four-part

symphonies he would have this piece that. it would be written in three-quarter

time and it moved along fast. It moved fast but the music didn't look fast, it

looked slow. It took up twice as much score paper to write it. But as a

composer you could grab a hold of it and sort of move along with it, it

developed out into something more than it was. And Jim Hall he was attracted

by the style of the piece. Ralph [Pe¤a] he was of Mexican heritage and he

played his bass like a big guitar and it just got this groove. I guess people

can just ride in a train, everybody's experienced it.

I went through a period where I thought I would like to become a so-called

"avant-garde" classical composer, using all the major seconds, major seventh,

minor seconds and all the effects in the sometimes strange weirdness of this

music. I thought I wanted to be one of those: "Stockhausen #2." But something

happened that made me feel I really didn't speak that same language. I could,

but it really wasn't me. If anything was me, it was jazz music. Even though I

love to hear some beautiful classical things.

The Quiet Time, one of my earlier pieces. Well, that was one with the

vibraphone player, Teddy Charles. I wrote a piece for an album along with

George Russell and several other different arrangers. The one I wrote was

Quiet Time, and that's definitely a minor piece, maybe in the bridge we've got

a little major. That was a good example of counterpoint writing. Now the

Pharaoh is definitely a minor piece. I came about writing that piece when John

Lewis and Gunther Schuller got this organization together in which they were

going to try to blend classical and jazz music activities. So they

commissioned me to write a piece for eighteen brass and timpani. So I wrote

[the] Pharaoh. It was another good example of counterpoint.

Piece for Clarinet and String Orchestra: one side was all written and the

other side was all improvised, except for the accompaniment. My part was all

improvised. I love to write for strings: this was forty strings. I was in

Baden Baden, Germany, we had a good time working these things out. It was

[released] on Verve Records. I just sat down and started writing and I guess

that idea came to me of having a lot of little spaces, clarinet being free to

play or not play. [The] strings had their designated things to play.

I wrote two string quintets. It's a clarinet and string quartet. One is Orb

and the other one is Clarinet Quintet #1. That was commissioned by the jazz

festival in 1962 in Washington, and [it] premiered at the Library of Congress.

The other one was played at the Whitney Museum along with a piece by Cecil

[Taylor] and his own group and Sonny Rollins solo, which I talked him into. He

had mentioned before in articles that he would like to play just by himself.

So they originally thought this program up with Ornette [Coleman], probably

writing a piece, and myself, and Cecil Taylor. Ornette couldn't play, or he

didn't get a piece done. Sonny hadn't got a piece done and they were trying to

have him play [along] with Debussy or Ravel. I told him, "I read that you

wanted to play by yourself, why don't you take this opportunity?" And he did.

I don't know if it ever got recorded, I have a copy of it. But I don't know if

it came on the market. That's the first time he played a solo concert.

I'm very good at titles. One of them I remember I wrote years ago was Deep

People, for "Deep Purple," obviously. I always like them, natural things,

especially something that comes across space and enters your inner ear.

Dragonfly, just to look at the bug itself is a beautiful thing. I tried to

find titles that relate to the music but also have some attraction. Quasar, it

was fairly easy to title this because it had an outer space quality and it

brought us into that area. [Juanita, my wife] would like to encourage me to

write faster. I tend to stay around the quiet brook and lay upon the stones,

and I forget about the movement, which I shouldn't do. Four Brothers is about

as fast as I went (he laughs).

I seem to have a special liking for minor, pieces in minor. Even if I write,

and I try to write, in major, I end up some way making it sound half way

minor. It just drifts that way. To me, it has more depth. It doesn't seem

possible to write a piece in major. After a while it becomes "just major,"

just "everything is nice." Minor suggests hardships, pain and other emotions.

I don't know how that happened but just I have that nature, definitely.

INSTRUMENTS

Ah! I had my share of commercial bands and stuff. But they usually used

clarinet just on second. You know, mostly saxophone but certain places they

switched to clarinet. And then I got with Buddy Rich's band and they didn't

use clarinet so I put it on a shelf, in the closet. And a little later on,

Woody Herman. he didn't use clarinet except himself. And then the next thing

was the Lighthouse All-Stars, that I can remember. I was with Boyd Raeburn's

band for a week and I wrote some arrangements for him. I think it was a great

great band and George Handy was very underrated. I think he's one of the most

creative and talented composers. Then [i was with] Jimmy Dorsey. I brought out

the clarinet in early fifties. I don't know where I picked up the baritone. It

got me a lot of work because nobody liked to play baritone. So I got the

baritone and several records that I am on I think probably I got the job

because I played baritone. And I played that with my trio with Jim Hall and

Ralph Pe¤a. I played clarinet, tenor and baritone.

