MEDIUM Vinyl Record
WEIGHT 180gr (black Vinyl) 33rpm
CONDITION sealed
COVER Standard
CONDITION COVER M mint
COVER DAMAGES No, we take care about that
SERIALNUMBER No
LIMITED Yes
MISCELLANEOUS Stereo
MUSICIAN HOMEPAGE --
Jimmy Giuffre - clarinet, tenor sax, baritone sax
Jim Hall - guitar
Bob Brookmeyer - piano, valve trombone
western suite
- first movement: pony express - 5:56
- second movement: apaches - 4:18
- third movement: saturday night dance - 2:56
- fourth movement: big pow wow - 4:28
topsy - 11:28
blue monk – 8:16
In late 1957, jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, and iconoclast Jimmy Giuffre broke up the original Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Ralph Pena and Jim Hall
In early 1958, for a recording session, he formed a new trio without a rhythm section
For the album "Trav'lin' Light", his new trio included Hall on guitar and the underrated trombone giant Bob Brookmeyer
For a year, they gigged together up and down the West Coast and played summer festivals, recorded, and even played clubs in New York
They became a trio of adventurous musicians for whom form was not an obstacle to creativity
As the year wound down, Giuffre wanted to document the trio once more, sensing its life was coming to an end
He composed the four-movement "Western Suite" with the trio's strengths in mind, as a way of documenting how they had come together as a band during that year
The piece itself stands as a crowning achievement in a career that included discovering the talents of Steve Swallow and Paul Bley and making the truly revolutionary recording "Free Fall" for Columbia three years later
The roots of that thinking lie in this set
Jim Hall's playing was dark, funky, ambiguous, sounding like drums and voices all at the same time -- particularly in the fourth movement
Brookmeyer became the pace setter
His lines were played as stage settings for the other two players to dialogue and narrate against
Giuffre, ever the storyteller, advanced the improvisation angle and wrote his score so that each player had to stand on his own as part of the group; there were no comfort zones
Without a rhythm section, notions of interval, extensions, interludes, and so on were out the window
He himself played some of his most restrained yet adventurous solos in the confines of this trio and within the form of this suite
It swung like West Coast jazz, but felt as ambitious as Copland's "Billy The Kid"
The record is filled out with two other tunes, one of Eddie Durham's, "Topsy", and the final moment of mastery this band ever recorded, the already classic "Blue Monk"
The easy stroll of the front line with Brookmeyer's trombone strutting New Orleans' style is in sharp contrast to Giuffre's clarinet playing
Which carries the bluesy melody through three harmonic changes before he solos and then plays three more
Hall keeps it all on track, and somehow the piece sounds very natural this way, though unlike "Monk", there are no edges here -- everything is rounded off
This is as solid as any of the earlier or later Jimmy Giuffre 3 records, and two notches above "Trav'lin' Light" in that it reveals a fully developed sense of the responsibilities, possibilities, and freedoms of reinventing jazz for the trio
RECORDING December 3 1958 at Atlantic Studios NYC and Lenox MA
ENGINEERING Heinz Kubicka, Herb Kaplan, Tom Dowd
LABEL Atlantic
RE MASTERING Ryan Smith
RE RELEASED August 2015
AVERAGE RATING 5 Stars out of 5
PRESSING by Pallas Germany
MADE IN England / Germany
STYLE Jazz / Cool Jazz
AVAILABLE as long as inventory stock
