JIMMY GIUFFRE - JIM HALL - BOB BROOKMEYER: WESTERN SUITE

Performer: Jimmy Giuffre, tenor and baritone saxophone, clarinet; Jim Hall, guitar; Bob Brookmeyer, trombone
Composer: Jimmy Giuffre – Jim Hall – Bob Brookmeyer
Number of discs: 1
Barcode: 5060149622278
Label: Pure Pleasure
Format: LP
Genre: Jazz
Year: 2015

"Towards the end of 1957, the saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, and nonconformist figure in American jazz Jimmy Giuffre ended the Giuffre Three project, which he had carried out with Ralph Peña and Jim Hall. In the first months of the following year, Giuffre formed a new trio for a recording session, this time without a rhythm section. The album Trav’lin’ Light was recorded by Giuffre with guitarist Jim Hall and the great but now underappreciated trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. For a year, these three musicians performed at various West Coast venues, appeared at several summer festivals, recorded albums, and played in some New York nightclubs. In a short time, Giuffre, Hall, and Brookmeyer developed an extremely original trio, where form did not limit creativity.

*As the year drew to a close, Giuffre felt the need to leave a lasting testimony of this trio, realizing its imminent end. For this reason, he composed the four-movement piece “Western Suite,” carefully considering the stylistic characteristics of the trio, aiming to leave a record for posterity of how they had formed the band over the course of the year. This piece can be seen as an ideal culmination of a career that had already uncovered the great talents of Steve Swallow and Paul Bley and led, three years later, to the revolutionary album Free Fall for Columbia. This major achievement has its roots in Western Suite.

Jim Hall’s playing style was dark, ambiguous, and unmistakably funky, acting simultaneously as percussion and voice, particularly evident in the fourth movement. Brookmeyer worked to merge the styles of Giuffre and Hall, performing as if providing a soundtrack for his two colleagues’ musical dialogue. Giuffre, a master storyteller, limited the expansive improvisational space he normally allowed, writing all parts in full so each of the three had clear boundaries and there were no lulls. Without a rhythm section, concepts of interval, extension, and interlude took on much more limited meaning. Giuffre performed some of his most restrained—but no less daring—solos within the strict stylistic confines of the suite. Content-wise, the album presents brilliant West Coast jazz with a highly ambitious approach reminiscent of Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid. In addition to “Western Suite,” the album includes two other tracks: Eddie Durham’s “Topsy” and the trio’s final masterpiece, “Blue Monk,” already considered a classic at the time.

Brookmeyer’s pleasing trombone melodies, evoking New Orleans jazz sounds, contrast sharply with Giuffre’s clarinet. This interaction carries the blues melodies through three harmonic variations before the solo and three repetitions. Hall contributes to maintaining an appropriate overall order, making the piece feel completely natural. Unlike “Blue Monk,” the contrasts here are subtle, producing a pleasant consonance. This album demonstrates a consistency unknown in any previous or subsequent Jimmy Giuffre 3 recordings and surpasses Trav’lin’ Light by at least two notches in terms of full development of musical responsibility, knowledge of possibilities, and the freedom to reinvent jazz for a trio. – AllMusic

Tracklist:

1. Pony Express
2. Apaches
3. Saturday Night Dance
4. Big Pow Wow
5. Topsy
6. Blue Monk