Hal McKusick - Cross Section-Saxes

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Interview with Hal McKusick

“Composer and alto saxophonist HAL McKUSICK, born 1924 in Medford, Massachusetts, plays most saxophones, clarinets, and flutes. He was a member of the orchestras of Boyd Raeburn, Claude Thornhill, Woody Herman, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Barnet. In the later 1950s he made recordings with George Russell, Art Farmer, Al Cohn, Manny Albam, Jimmy Giuffre, Gil Evans, among others, and appeared on the 1959 album Lee Konitz Meets Jimmy Giuffre. From 1958 to 1972 he was a staff musician for CBS in New York. His compositions for Boyd Raeburn, his own groups, and others show an original avant-garde sensibility. Today he teaches and performs on Long Island in New York, and makes fine handcrafted furniture.”

- Andy Hamilton, Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser’s Art [2011]

Hal McKusick

ALTO SAXOPHONE

Born 1 June 1924

McKusick was a section-player in many big bands in the 40s and early 50s, but he's best remembered as a studio man who led some interesting dates of his own for a number of different labels in the latter part of the 50s. His RCA set The Jazz Workshop (1956) was recorded contemporaneously with George Russell's of the same title, and features material by Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Gil Evans and others: a quietly compelling record with some starkly challenging music, although Triple Exposure (Prestige, 1957) and Cross Section: Saxes (Decca, 1958) also have some fine and rewarding music. McKusick's own playing was soft-toned and wryly inventive. After this burst of activity, though, he doesn't seem to have recorded again as a leader, although he still did studio work into the 70s and carried on playing into the 90s with small groups. He is also a pilot.”

- Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia

“McKusick, Hal [Harold Wilfred] (b Medford, MA, 1June 1924). Alto saxophonist. He first worked as a sideman and a principal soloist with a number of big bands, including those of Les Brown, Woody Herman (both 1943), Boyd Raeburn (1944-5), the guitarist Alvino Rey (1946), Al Donahue, Buddy Rich, and Claude Thornhill (1948-9). During the 1950s he played with Terry Gibbs (1950-51,1955-6), Bill Harris  (1952), and Elliot Lawrence (1952-7), and also worked as a studio musician and led his own groups. In 1958 he joined the staff of CBS in New York, but continued to perform and record as a freelancer. McKusick is noted for his experiments in the 1950s with novel time signatures, modes, and counterpoint; the influence of Lester Young may be discerned in his delicate tone and phrasing, both well suited to the cool-jazz style.”

- DIANNA RHYAN in Barry Kernfeld, Ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz [1995]

I’ve wanted to bring up a Substack feature on multi-woodwind and reed specialist Hal McKusick [1924 -2012] for sometime be I couldn’t seem to find a starting point until I recently listened to a CD collection that contained Hal McKusick - Cross Section-Saxes which was originally released in 1958 as a Decca LP.

Hal was not only a fine soloist and an excellent arranger in his own right, but also an excellent interpreter of the work of other arrangers. In this case, George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Ernie Wilkins and George Handy who did some very intriguing work with sax sections on Hal McKusick - Cross Section-Saxes.  

On some of the tracks on this album, the sax arrangements sound like a forerunner to Med Flory and Buddy Clark’s Supersax, a sax section that came to prominence in Los Angeles in the 1970s playing unison and harmonic versions of Charlie Parker’s classic Bebop repertoire replete with his iconic, original solos.

This album is also of interest because it is one of the earliest to feature the work of pianist Bill Evans before his association with Miles Davis and his twenty year career as the leader of his own trio.

The details about this recording are discussed in full in the following liner notes by George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Ernie Wilkins, George Handy and Burt Korall and they are also contained in the booklet that accompanies Hal McKusick: Three Classic Albums - The Jazz Academy, Jazz Workshop, Cross Section-Saxes [Avid AMSC-1167]. Interestingly, each of the composers talks about the work of other composers on the album in a way that illuminates special features of their singular style of composing and/or arranging. Burt provides a summation.

“When the jazz musician no longer seeks out fresh avenues of expression, he shrivels on the vine. Of necessity, the creative artist must be refreshed and revived at frequent intervals. He must be challenged; it is essential to his continued vitality. Obviously, it is too easy to be trapped, to wallow in a comfortable groove, turning away from the more creative, and indulging in the pleasure or success of the moment.

Whether or not the jazzman becomes lax is dependent, in varying degrees, upon two things: talent and temperament. Those who are content to reach a comparatively modest level of accomplishment, and to exploit the attendant feeling of mastery over material and a sense of case for their own sake, are numerous. Fortunately for jazz, however, there are more musicians who are not content with the fulfillment of today and keep building for a more fruitful tomorrow. Musicians of this genre are acutely aware of the symptoms of stagnation, avoid the pitfalls manifest in jazz and themselves, and remain "alive", musically. These are the people that prevent jazz from suffering from an acute case of "tired blood."

Hal McKusick, since his stay with the adventurous Boyd Raeburn orchestra in the 'forties, when he collaborated with arranger-composer George Handy in the writing of some noteworthy compositions - Yerxa, Tonsillectomy, etc. - and was one of the more enthusiastic subscribers to the modern manner of playing fathered by Lester Young and developed by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, T. Monk, Kenny Clarke - the Minton's- 52nd Street coterie - has found psychological and financial sustenance following the challenging paths in the jazz woods.

"A continuing sense of growth as a musician and as a person is of utmost importance to me," says McKusick. "I feel that very little can be gained by doing the same sort of things over and over, especially if there's no more to be learned by doing them. " I don’t wish to imply, however, that the jazzman should flit indiscriminately from one thing to another without adequate preparation, or that he should grow compulsively rather than naturally; but I do want to emphasize that standing still in jazz can only become an unfortunate habit.