Dates lead me about where I went further into the flute. ... I notice that l

made a decision to focus on composition instead of the flute. So I hadn't

taken up the flute for a long time. So I think in the sixties, some place in

there, I got a flute and l started trying to be a flute player. George

Opperman, who is a flute maker, told me that he had a bass flute and I said,

"What's that?" and he sent it to me and I liked it. I didn't focus on building

a technique on it, there are too many other things, but I played it in a nice

moody situation, that's the way I played it.

Recently, I wasn't feeling so good on the tenor and I got this idea of picking

up an alto for getting an old real choice instrument. I had played the alto on

my first recording and my first solo, with Red Norvo. Red Norvo played a few

pieces, two pieces, I think, one of them was my arrangement and Dexter Gordon

was there and we had a question and answer duet, and Shorty Rogers was on the

date, [barney] Kessel too, the guitar player, Dodo Marmarosa, Red Callender on

bass. Anyway it was a nice little date and I got my first solo, period. So

[for] that one concert we did in California I picked up an alto at a

repairman's shop and took it out and played one piece on the concert. But

other than that I never touched alto sax. I just decided to try and I'm having

some fun with that. I don't think there are any other instruments I can think

of that I used.

I've always liked a low register [of the clarinet] because I can't find a

sound that I like in the middle or upper register. I do play some of it, but I

focus more on the bottom. I'm doing the same thing with alto sax. It produces

a different quality and as usual I want to try and be original if I can. But

it definitely is an old friend. The thing about it is, when I took up soprano,

a few years back, that provided something different. You can drive right along

with that. A clarinet, you have to find a way of making it sound right and you

can't just play a bebop piece on it. You can, and Buddy DeFranco does a great

job of it, but my style just didn't fit the high volume thing on the clarinet.

But now with this soprano you can go right ahead and straight out.

INSTRUMENTAL STYLE

Rhythm, I've never been very interested in rhythm. One of the most important

things to me that I'm striving for is personal music. My own style, if it's

possible. And the interest in rhythm puts it in another area. When you focus

on rhythm it keeps you from having an original style. It gives you a style

that's more common. You see Latin American rhythms in all kinds of music and I

don't reject it. I just don't use it because it would lead me into a more

common area and I'm trying to find a special area for myself. Some people

think you can't play swing softly, and I never accepted that. One of the

reasons I, at the present time, have a drum less group (and I had several of

them) was that I really wanted to hear the tone of these instruments. And I

still think it can be done with the drums but there has to be extreme work on

it to find the way to do it.

I think I learned a lot from Debussy and Delius and Ravel. In classical music,

it has lots of dynamics. Something put me in touch with that. I like to play

with varying dynamics and I also like to hear the great ones play the way they

play. And it might be Bird playing on a level that stays on that level because

he's got it there and he's driving it home his particular way. I think if you

listen to the great ones like him and Dizzy, Miles, Bill Evans, many others,

you hear the variations, you hear the dynamics change. Many time when you hear

people that are playing in that style but they haven't achieved the grandness

of those great ones, then it can sound kind of boring if it just stays there

and these people haven't found a way to give it breath, and give it give and

take.

I was playing with Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne at a club in Hollywood and

it was pretty crowded. As I remember I can see people dancing. There was quite

a lot going on and I couldn't hear myself. And right in the middle of the solo

I just went down and started playing just the rhythm and it turned everybody

round, they just didn't know what to do, and then pretty soon I just fell in.

I only played a little bit but I played enough to say, "Listen to us!" Then I

started using it regularly, you know, in this Martians Go Home, and we used a

lot of space.

