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 Jimmy Giuffre (b.
1921) is best known as the jazz clarinettist who specialised in playing
in its low, dark, chalumeau register. Remember The Train and the
River, recorded in the late 50s with Jim Hall (guitar) and Ralph
Peña (bass)? This tune was heard (in a different instrumentation) over
the titles of the movie Jazz on a Summer’s Day (re-screened
last September on SBS TV). Here are some comments by Whitney Balliett in
his The Sound of Surprise (1959):
. . . a
refreshing idea . . . limpid, mahogany-colored sound . . . fragile,
intense counterpoint . . .
Giuffre was a
tenor and baritone sax player, too. He also composed and arranged
prolifically for bands of various sizes, though nothing he ever wrote
will be as celebrated as his 1947 Four Brothers for Woody Herman’s
Second Herd. This featured four saxes (three tenors and a baritone),
scored in what William Russo’s Jazz Composition and Orchestration
(1968) calls the “thickened line” (close parallel harmony). My own
copy of Four Brothers is a prized 78 I picked up in the 60s for
two bob.
On that low
register business, by the way, Russo's book also quotes this (probably
apocryphal) story:
. . . when Benny
Goodman heard that Giuffre had been appointed a teacher at the School of
Jazz in Lenox, and would teach the clarinet among other subjects, he
remarked, “Who’s going to teach the upper register?”
Sadly,
Giuffre today is said to be suffering from Parkinson's disease.
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