"It is for this reason that I generally try to vary my activities, to have my albums project something of the extensiveness, the variety that is jazz; each one of them calling for something different from the players and myself,

McKusick has done "free-blowing"' sets, where the disciplines and general sense of interest are dependent upon improvisation. Altering the emphasis, other McKusick programs have placed stress on incorporating free-blowing in a "lightly" arranged framework. As of late, Hal has veered to what he considers a most fruitful set-up-a close interrelation between the writer and the players; the writing in the latter situation, ranging from the deceptively simple to the more complex, according to the composer's bent. The value of the performances is, once again, relative to the invention, the interpretive strength of the players; but the organizational elements basic to scoring render a more overt sense of form of a written score that tends to inhibit the jazz blower" Yes and no. It could well inhibit individuality if the writers had no understanding of the needs of the jazz player. However, the writers involved in this album, through their experiences in jazz, have come to realize that the player must be given a chance to play, and/or be challenged by the feel, the variety and unity of the writing. In essence allowance must be made for the player to contribute meaning to the work, not only on the group level, but as an individual as well.” -GEORGE RUSSELL

“Composer-arranger George Russell realizes this. Like the jazz soloist, George creates compositions and arrangements that underline adventure and flexibility, the basic and not so basic.

Russell feels that he, too, is an improviser. Discussing jazz composition he said, "Given a set of musical facts, he (the writer) can, in the same way a soloist improvises on chords, improvise upon musical facts pertaining to his composition and produce a swinging, logical, vital-sounding piece of music. Improvisation on various levels is an integral part of jazz.

In the process of composing music over the years, George has evolved his "Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization," encompassing the whole of composition - the consonant (tonality) and the dissonant (atonality). There is dissonance in his work, but always in relation to a tonal center. As Russell said to Jack Maher in JAZZ TODAY: "I feel that writing tonally, in many ways, is more of a challenge. The limitations of tonality force you to look and feel harder for the endless variations that exist."

In the manner of Duke Ellington, Russell emotionally and scientifically measures the capabilities of his instrumentation and the artists he is dealing with, writing for the player and the unit, rarely overextending himself, for he always seeks to fully understand all the elements with which he is working. This is something he tried to do even in his fledgling period as a writer for Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter and Charlie Parker.

Russell, at 35, has been over a decade in finding himself. Through self examination and study, he has come to a point in his development when forging his own message is possible. Relatively unheralded today, his future is fraught with possibility.

The Russell contributions are played by Hal McMusick, alto: Art Farmer, trumpet; Bill Evans, piano: Milt Hinton, bass; Charlie Persip, drums: and Barry Galbraith, guitar.

YOU'RE MY THRILL - Russell maintains the identity of the song without adhering too closely to its melody or form. "I tried to compose on the song," said Russell. Perhaps the chief recommendation of this arrangement is that the written ensemble lines move well and in a most natural manner. The solos follow as release for the tension set up by the lines; the interweaving of both add to the pulsing feeling of the selection. Speaking for the soloists, Hal succinctly commented: "George sets you up his own way, and makes you play."

STRATUSPHUNK is a medium-tempoed blues that intimates atonality though it maintains an essential tonality-Blues in F. The prime motif is a bass line built on the interval of a minor seventh that is picked up by trumpeter Farmer, then further enlarged upon by the ensemble. Piano and drums drop out for the first six or eight bars of each solo, after which the full rhythm section plays in double-time, and then reverts back to straight time, thus establishing a variety of rhythmic tensions and enriching this deceptively inornate, well organized opus.

Russell seems to follow an emotional plan: By building from the opening bass line through ensembles to solos, diversifying his rhythmic and melodic colors and buoyantly supporting soloists along the way, Russell logically reaches climaxes, and then returns, in progressive steps, to bare essentials - bass line in close.

END OF A LOVE AFFAIR is an apt illustration of the degree of inner organization of Russell's writing. One is aware of planning, the form of the arrangement, but the loose, natural quality of the work never makes that knowledge any more than a convenience.

Opening with a 32 bar verse, a colorful affair notable for shifting rhythms and clever handling of melodic elements, the emphasis changes in the theme sections to the more straightforward as Russell underlines "the romantic feeling and a definite sense of swing." The general flow of the solos is aided by the "dancing feel" of the rhythm section headed up by drummer Charlie Persip.” - JIM GIUFFRE

“The challenge to the players is continued in the work of the next writer to be considered. Jim Giuffre, the man and the musician, functions as he feels he must. A product of the mainstream of jazz, the man who wrote Four Brothers for the Woody Herman Orchestra, played tenor in the tradition of Lester Young for Woody, Buddy Rich and other bands, has come to know himself, and now feels a good deal of security concerning his concepts.

Indeed, Jim has taken hold over the last few years. By organizing his thinking and his life, he has managed to free himself of the shackles of influence, and has gone his own way. His writing exhibits individuality and is identified by "low volume, gentleness and restraint, which makes more clear attitudes often not found in jazz: pensiveness, compassion, even meditation. Because of those same three major elements, his music makes the relationship between other musical forms and jazz more evident, since the relationships arc not obscured by the

overwhelming power and intensity representative of most jazz performances."

Giuffre's music shows an express concern for American folk elements: a closeness to the blues, spirituals, the feeling of the land and people of this country. It is a personal, earthy kind of music.

Not inhibited or circumscribed in his writing, Giuffre does not hesitate to make use of devices or techniques native to musical forms other than jazz. No matter what techniques or materials he incorporates into a composition or arrangement, however, one never gets the feeling that he is grafting anything alien onto the body of the work. On Jim's three efforts here, his objective was to set three distinct moods, sustaining the basic flavor of each tune by developing a long line throughout; the balancing of the instruments generally, utilizing each instrument as a "contributing" melody instrument, fundamental to his method.

Hal McKusick is heard on bass clarinet and alto on the Giuffre selections. Art Farmer is the trumpeter: Bill Evans is at the piano; Paul Chambers, bass; and Connie Kay, drums.

The treatment of Yesterday brings out the essential sadness and yearning of the tune, ascertains a deep blues feeling and spots Connie Kay playing finger cymbals throughout. Sing Song is a Giuffre spiritual, notable for building continuity and a close interrelation of the instruments in the development of one basic motif.

Tranquil, somewhat pastoral. It Never Entered My Mind is representative of the Giuffre sound and sense of beauty. A feeling of completeness -that of a vignette well told - is this selection's essential strength. The McKusick and farmer solos, Hinton's sustained excellence, and Connie Kay's sensitive cymbal work are certainly to be noted.” - ERNIE WILKINS AND GEORGE HANDY

“The remaining four selections - Whisper Not, Now's The Time, La Rue, The Last Day Of Fall -were arranged for sax section (and rhythm) by Ernie Wilkins or George Handy. Stress was placed on dynamics, blend and feeling in the performance of these arrangements. (Ed. note: the compounding of these three elements in sax section work today is certainly a rarity.)