As soon as I started playing the clarinet with the band these things came

along. had to play very soft, I hadn't played it [the clarinet] for a long

time, and I noticed it in the closet and I got it out to try and see how it

was and [it] felt real good. I didn't have much chops because I hadn't been

playing it. But anyway, I just sort of played it like it felt good, down the

lower register. And I brought it in and we had to find a way to play so that

it worked. So it turned out that the bass's playing softly, the piano's

playing like Count Basie, very, very sparse, and the drums with brushes and

the trumpet, usually with a mute. That's the way it worked out and then we

added these silent wind solos and lots of breaks where we played without

rhythm. And sometimes a whole solo without rhythm and then we'd go back into

rhythm.

ENSEMBLES

The Tangents in Jazz was the first group that I had, but it didn't last

because I didn't find any gigs. That group played a couple of jobs, that's

about all. We got such [a] good critical reaction on it we were going to try

to move it. I finally got a manager, an agent, and we were gonna try and bring

it East. I looked around and Jack Sheldon, who was the trumpet star on it, he

had joined another group and he couldn't go with us. So we had to start from

scratch and that takes us to Claude Debussy. I heard this piece for flute,

viola and harp, and I fell in love with that piece. Some way I got to know Jim

Hall. I tried writing some things for that combination and it worked.

I started experimenting with things that came away from that period when I

wanted to be an avant-garde composer. I went into breaking jazz down into more

unusual situations, tonally. I did this piece called Fugue for Shelly and it

was all written, classical jazz feeling. But there was a jazz feeling and the

rest was all lines but smooth. As we went along I tried to do something

different and finally we got to those Shelly Manne and Jimmy Giuffre and

Shorty Rogers record that was called The Three. We called them "Abstracts"

because they seemed at an angle to everything else. But it was a far cry from

what we're doing now. It should be [after] thirty, almost forty years! As we

went along, I met, I guess Paul [bley] was one of the earliest people I met

that was into that world, and then Ornette [Coleman], and Cecil Taylor and

[Charles] Mingus. We just gradually moved into things from hearing musicians

and working on it yourself, bringing out whatever it is that's inside you. And

so we got the group together with Steve Swallow and Paul BIey. Time goes by

and we made our final record, Free Fall. This group found out how to go and

play free, in our own way.

Then when we broke up, I was trying to find other musicians that were

interested in this, and it ended up with Don Friedman on piano and the bass

was Barre Phillips. He was with me for a little while. We did this tour, Paris

and London, doing concerts and we were still playing the same music I had

played with Paul and Steve. Then I jumped back into a more accessible style,

with bebop and standards and all things like that.

A couple of years ago Paul Bley shows up with a French record maker, Jean-

Jacques [Pussiau] and he had the idea of bringing this group back together.

And it worked. Each one of us has expanded and we're playing some favorite

standards of ours that we... sort of instant arranging. We have no plan on how

to play it, how we're going to play it, just that we are going to play this

piece. Everything is delegated, brought out for each musician to play a part.

In the meantime we're improvising a lot. The music is leveling out and the

public seems to be a hundred per cent more interested than it was in 1961 or

`63. And the producers and promoters and critics seem very interested.

My recent quartet, with Pete Levin on synthesizer, Bob Nieske on bass and

Randy Kaye on drums, they've been with me for many years. I had a dislike for

electric instruments or electronic instruments and whenever I heard electric

bass it always turned me off, the synthesizer. But I heard some records by

Weather Report and it turned me back on. So I figured if they could do it, so

could I. So I set out to try to find first an electric piano, or electronic

piano or synthesizer or whatever you call it and I remembered that I'd heard

synthesizer playing with Gil Evans. Turned out to be Pete. And so I got Pete,

he came aboard and we made three albums and a couple of tours to Europe.

Electronic bass, or electric bass, I couldn't stand it but I managed to find

Bob Nieske in Boston and he was able to play the instrument more or less the

way he plays stand-up bass, because he was a stand-up bass player too. And it

gives you certain kinds of dimensions, both those instruments do, that you

can't get any other way. And that's what drew me to it, so I could have more

dimension in the music. We more or less went on our way playing the same way

we were playing. We just happened to have electric bass and synthesizer

playing. The music has changed gradually, but I never used any language from

rock, because it never was me. The basic thing was like with the Latin music,

it was always there, in Rock, the drum beat is always there, pretty strong. I

found Randy Kaye after many years and he's been with me now about twenty

years. I might not have had any drum less groups if I had met him earlier.

