Showing posts with label jimmy giuffre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jimmy giuffre. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

A little more Giuffre

There is a lot more Jimmy Giuffre available that I had realized, back when I acquired his Free Fall album.  Today I purchased The Train and the River, and The Jimmy Giuffre Clarinet.  The former is priceless.  Pure feeling woven through brilliant skill.  I am playing the first two cuts off the album: the title cut, and 'Elephant'.  Both are superb.  The latter is a conventional blues done down right.  Kiyoshi Tokunaga is on bass, and Randy Kaye on percussion.  

The latter seems to be a series of small combos.  I am playing 'The Quiet Cook'. 

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Serge Chaloff & Jimmy Giuffre

I saw Pharaoh Sanders at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London.  It was magnificent as you might imagine.  Ronnie Scott's is one of the best venues I have had the pleasure of visiting.  Sanders was in top form.  He played through a range of moods, including his more mystical compositions as well as some standard and very muscular hard bop.  

I didn't manage to visit any jazz record stores, but I did pop into the music annex for Blackwell's Book Store in Oxford.  The jazz section is small, but interesting.  I picked up Boss Baritone, an affordable four disc collection of recordings featuring Serge Chaloff.  I am not sure that Chaloff was really an "important figure in the bop movement" as it says on the side of the box.  He was a very fine hard bop player, with a great presentation on the low horn.  I have featured his music before from Blue Serge.  The box includes a good chunk of his recordings from the late forties and early fifties.  I am playing 'The Fable of Mabel' from Disc Two.  

The other thing I walked away with was Live in 1960 by The Jimmy Giuffre Quartet.  This one was a real find.  It includes Jim Hall on guitar, Bud Neidlinger on bass, and Billy Osborne on drums.  Like Chaloff, Giuffre dressed like an insurance salesman and played like he was from outer space.  I am playing 'The Quiet Time' and 'Two for Timbuctu'. 

Monday, April 26, 2010

Steve Lacy, Herb Ellis, & the Copyright Cop Blues

I just had another post taken down by the "authorities".  Oddly enough, this one was an old post on Ike Quebec, with the link long since ineffective.  I found a copy of the original notice, and my blog appears in a long list of offenders.  I suspect that this is a largely automated process.  

Anyway, and while I am still in business, I picked up a bunch of great jazz at the wonderful Jazz Record Mart in Chicago.  One was a disc I have been searching for: Five Facings, by Steve Lacy.  This is a series of duets with Lacy on Soprano Sax of course, and different piano players.  If you know Lacy's music at all, well, this is more Lacy.  With just a piano and sax, it is very laconic music.  I find it exquisite: pure musical ideas laid out for all to hear.  

Five Facings is apparently out of print.  You can find it online, but only for the price of a new DVD player.  I was delighted to find it at the Jazz Mart.  Here is a sample.  It won't be here long.  
Steve Lacy/Ruby My Dear/Five Facings
I had planned to do a more extensive post in honor of Herb Ellis' passing.  I ain't got around to it yet, but I did pick up a beautiful double album, with Nothing But the Blues & Herb Ellis Meets Jimmy Giuffre.  It is quite a find, if you like Herb's lovely lines.  I think the latter is the real prize.  Jimmy Giuffre is easy to miss.  He looked and dressed like Lawrence Whelk, but played like he was from outer space.  On this album, he sounds more like Lawrence Whelk.  But the music is rockin' good jazz.  Here is a sample:
Herb Ellis/Remember  
You can get the double album at a reasonable price from Amazon.  If you like jazz guitar, you won't be sorry you read this post. 

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Big Bands, Small Combos, & Duets


The difference between big band jazz and the small combo (3 to 9 musicians) is analogous to the difference between a novel and a short story. In the former, the larger picture usually subsumes most of the individual elements, with the exception of a central character or two. The main character watches the rise and fall of a Louisiana tyrant who pulls all the other characters into orbit around him. The jazz version has a solo horn play against the theme provided by an orchestra. Here is an example: Art Pepper playing against an orchestra:
Art Pepper/Our Song/Winter Moon
In the latter, a handful of characters come into focus against one another. A lonely furniture salesman negotiates the transfer of an antique table from a wife, only to find out that a mistress wants it. In the jazz version, the main horn establishes himself against the rhythm section, and then encounters the other instruments one at a time. Listen to this cut by the Jimmy Giuffre 3:
The Jimmy Giuffre 3/Two Kinds of Blues/Hollywood and Newport Live
If my analogy is any good, let me propose that the jazz duet and solo album is analogous to poetry. Everything is cut down to the bare skeleton of story. Each word, or note, has to stand for a vast realm of things. Here is a cut from Mal Waldron's last album, a duet with Avant Guard sax man Archie Shepp. This is jazz distilled into its essence. Be amazed.
Archie Shepp & Mel Waldron/Everything Happens to Me/Left Alone Revisited
This was Waldron's final tribute to Billy Holiday. Sadness and beauty inscribed with brilliant economy.