"The sax players were selected for their ability to work in a section," McKusick pointed out. "We aimed for a feeling of unity, a togetherness that is best illustrated by the sax sections of the early Benny Goodman band, and the Basie crew that recorded "Jump The Blues Away," over a decade ago."

Ernie Wilkins, a long-time sax section inhabitant (Earl Hines, Count Basie) before he began to arrange and compose on a full-time basis, comes well equipped to write for reeds. Always a writer closely identified with techniques and source material in jazz, Ernie feels the future lies within the idiom itself, not in amalgamation with elements native to other musical forms.

Though consistently aligned with Basie by critics, (he's been writing for the band since 1951) this association is not all there is to the man. In recording projects of his own, equally reflective of his jazz roots. Ernie has shown he can voice a message of his own, without the "fashioned for Basie" trademark.

For this program, Ernie arranged Benny Golson's beautiful jazz melody, Whisper Not, and the Charlie Parker blues, Now's The Time, complete with scoring Parker's memorable solo for full sax section. Both are the work of a craftsman acutely aware of the possibilities of his material

Ever so "experimental" when writing for the Boyd Raeburn band in the 'forties, "often echoing Bartok and Stravinsky and Debussy," as Barry Ulanov phrased it, 38 year old George Handy has consolidated his thinking in the last decade. Much of the dissonance of his life has become consonance; his music, just as authoritative as before, like the man, has become more settled.

George has become more traditional. His maturation has allowed him to really deal in jazz terms. He is just as thoughtful and clever as in the past, but now is more flexible, and can write for all situations. His two scores for this set, La Rue and The Last Day Of Fall, reveal a more swinging Handy than his old fans will remember. The former is a line written by the late Clifford Brown; the latter, a "Handy capture" of the improvisations of one of our leading jazz tenormen.

On the four aforementioned titles, Hal McKusick and Frank Socolow are heard on altos; Dick Hafer, tenor and Jay Cameron, baritone. Bill Evans is at the piano; Connie Kay, drums; and Paul Chambers, bass.

In summation, the most valid thing to say is that this program has a point of view. It is an expression of the musicians and the writers and their need to pump fresh life into the body of that which they love and obviously respect. With people of this kind - the restless, the adventurous yet well-rooted-lies the future of jazz. If for no other reason, this cross section of jazz thought is important.” - BURT KORALL

The Passionate Conviction: An Interview with Jimmy Giuffre by Lorin Stephens [From the Archives with Additions]

 © -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Candid self-assessment was as much a characteristic of Jimmy Giuffre’s personality as was the constantly innovative approach he took to making Jazz.

Francis Davis explained it this way:

“Given a long history of animosity between musicians and those who write about music (or merely write about it, as some musicians would say), I hope that Jimmy Giuffre won’t take my suggestion that he would have made an excellent jazz critic the wrong way.

I simply mean that during his most prolific period as a recording artist, beginning with the release of his first 10” LP for Capitol in 1954, Giuffre in interviews and liner notes provided his listeners with a running commentary on his motives and methods, revealing in the process a great deal of knowledge of such other disciplines as philosophy and psychoanalysis.

Reading Giuffre on Giuffre, a critic might despair, because this is one of the rare instances in which a performer has already been as fair and impartial a judge of his own successes and failures as anyone could hope to be.

(Especially for an artist as committed to public trial and error as Giuffre was during the period in which he recorded most frequently. There is also a sense in which a new piece of music can be heard as a critique of the work that came before it – yet another way in which Giuffre beat after-the-fact commentators like myself to the punch).

Best of all, despite seeming to rebuke the jazz rank-in-file of the 1950s for their conformist tendencies, Giuffre never lapsed into what I call the existential fallacy, that leap of hubris by which an artist (or for that matter, any individual) presumes that his new direction is one that everybody should follow.

In one of his earliest pronouncement – a Down Beat [November 30, 1955] article published under his byline in 1955, in which he explained his decision to limit the bass and drums on his controversial new album Tangents in Jazz [Capitol T-634] – he was careful to point out in his lead that he wasn’t trying to “preach a sermon” in order to bring the rest of Jazz into line. “It’s just one way,” he reiterated at the end, “and every man must go his own way.”

- Francis Davis, [Jimmy Giuffre - The Complete Capitol and Atlantic Recordings Mosaic Records, MD6-176].

And Lorin Stephens further explored Jimmy’s proclivities toward truth and honesty in the following interview from THE JAZZ REVIEW  VOLUME 3 NUMBER 2 FEBRUARY 1960.

This interview is intended as a beginning in exploring the impact of hipness on jazz. Jimmy Giuffre is regarded by many as one of the major composers in modern jazz, but his position has been controversial. His admirers feel that his music has great validity. Even his strongest detractors, who consider his work of peripheral concern, are struck with his deep sincerity. It is fitting to explore this question with him, particularly because of his recent marked interest (along with hip legions) in the music of Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. The interview was graciously granted in November 1959. I believe that a reader cannot help but be moved by Jimmy Giuffre's willingness to expose himself honestly in the interest of furthering understanding of jazz and the jazz artist.

Why do jazz players change styles in an almost wholesale fashion with the arrival of a Parker, a Monk or a Rollins?

The thing that's hard for a non-performer to understand is how things keep changing inside. A listener often analyzes changes as being arbitrary, but they're not. In other words he thinks that when you play a certain phrase, you've planned it out and played it, when actually a big percentage of the music comes out almost like a stone rolling down a hill, especially in improvisation. And it depends on the rhythm section, the acoustics, your frame of mind, your reed (if you play a reed instrument), and your lip. Also on your maturity at the time, and your experience—all these things. And if one little thing is out of line, you're distracted from being most natural, perhaps. For instance, a stiff reed if you're playing a reed instrument (you're always torn between reeds; you never have a perfect one).