He's very, very tasty. and listens. There are a lot of good drummers that I

like, like Don Lamond. He made Four Brothers really sound swinging. Of course

there's Jo Jones.

Andr‚... Jaume! I [had] received his albums, and he had written to me and said

he would like to study with me, which is quite something for someone to do who

is a professional. It struck me very well that someone [would] take a

challenge like Andr‚ Jaume did. [People] think because they're professional

they can't learn anymore. He took it upon himself to do that and then we went

ahead and he came over and we had about a week of lessons. And we happened to

have a performance at the same time. He came up to school, the New England

Conservatory, he joined us and we've gotten things together. We play similar

styles and we have found out how to play with two instead of one. He has

turned out to be my partner in a duet. We've made two albums and we've made

numerous tours. Andr‚, people that he knows all through France are interested

in what he's interested in, and I noticed that a lot of people are. There are

a lot of organizations, and overall organizations, networks. I wish I could do

this in the U.S.

[so] at this time I have the duo with Andr‚ Jaume and I have the quartet and

recently the trio I had in 1961 is back with me. Paul Bley, Steve Swallow and

myself, we've been playing and doing some recording, and touring and it seems

to be working out very nice. An Artist's Life

I do know that an artist needs help but he has to go ahead without it if he

doesn't have it. Quite often people are behind artists and help them do what

they have to do. Quite often too they're taken advantage of. But that's

something we all hear about while we don't have any clear cut instances in our

mind. They have strange ways of appearing honest but also appearing [as a]

mysterious devil, penetrates your body and controls you. At least that's the

way it seems to me.

There have been people that come along and help. These are the ones to

concentrate on. I'll do a bit of a ceremony about the man that was the head of

Atlantic records, Nesuhi Ertegun, who died recently. He and his brother Ahmet

worked hard to help jazz in a very tasty way. Everything was done with taste.

Norman Granz is a very important part of jazz. He decided from hearing my

music that he thought he could do something with me. It didn't work all right.

Whatever happened happened. In the middle of it he sold his record, after we

were with him, he sold the record company to someone else so we didn't have

the close operation as we did with him. It's a multiple job. You're supposed

to get someone do the cover, and you've got to do the notes or you get someone

else to do them. He just [gave the label] an artist and [said], "Do an album".

Producing and doing the recording, he sure did work hard to try to build jazz

up. Took all the great stars, put them together. Then there's all the numerous

little small labels and the writers who have dedicated and spent the time and

the effort to help us along. Means a lot!

[flat5]

I'll bore you some more.

On this early spring day in April, (2003 - JG is no longer with us) artist Juanita Giuffre, Jimmy's wife of 42 years, graciously agreed to take time out from her role as caregiver to the ailing innovator, and chat with me about her husband's many milestones. Parkinson's disease has silenced and stilled the once boundless creativity and expression. Music remains his great pleasure, if only as a listener.

This link is still good so...

http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/?read=butters1

Edited November 28, 2006 by flat5

[(BB)]

I'll bore you some more.

On this early spring day in April, (2003 - JG is no longer with us) artist Juanita Giuffre, Jimmy's wife of 42 years, graciously agreed to take time out from her role as caregiver to the ailing innovator, and chat with me about her husband's many milestones. Parkinson's disease has silenced and stilled the once boundless creativity and expression. Music remains his great pleasure, if only as a listener.

This link is still good so...

http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/?read=butters1

Are saying that Jimmy Giuffre is dead?

And thanks for posting the other info.

Bill

[David Ayers]

traditor, the latinist in me, would translate as "he who spreaded traditions" or something, btw.

Both traitor (traditor is Latin) and tradition seem to have a common root - trans-dare. Whoda thunk.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

JSDGRY: do u mean Jimmy made 80s fusion records? really? REALLY? *****REALLY*****??!?!??!

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

int ersting article RDk!

[JSngry]

JSDGRY: do u mean Jimmy made 80s fusion records? really? REALLY? *****REALLY*****??!?!??!

Yellheah!

Well, sorta. There's sythns & electric bass, and some "contemporary"-ish rhythms. It's still pretty much "jazz" but the influence is definitely there. "Fusion" more like "electric jazz", not like "odd-meter chop spewy".

3 Sides on Soul Note - Dragonfly, Quasar & Liquid Dancers. I like 'em.