Download It #7: Gotta Dance

May 16, 2008

Giuffre New (shrunk).jpg

Jimmy Giuffre passed away on April 24th, and that probably means nothing to you. But it means a great deal to me, for a very special reason.

Giuffre (pronounced “joo-free”) was a clarinet, tenor sax, and baritone sax player who somehow remained light and listenable while doing more than his part to help transform post-bebop jazz into a roaring monster. While most of his contemporaries - including the brilliant Stan Getz, who joined Giuffre in the horn section of Woody Herman’s legendary Second Herd in 1947 - would forever move in a relatively logical line, Giuffre eventually began toying with minimalist, chamber-like arrangements, and taking remarkably oblique chances with his swinging solos.

It probably shouldn’t have worked. In the wrong hands, chamber-jazz experiments tend to resemble the wanderings of super-funky librarians. But Giuffre consistently pulled it off in a way that deftly disguised his experimental leanings.

As time went on, he’d knock-knock-knock harder on the free jazz door. But for several invigorating years, Giuffre and his band, The Jimmy Giuffre 3 (that would be Giuffre on horns, with Jim Hall on guitar and Ralph Pena on bass...with Bob Brookmeyer and his valve-trombone later replacing Pena) played very distinct, counterpoint-laden compositions that sounded like Dixieland slowed down several significant steps and dispersed into the air through an atomizer. Giuffre described the music as being driven by “a non-pulsating beat.”

Here's some rare footage of the original Giuffre 3 lineup, with Jimmy jumping between horns. It appears to have been broadcast from the moon, but probably originates from a TV studio deep in darkest Manhattan:

There’s genuine warmth and humor in this stuff, a sense that these guys were basically too self-contained to care if listeners didn’t like what they were doing, but knew they’d probably like it anyway. The Jimmy Giuffre 3, regardless of the configuration of players, always enjoyed themselves.

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When my son, Jack, was born in January of 2003, I quickly grew frazzled out of my mind. Like his dad, Jack didn’t care to sleep very much. However, unlike his dad, he never slept at all. I’d repeatedly find myself more or less awake at 4:00 a.m., desperately bouncing this little stranger on my knee while he serenaded me with a series squeals and banshee screams that would have broken our chandeliers, if we had actually had any.

It would go on forever, and there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it. After a couple hours of this treatment, I’d be sporting the bloodshot, bug-eyed look of a panic-stricken Chihuahua. Then the alarm clock would sound, and I’d pick up my lunch bucket and head off to the paper mill.

One night, as you can imagine, I finally got desperate. Having no idea whether it would work or not, I reached over to my PowerBook, switched on iTunes, and selected a Jimmy Giuffre track called “Quiet Cook.” A buoyant, whispering little thing, it filled the nighttime air with a bubbling serenity. I was only able to notice this because, not five seconds after it began, Jack clammed up and started to listen.

A white man’s voodoo, the tune had somehow turned him back into a little person, rather than the physical manifestation of chronic insomnia. I gently bounced him up and down in time to the music, and he soon fell into a happy slumber.

For the next several months, every time Jack began to twist and shout in the middle of the night, I’d put on “Quiet Cook.” And, like clockwork, he’d lapse into a waking reverie, then close his eyes and go to sleep. Just like that.

Jimmy Giuffre saved my life.

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I normally encourage you to download the tunes I write about, but I won’t be doing that this time. I’ve supplied you with another classic Giuffre performance to get you started, and I hope you’ll follow his trail from there. You’re bound to get a pleasant kick from the journey. “Quiet Cook” belongs to me and my little boy.

Jimmy Giuffre may have recently entered the realm of the free-floating vibration, but, to me, “Quiet Cook” will always be the melody of life beginning, a little baby gazing up at the ether and suddenly finding himself comforted by music’s cushion. There’s a lovely symmetry to it, the rise of a promising new chord replacing those that have slowly faded away.

I’m absolutely certain Giuffre would appreciate that.

Download “Gotta Dance” by The Jimmy Giuffre 3. Album: “The Jimmy Giuffre 3” (1956). (Photo of Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Swallow, and Paul Bley by Herb Snitzer.)

Paul Tatara

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