You must go through different stages. I've been playing the clarinet since I was nine and I'm thirty-eight now— so that's twenty-nine years of playing the clarinet! I started on the E flat clarinet, and it took a lot of blowing; a little bitty thing—but it took a lot of blowing. And I don't know if the mouthpiece was right or not. I was just a baby. But you have to start with something, so you just start blowing in this tube and years later you might start to think about whether you have the right mouthpiece, and then years after that you find out the choice you made when you were fifteen was wrong, and so you just keep going with these mechanical things. You have certain ideas in your mind that shadow your choice of reed, your choice of instrument, your choice of mouthpiece—and the choice of musicians you play with.

In high school we got a dance band together and played dances. And I started into an area of sound; I was interested in getting a beautiful sound from the saxophone, and I was complimented on my sound. In college I went further with this. We played a lot. We had this eight room house in college, and I lived with Gene Roland, the arranger and trumpet and valve trombone player, Herb Ellis the guitarist, Harry Babison the bass player, and Tommy Reeves the trumpet player and arranger. We had big bands, we had a small band and we jammed a lot. We learned a lot—we listened to a lot of records then. I liked Sam Donahue; he got a beautiful mellow sound when he was with Gene Krupa. And we got a sax section that used no vibrato; we got a perfect blend. And the sound thing was very dominant in my thinking, and it continued on that way—sound superseding anything else.

Then I went into the Army and played with a quintet, xylophone, snare drum, electric guitar, bass, and I played tenor. (I didn't start improvising on the clarinet actually, until about six years ago or so.) This little group played for the different mess halls at lunch hour and it was a groovy little group—light and straight, but still the sound predominated.

After jobs with Boyd Raeburn and Jimmy Dorsey, I came back to Los Angeles and I started studying. (I don't mean to make this a history—I'm trying to work it into the thinking inside about the instrument.) I went to U.S.C. to get a master's degree, having changed my major from teaching music in public schools to composition. Well, there were so many prerequisites at U.S.C. that it threw me back quite a bit. After a semester of that, I decided it wasn't the answer. I had heard about Dr. Wesley La Viollette and his approach. Before this, my concept had been totally vertical. I had in my mind a chart of voicings, for instance if I used five saxes and there was C-7th and G was in the lead, I could spell you out immediately, the ideal voicing vertically, right down the saxes; I knew just how to space them. This was a crazy sound if you could just play it by itself. You didn't consider where it came from or where it was going, you just thought vertically each note, and this was pretty standardized for dance band writing, and a lot of writing is still done that way. There's nothing actually wrong with it: there probably is no right or wrong. I will say this about it. it can be done by anyone; it is mathematical, and difficult to do creatively. I had no awareness of counterpoint. In my work it didn't occur to me for a very good reason. At college I had only one semester of counterpoint because the degree plan which I followed was to prepare a man to stand up in front of high school or junior high students, and you had to know a little bit about everything—how to play a trumpet, bass fiddle and all those things. They didn't have time to go into the depth of counterpoint. So that's all I got. I had studied harmony with my clarinet teacher when I was about fifteen and in college I got harmony, but my thinking was all derived from listening to records; Basie and Benny Goodman.

In college we had a pretty radical attitude, I'll admit that. We wore long hair, zoot suits and we pretty much thought we knew what things should be. A pianist friend, Bill Campbell, said to me. "Well, it doesn't matter what the voicing is, how many parts, it's how each one of them leads." It didn't strike me; I didn't understand what he was talking about. Years later Scott Seeley, who was studying with Dr. La Viollette. gave me a similar answer when I asked him a question about his writing—his writing sounded strange. I asked him. "How do you voice your brass?" He replied that he did not voice, he just wrote each part separately. I just sort of shook my head; I didn't understand. At that time, believe it or not, I had a college education and I'd been writing music for ten years and playing for fifteen years, and I just didn't know the counterpoint approach to music.

Then later on when I went to Los Angeles, I met Frank Patchen. We played together down at the Lighthouse and he'd been studying with Dr. La Viollette. They both told me this was the answer. So I started studying with him, and it turned out to be one of the most important things I've ever done in my life. His influence personally and musically has been profound on me. Studying with him began to shadow my jazz thinking. For instance, when you write counterpoint, you write a duet for a clarinet and trumpet. That's all there is to it, there's no rhythm section, a complete composition for these two instruments. If you happen to use a drum with them, you write a complete composition for clarinet, a trumpet and drum. If you happen to write for a piano too, you do the same thing. There isn't a function for any one of the instruments as there is in conventional jazz; in jazz there's a fairly set part for drums. They more or less have been called upon to keep time. Now I've come through several different outlooks on this thing. I started studying in '46 when I first came out here. At that time I didn't conceive the possibility of using counterpoint in jazz. I was studying it to become a 'composer', but found out that a 'composer' includes jazz composing. Anything that can be used any place can be used in jazz. I remember one time Barney Kessel talking to me about that. I told him I was writing fugues and canons and counterpoint inventions, and he said, "Why do you want to study writing fugues?" He wasn't negative, he just didn't understand it, didn't see the point of it. It took me about five years studying with La Viollette to shake off all the prisons I had locked myself in—the vertical prisons. This is my own opinion; there are many harmonists in the world who will take exception to what I'm saying. I felt as though I were in a prison, whether it was vertical or not I don't know, but I have that conviction in my own mind.

After about five years of studying with La Viollette I began to be able to write counterpoint in jazz—with the jazz feeling. Before, all the study was what you might call straight music; it didn't have too much syncopation, and it didn't have too much of me in it. I was writing lines of music, straight, learning how to write lines together, and to be able to put myself into each one of those lines is another thing that came later, but it took me five years to start it. After I got to writing jazz, I began to think of each man's role in the music and it just began to be inconceivable that a certain man had to sit back and play time all the while, and that another guy had to play quarter notes all night. I just didn't understand the point of it. A man is in music all these years, then why should he just have to play one portion? Why couldn't he just express himself along with the other musicians? Right away, I put this to work in the music and began writing things where the rhythm section didn't play in a conventional manner. The first one I can remember was the fugue I wrote for Shelly Manne. And also, I went overboard and wrote in the so-called atonal approach. But we got it across, and I wrote another piece for his second album.

