Five-Star Collection... Jimmy Giuffre

Jimmy Giuffre

Jimmy Giuffre

JIMMY GIUFFRE is a quiet and intense young man with a singular creative touch. He has written and played for Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Jerry Gray, Stan Kenton, and many more of the nation's leading bandsmen, and now — for the first time — he's on his own, in this album of seven Giuffre gems.

Jimmy has been playing clarinet and tenor sax since he was a lad in Texas, and he approaches composition most naturally as a performer. His work is generally melodic and “linear” in character. "This style of writing", he says, "gives the players the feeling of individuality that’s so important to jazz. Besides, I think it gives the listener more variety. I also use less rhythm section than is usual because I believe that this, too, provides more clarity and less monotony".

Like Jimmy, the performers he has joined together in this album of "chamber jazz" all belong to the vigorous and imaginative West Coast group of topflight modernists that has created such a stir in music circles. The tunes they play here, with the exception of the familiar I Only Have Eyes for You, are all Giuffre originals, one in particular — Four Brothers — having achieved a good deal of success in big-band arrangement.

Among the others are new and carefully fashioned numbers whose free flow and variety of instrumental combinations give them a wonderful improvised sound — though all of >Sultana<, for example, and half of Nutty Pine, are written out. Wrought of Iron is an exciting eight-bar theme and variations, an unusual form featuring ad lib solos by every member of the group.

An odd back-beat rhythm introduces the swinging tempo of Do It! and its fine improvisations on tenor sax, clarinet, trumpet, and piano. All For You is in a brooding ballad style, with trumpet playing gently about the tenor sax melody line. The one "standard" — Eyes — displays Giuffre's instrumental inventiveness at its best in an ad lib baritone sax cadenza, with masterful drum accompaniment, that highlights the six minute production number.

In all, this Jimmy Giuffre album debut shows fine versatility, and is a stimulating contribution to first-rate modern jazz literature. There's fascinating listening enjoyment here for quite a while to come. *(from the liner notes)*

Jimmy's first LP to himself is an absorbing success on which Jimmy scores both as performer (tenor, clarinet, and baritone) and as writer (all six originals are his). As a writer, Jimmy strikes this listener as the most freshly inventive and maturely daring (but unpretentious) of all the writers on the coast. For one thing, several of his works have the melodic strength (Nutty Pine and All for You, for example) to become part of the repertoire of any swinging modern jazz group.

And almost all of his original lines on this and on other albums are really original and fresh. They are not (as so often happens with Shorty Rogers, Bill Holman, and many other writers of "originals") just quick routines that can be enlivened only by the ad lib solos within them but can't stand up for themselves.

Even the more involved Giuffre numbers (like the completely written-out Sultana) are constantly challenging to the ear even if they don't entirely come alive yet. Fine work on the first four by Bud Shank, Jack Sheldon (trumpet), Shorty Rogers (fluegel horn), Bob Enevoldsen (valve trombone, bass), Ralph Pena (bass) and Shelly Manne. The last three have the excellent aid of Sheldon, Manne, Russ Freeman, and Curtis Counce. Cover credit should have been given the fine engineering of John Palladino and to whoever wrote the helpful notes. But the man who rates the full bows and the encores is Giuffre, a major modern jazz talent.

*Nat Hentoff (Down Beat, December 15, 1954 [5 stars])*

1 - Four Brothers

(Jimmy Giuffre)

2 - Sultana

(Jimmy Giuffre)

3 - Nutty Pine

(Jimmy Giuffre)

4 - Wrought Of Iron

(Jimmy Giuffre)

5 - Do It!

(Jimmy Giuffre)

6 - All For You

(Jimmy Giuffre)

7 - I Only Have Eyes For You

(Harry Warren, Al Dubin)

#1 to #4:

Jimmy Giuffre (clarinet, tenor sax, baritone sax), Bud Shank (alto sax),

Jack Sheldon (trumpet), Shorty Rogers (flugelhorn), 

Bob Enevoldsen (valve trombone, bass), Ralph Pena (bass), Shelly Manne (drums).

Recorded at Capitol Studios, Holywood, California, April 15, 1954

#5 to #7:

Jimmy Giuffre (clarinet, tenor sax, baritone sax), Jack Sheldon (trumpet), 

Russ Freeman (piano), Curtis Counce (bass),  Shelly Manne (dums).

Recorded at Capitol Studios, Holywood, February 19, 1954