Last of the Brothers – Jimmy Giuffre, 1921-2008
I saw him play three times–twice with Herman and once at some dreary little club downtown whose name I’ve forgotten in front of an audience of me, a friend and the bartender. It didn’t seem to bother him much; he played like he was in front of a full house at Carnegie Hall.
Giuffre played sweet tenor, great clarinet, and, of course, he wrote one of the all-time big-band masterpieces–Four Brothers. Doug Ramsey has a splendid writeup and a link to the unusual video below which proves conclusively, one mo’ time, that Giuffre will live on forever everywhere musicians get together for the purpose of swing.
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I’m with DJA…. remarkable trio recordings of music which is truly timeless. RIP
Goddammit, my brain’s not working right these days. The trio is, obviously, Jimmy Giuffre + Paul Bley + Steve Swallow (not Gary Peacock). Gah.
“Four Brothers” is only a tiny corner of Giuffre’s musical universe. Anyone who has not heard the recordings the Giuffre-Bley-Peacock trio made in the early 1960’s is missing some of the most astounding chamber music of the 20th century. I’m hosting one track from Fusion on my blog because this music is so vitally important to me and had such a profound influence on my development. This stuff really deserves to be more widely known.