Then I did my first album for Capitol. I incorporated the rhythm section in different ways. I remember I took out the top cymbal in the drums and had him just play the sock cymbals, the two and the four, and the bass walked. Then there were other compositions where I used no rhythm whatsoever. Then, I made a point in the next album, in Tangents in Jazz, of not having a pulsating rhythm section, I mean no definite beating out of time, any place in this album. The idea was valid and is valid. The point I'm trying to make is that I began thinking, as a result of studying composition, of the individual in the music—of each one of the musicians rather than in toto. And I began thinking of what you might call 'interesting ideas', counterpoint, and using the rhythm section in different ways, different forms and different kinds of tone — all these things that weren't conventional in jazz. And so, these things became the object of my attention. But all this time my mind in playing had still required this sound, this subtle, soft, mellow, deep sound.

Why was sound so important to you?

Perhaps it comes from my childhood. It was sort of like not wanting to go out unless I was dressed properly. I couldn't release this music inside of me unless it sounded perfect—that was the first consideration—to have a beautiful sound quality. I've run into hundreds of people who felt exactly the same way, Bill Perkins was one of them. He had the same kind of thing gnawing at him. The sound had to be beautiful and smooth. And I've known so many people like this. Lester Young, he had this smoothness. He said he idolized Frankie Trumbauer who had this kind of sound too. In other words, it dominated me—that had to be fixed up before anything else could happen. It went to such a point with me that when I got the clarinet going, this was number one. There was nothing else considered about it at all—sound was it. The ideas in the whole thing were secondary to sound.

But why so important?

Well, it goes with my personality, I'm sure. I won't accept the thing that I am an introverted personality, which some have tried to make me out. I have gone through periods, and I won't say I have shaken that off completely, but I have gone through periods where I was quiet; I like the pastoral—the country; I like Debussy and Delius—I like peaceful moods. This all came into the trio sound as I've discovered now. I don't know why I wanted it to be pretty. I can't figure it out except that I just didn't want to look ugly, didn't want to offend anybody. I've always been afraid of offending someone, and I don't argue with people for that reason—I mean I'm not a vehement person, nor forceful—and I'm not too frank for that reason; maybe I should be, but I avoid those things because I don't like them.

If this is natural for you, doesn't current hipness force you and others like you into unnatural strictures?

All I can say is for myself .. . it traces like a snail what began to happen to me. Well, I don't know what effect comments have had. I'm sure they must have had some. For instance, one time I played a performance that seemed to be very successful and a critic said it was successful, but that my playing clarinet was like mowing a lawn with an electric razor. When it was announced that I was going to be a clarinet teacher at the School of Jazz another critic passed the remark, "Who will teach the upper register?" Then another time a critic said he liked the way I played, but that he wouldn't vote for me because I didn't play the whole instrument. I don't know if these things had some effect on me. Then, another area—I couldn't go out and play with sticks and drums. The only way I could play the clarinet was the way I was playing it—very quietly. They had to play with brushes and practically no piano. That's one of the ways we got to playing some of the unaccompanied stuff, and counterpoint with two horns and all those things we played with Shorty's group. I found that to be the only way I could hear the sound of my instrument; my ears got so sensitive that I went through a period where I just wanted to play the instrument by itself and hear the sound. To have a drummer playing a cymbal next to me was grating. I couldn't hear myself, and I began to wonder what was going on. I wanted to hear clearly—something in me just demanded this clarity. So I brought the drums down or took them out a lot of times, and I worked for a blend of the instruments so that I could hear hear everything that went on in the group. This is one concept of the thing. But we sometimes change our concept—if we're not afraid to. I've changed my concept, and that doesn't make a lot of things that I did invalid. This business of the rhythm section using the drums and the bass constantly—I finally realized why this is and why it has to be perhaps. The improvisor, as he is improvising, if he is too naked as I was with my group, he's out there and he has to think of too many things. It's thrown right in front of his face so quickly. Getting a sound on his instrument and thinking of ideas, that's just taken for granted in all situations. But not just being free to think up ideas: I had to cover certain functions. I had to make something happen, to provide form, composition, and this was a very good thing, but not as a constant diet.

What then has made you change your concepts?

I went down to hear Thelonious Monk. I heard an element in his music that I didn't seem to have in my music. I don't mean ideas, style or anything like that, but it was a certain way of stating things with conviction so that he spoke clearly and surely, and he played this idea without any restraint—he played it immediately, right in front of you. I didn't know exactly what it was that was hitting me, there were many things in his music that aren't in my music, but there was one that was hitting me and that was it. Then I also noticed it in Sonny Rollins' music. I had not liked Sonny Rollins too much because of his sound. I couldn't bring myself to listen to the music because I didn't like the sound on his earlier records, but now I heard this same kind of statement. It was definite, with conviction behind it. It sounded as though he was sure of himself, and there was not any holding back, and he was ready to go ahead and say this right now. He didn't have to qualify it; he could stand behind it. I got interested in this point. And it wasn't a new idea at all—it is something inspired musicians have been doing for years, but I was gradually becoming aware of it. I heard some folk songs by Cisco Houston who accompanies himself on the guitar. He sang with this same thing, and as I look back on it, I see that he did that too.

There was another event which was very important. I was riding along in the car listening to the radio one day and I heard a violin playing Bach—all by itself—and I stopped and I listened. It was Nathan Milstein, but I came in on the middle of it, unbiased, I didn't know who it was or anything. I knew though, that he played it with this same conviction, this definite sureness. There's another thing that enters in there besides this. This conviction originates with this person. It comes out "This is my way of saying this." Milstein didn't improvise, and it didn't have anything to do with improvisation. It was like the way Marlon Brando says something in his acting. He takes a written line, and says it his way, puts his stamp on it. He doesn't change the words, and Milstein didn't change that Bach, he played it just like the thing was marked but he put his kind of vitality underneath, his kind of spark. And this is what Monk and Rollins do. But I saw there is a level of playing music, whether it's jazz or classical, where it all comes together. It's just music, and it's spontaneous sounding—it sounds like the player—it' s his personality with such a stamp that it reaches the listener immediately . . . "this man knows exactly what he is talking about—he's not afraid to say it, and he said it." That's the way Art Tatum was. It is something, that, whether you like what he said or not, you know he says these things, and that's what he believes.

And this began to be interesting. I was tired of being soft, as valid as softness is. (And a funny thing is that you can have this definiteness and still be soft—it isn't a matter of volume). So I got interested in this thing and started to work on it. Back to the reed, then. I found that I couldn't get these ideas out immediately with the set-up I had. It just wouldn't come out. I was hung up with sound. I wanted it to sound right, and in order for it to sound right it had to come out slower, not quite so quickly. Well, I knew that if I got a soft reed it would come right out. But then I also knew that I would get a thin, weak sound. But, I forced myself to try it. I had tried it before, actually, down through the years every once in awhile I'd try getting a softer reed because I knew I could play faster with it, but I could never bring myself to stick with it because of the sound. Well this time something happened, either in my experience, my success, my maturity or something, I reached the point where I'm not afraid to sound ugly for a little bit. And that is what had to happen, I had to soften that reed up so that the music would come out right now. But it sounded sort of thin and I lost some of the quality of the sound, but it didn't bother me this time. All these things had been inside of me, but I didn't let them come out because of the sound. Once I started doing this, then I discovered a lot of things. I discovered how full of fear I was before—I was holding back a lot of things because I was afraid of sounding ugly—so I was cringing and tightening up my brow and pinching my eyes and hunching my shoulders. I was afraid of hitting certain notes because they would be too brassy. That didn't keep what I was playing from being valid, but I held some things in me back. But I got the thing going, and once I got it going, I noticed these fears, this cringing, leaving. Then I put a stopper on it, I made myself practice in front of the mirror and watching carefully to remain calm, unafraid, while I played, and I made myself play anything that would come in my mind. I worked on this thing, and threw out all that other stuff; and finally got up enough nerve to throw the rock off the cliff and just play anything I wanted to play when I wanted to play it. It was a revelation. I began thawing a year ago, and recently I finally got up enough nerve to where I felt I could really handle a blowing album by myself as a soloist. It may seem funny, with so many years of experience behind me, I hadn't made one. But the other albums were well-planned in composition and all the different elements for a planned listening experience. In a blowing album, one man is up front there and has to have something to say and he's got to be sure of what he's going to say. And I wanted to make sure before that happened that I felt that I could do it. I went into the studio last July with Red Mitchell, Lawrence Marable and Jimmy Rowles and there was no planning. The only thing planned was that I wrote three tunes, just the melodies and I thought of three standards to play. (I didn't even write any music, I taught the originals to the men by ear, which is not a new idea. First time I know of it, Monk came to a record date with Art Blakey and he had all the arrangements locked up in a brief case, and he wouldn't show them to anyone. He made them learn them which has a good point to it.) But, having to do this blowing album was necessity mothering invention. A lot happened to me as a result of that—just doing that album at this particular time with the frame of mind I had of shaking off these sound prisons, and having to do it on record. It worked to shoot me out over the cliff.

Red Mitchell says it's the best he's ever heard you play. What effect did playing with Ornette Coleman at the School of Jazz have on you?

I had heard a lot about him, but then I heard him play. He was doing the same thing that I was after, in his own way. The wonderful thing about this point is that it has nothing to do with the ideas or the musical content, it has to do with the statement—and when somebody gets to this point where he can be this free and this sure in his statement, then its just a matter of his speaking. It's not competition with anyone else. You could take two men who played this way, and they could be playing completely different ideas, but they would both be projecting the maximum in immediacy and quality. So, I found that this was what Ornette was doing. He was doing a lot of other things too, but this appealed to me more than anything. Even if he said hardly anything at all, the way he said it would have come across, because he speaks directly. He has thrown out the bugaboos about being afraid of what he's going to sound like. That's what it is, it's a matter of being unafraid to stand up and be yourself—right there in public—and it's very difficult to do, but I've got on the trail of it now. Ornette's gone further with it, because he's thrown out the preoccupation with trying to fit in musically with any given situation. That's what I'd like to do. It means like almost playing flow of consciousness, playing without any regard to channeling what you're doing into a given tradition of any kind. And that means in sound, in tone, key, and all the different ways. In other words, you're so free that you're out in space, and you do what occurs to you at that instant without thinking it over. I'm not saying this is the answer to everybody's problems, but I can see a wonderful release in it for me. Ornette and I had a jam session with George Russell on the piano and some students, and Connie Kay and Percy Heath. We just cut the strings, jumped out of the airplane, and a lot of wild things happened. We didn't know what it would sound like, but it was a release anyway. But the point I'm trying to get at is that it's a matter of really not being afraid to do anything—I don't care how different from whatever else has been done. It's not just doing something because it's different, it's doing something because it occurs to you right now.

Does scale orientation (as opposed to chromatic harmonization) free the improvisor?

The first time I heard about that kind of thing was with George Russell. He's got a complete system, an analysis of music that places everything in scales. In all of his music, he can break it down as to what scale it is. As for myself. I don't know if I can really say, that clearly, what I'm doing when I improvise. I'm not sure I've ever been able to think about anything when I play. (Of course, playing I Got Rhythm when I come to the bridge I know it's E 7th. If anybody can avoid thinking about that, they'd be pretty, miraculous. It's E 7th—and it's like written on the wall.) But there are different things. For instance, the first eight bars of I Got Rhythm can be thought about as just being in B flat. There are all kinds of changes in there, perhaps, according to who you play with. But you can just think in B flat for the whole thing. I think more in keys than in scale—it might be the same thing the others, Miles and Bill Evans, are thinking about.

But does scale orientation further free or is it just a different set of rules?

I think it is another kind of limitation perhaps. But actually it doesn't matter if it's a limitation or not, all that matters is that something comes out that somebody can enjoy. They say that certain people analyze themselves way past where they are. I've heard this about Hindemith, that he's very analytical, but his music comes out. There's the musical experience; what does it matter how much he or anybody else talks about it? If it's there, it's there, and if you get something from it, you get something from it. As I say, I don't have a way of thinking about playing, I just play. And when I start trying to follow a route—harmonically or scales or anything like that—it limits me, as you say. Of course, I'm just one person, and I work in a way that's most natural for me.

Is freedom what the scale-orientation improvisors are after?

Yes. But I'll tell you what they're concerned with more than that. This scale approach requires a certain kind of composition that can be approached in a certain way arid they're more interested in playing that kind of a piece, and that's the way I am too. The piece must have longer harmony—pedal-point harmony. You stretch out on the same chord for a while instead of changing every two beats or every four beats.

Then pedal-point orientation does free the improvisor?

Yes. This kind of a piece lends itself much better to freedom than a musical comedy type of piece. Because of having to adjust to the vertical requirements, it's distracting—it's abrupt. That's why I suppose I've written contrapuntally, I can't see adjusting vertically all the time. There's going to be harmony there. This is the technique Dr. La Violette taught me a long time ago. I remember the words. 'Stretch the harmonies out, and the music will flow more smoothly.' How do you stretch the harmonies out? Well, the way you do when you write counterpoint, you don't think of the harmony vertically, but in the back you put the harmony of pedals. To explain; a pedal-point is having a certain note in tenure for several bars. A figure pedal is when you have the same figure over and over. Actually there are many kinds of pedals: it denotes a sameness over several bars. It can be one note, one chord or one figure. A sound that becomes permanent in the background—as in a painting where you would have a white background. If you stretch this pattern out over a period of time then the improvisor can just let himself go free, he can play so many things against a pedal point. He can play any note of the scale against a pedal note and it's correct and it moves on and on. This is one of the basic things in counterpoint. This is what they are discovering frees them in improvisation. Ornette, from the way I understand it, is attempting to circumvent the whole thing. In fact he and I did it this night we had this session. The rhythm section played the blues—we weren't even playing the same tempo they were. We were playing any tempo—we weren't playing any chords, any tunes, any key. We were playing anything that came in our minds. And you can plainly ask, "Well, what bearing does that have on the rhythm section playing the blues?" All I can say is that if we did it by ourselves, we wouldn't have had the way to do it. They provide a background; just like a background for a painted rose. You see that rose, and the background becomes a color. The blues is a pedal type tune you can stretch out; there are so few changes and the changes are not abrupt.

But do most musicians who pattern their ways of playing after, say Sonny Rollins do so to achieve freedom or to serve the hip ritual?

I'm fortunate to have waited until this time to look in on this thing—because if I didn't have my experience behind me, I might have done this same kind of thing—I might have done this superficially. But superficially you can't emulate you only imitate."

Jimmy Giuffre and Scintilla Revisited [From the Archives]

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“It’s just one way and every man must go his own way.”

- Jimmy Giuffre, Down Beat, November 30, 1955

“Jimmy is an innovator and much has been written about his contributions to clarinet playing style and to Jazz composition, but this is secondary. It is the basic quality of his music, with its uncontrived simplicity and glowing inner feeling that sets Jimmy apart.”

- Gary Kramer, liner notes to The Jimmy Giuffre 3 [Atlantic 1254]

“the spirit of Jazz suffuses all of these performances …and important step in the long Giuffre musical odyssey …  they are simply marvelous, full of life brimming with ideas, and chock-full of rich, rewarding, imaginative writing and playing.”

- Peter Keepnews, liner notes to the PAUSA: Jazz Origins reissue of Giuffre’s 1950 Capitol LPs

“When one listens to Giuffre's music for what it is—and not for what one thinks it should be—the beauties of this rich and strange musical land­scape begin to emerge. Or rather, landscapes. For Giuffre never found a single musical Garden of Eden, a definitive style or format he could stay in for long. Like his more celebrated contemporary Miles Davis, Giuffre remains a musical chameleon, a distinctive stylist who constantly feels compelled to change his sonic setting.”

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1969 [p.227]

Almost forty years after I first heard it, I tracked down Jimmy Giuffre and wrote him a letter about how much I enjoyed the music on his Capitol LP – Tangents in Jazz [T-634].

Jimmy was living in Massachusetts and I in San Francisco at the time. Because of  health issues, his wife Juanita helped compose his response. Juanita, a professional photographer, also kindly enclosed a portrait of Jimmy which he had autographed,

In my letter to him, I explained that I had been particularly taken with the four relatively short pieces on the Tangents in Jazz LP entitled Scintilla I-IV.

On the album, the four-parts of Scintilla are sequenced: Scintilla II, Scintilla I, Scintilla IV and Scintilla III.

On a lark, I had decided to re-track these four Scintilla parts and record them in consecutive, numeric sequence.

I had included a copy of a tape recording with the re-sequenced Scintilla I-IV along with my letter to Jimmy.

In his reply, Jimmy shared that this was the first time that he had heard this music in its original order since he wrote and recorded it in June, 1955!

He also explained that although Will McFarland’s liner notes to the LP indicate the four Scintilla pieces being played in numerical order, somehow when the album was being prepared for pressing, it was sequenced according to the Master numbers assigned to each track when they were recorded on June 6,7,10, 1955.

Interestingly, when Mosaic Records reissued these recordings as CDs and LPs as part of their The Complete Capitol and Atlantic Recordings of Jimmy Giuffre [Mosaic MD6-176], Mosaic also used the master track sequence instead of grouping the four Scintilla tracks as a consecutive, inter-connected musical “suite.”

So what you hear as the audio track to the following video tribute to Jimmy is the four-part Scintilla suite in the original sequence. And unless one has re-tracked and recorded this music in a similar manner, no one has heard this music quite this way before.

The video is followed by Jimmy’s “Questions and Answers” about the music on the album which form the original LP’s liner notes, excerpts from Will McFarland’s descriptions of Scintilla I-IV and a postscript on the album by Ted Gioia.

As an aside, I got to know Artie Anton, the drummer on these tracks, quite well as he was for many years a drum shop proprietor and drum teacher in near-by North Hollywood, CA. He always considered his playing on Jimmy’s 1950s Capitol recordings as “one of my most enjoyable times in music.” He would also declare to anyone who would spare him the time to listen to them that his “… playing on these cuts proves that the drums are a musical instrument [big smile – His]!.”

The puckish trumpet work is provided by the inimitable Jack Sheldon; also prominent on all these performance is the robust bass tone of Ralph Pena who sadly left us much-too-quickly at age 42 because of his involvement in a fatal car accident in Mexico.

“A top-level soloist and writer makes his most daring move to date: Jimmy Giuffre sets forth a bold new form for improvised music.

The music is revolutionary; yet its advent was a foreseeable, logical step in jazz maturation. Giuffre's new concept is con­troversial ; its evidence here is a must for serious jazz-followers, yet the range of its appeal is so unpredictable that its cham­pions could include bouncing dilettantes, hard-shell tradition­alists, even jazz-apathists.

Specifically, this music puts on view a quartet that functions without an audible beat — no walking bass, no riding cymbal; yet thanks to Giuffre's indomitable folksiness, this flouting of tradition results in jazz that out-thumps the music of most of his heavy-handed neighbors.

Jimmy answers some leading questions...

Q What is this music?

A Jazz, with a non-pulsating beat. The beat is implicit but not explicit; in other words, acknowledged but unsounded. The two horns are the dominant but not domineering voices. The bass usually functions somewhat like a baritone sax. The drums play an important but non-conflicting role.

Q Why abandon the sounded beat?

A For clarity and freedom. I've come to feel increasingly in­hibited and frustrated by the insistent pounding of the rhythm section. With it, it's impossible for the listener or the soloist to hear the horn's true sound, I've come to believe, or fully concentrate on the solo line. An imbalance of ad­vances has moved the rhythm from a supporting to a com­petitive role.

Q But isn't the sounded beat an integral part of jazz?

A The sounded beat once made playing easier, but now it's become confining. And to the degree that the beat was there to guide dancers, it is, of course, no longer necessary to con­cert jazz. I think the essence of jarz is in the phrasing and notes, and these needn't change when the beat is silent. Since the beat is implicit, this music retains traditional feel­ing; not having it explicit allows freer thinking.

Q Hasn't this been done before, particularly by you?

A Several of today's writers have dropped all sounded beat for contrast, but never for an entire work. I've written works completely lacking sounded beat, but the difference between this music and all previous work is the use of the drums. My previous attempts at this approach, while achiev­ing some of the clarity I sought, were always vaguely un­satisfactory to me until I realized the trouble: the drums, by their nature, cannot carry a simultaneous or overlapping line; when the drum is struck, any other note is obliterated, and attention is torn away from any other line. In this music, the drums' lines are integrated but isolated.

Q How is it possible to ensure this isolation during solos, when tacit is usually unpredictable?

A By writing rests in the ad lib parts, allowing the drums to fill. I strive to write the rests at natural phrase endings, holding restriction to a minimum.

Q But isn't there generally more restriction — don't the solo­ists have a good deal less freedom than before?

A In a sense, they have more freedom. No longer fed a stream of chords, or fighting a pounding beat, they are free to get a more natural sound out of their horns, and try for all sorts of new effects.

Q Didn't you have to select your musicians with extra care?

A Yes, I discussed my plans at length with each of them to make sure they were completely attuned to the project. Artie Anton, the drummer, has had wide band experience; from the beginning he was sympathetic to my new ideas. He is a skilled reader, as is Ralph Pena, a bassist with great sound, jazz feeling and a classical background, who has worked with many big bands and Stan Getz. Pena has re­corded previously with me, as has Jack Sheldon, an ex-Lighthouse trumpeter who has also recorded under his own name. Sheldon is a major soloist, and fits perfectly into my conception of the quartet.

Q This music is such a sharp departure; do you have any mis­givings about making the leap?

A This music is no novelty; it's the result of almost a decade of formal study, the culmination of all my thinking, writing and blowing. To me, it seems like sheer insanity to continue to play against that hammering beat. Classical music, once the rhythm is stated, assumed the freedom to move un­accompanied, and if jazz is going to continue to grow, it needs this same freedom.

Q New styles usually provoke extreme reaction; what sort of general judgment do you hope for?

A Early works in a new style necessarily grope; each new tune helps to expand and define the form; this album is not final. All I really ask for this music is an isolated judgment —for what it is, rather than for what it isn't. It isn't an attempt to compete with, or supplant other forms; I knew when I took the step that I must sacrifice a large segment of the usual jazz audience. It is, I think, jazz, and a swinging music, but those are ambiguous terms. Does it excite in­terest? Is it pleasurable? Does the interest hold up? These are the real questions.

Q You've been considered one of the great blowers with the very sort of rhythm you now flee; are you abandoning it for good?

A As a working musician, I must continue to play other music until the quartet works more steadily, and there are prob­lems — such as the extreme awkwardness of any turnover in personnel. I still enjoy playing with a stomping rhythm section occasionally, but my heart lies here; I believe in this music.

Will McFarland comments on the four Scintilla selections ...

Scintilla One — This bright brief opener, mostly ensemble work, serves both as an introduction to the album and as a basis for three subsequent sparkling variations. There is no improvisa­tion or development as yet, but extensions of the form are heard.

Scintilla Two — The ensemble plays the first eight bars of Scintilla One to introduce a development of that theme — minus extensions. This fast, tough, earnest variation is used as a basis for blowing; it's Giuffre's tenor all the way, very free.

Scintilla Three — Another variation on the root Scintilla, lighter and cute this time, stars the trumpet. Jack Sheldon's depth in running ideas is given plenty of leeway, and the clarinet comments from the middle-ground, half written, half spontaneous.

Scintilla Four — Climaxing the album, Giuffre unveils a stir­ring development and finale: the drums are fingered; there is imitation; all four players take a final four; all previous Scintilla material is recapitulated and used; a couple of canons, and the concert closes.

– Ted Gioia,  West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1969 [pp. 235-36, paragraphing modified]

“Despite Giuffre's rhetoric, the pieces on Tangents in Jazz do swing. In many ways the listener is even more drawn to the rhythmic element of the music, by the way it moves from instrument to instrument, instead of resting solely with the "rhythm" section. On Tangents Giuffre was again joined by Pena, Sheldon, and Anton, and though none of them stretches out at length during the course of the album, each is very much put in the spotlight as Giuffre employs a wide range of compositional de­vices: call-and-response figures, two- and three-part counterpoint, unison and harmony lines, canonic devices. These take the place of solos in Giuffre's new conception.

As a filmmaker conveys a sense of momentum through a sequence of rapidly shifting camera angles, Giuffre's constant movement from one musical device to another achieves a similar effect. Part of the achievement of Tangents in Jazz is that, despite the leader's stated disre­gard for a "propulsive" beat, these pieces are constantly propelled, if not by a metronomic beat, certainly by Giuffre's constant changes in compo­sitional focus. If anything, Giuffre overcompensates on Tangents, avoiding lengthy solos and shifting musical gears with abandon. The result is a highly concentrated music — which may be pleasing to the listener, but also makes severe demands on the attention.”