Billboard : 05/12/1958

The new Jimmy Giuffre 3 featuring Bobby Brookmeyer on trombone and Jim Hall on guitar make an auspicious debut on wax here. Playing the “interior jazz” style that Giuffre has helped pioneer — a lightly swinging jazz chamber music with depth and quality, the trio performs it with taste and skill. Tunes include standards like the title tune, Forty-Second Street, California Here I Come, and a group of originals by Giuffre. One of the best modern jazz LPs this year.

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Cashbox : 05/17/1958

The Jimmy Giuffre trio comes up with it’s second album for the diskery. The set, in addition to Giuffre on clarinet, baritone and tenor saxes and Jim Hall on Guitar, features Bob Brookmeyer’s valve trombone in place of Ralph Pena, who sported the bass in the first session. The group offers the listener the same bluesy, intimate readings that made the first set a stand-out issue. One outstanding opus is a Giuffre original called Pickin’ ‘Em Up And Layin’ ‘Em Down. What the group’s fans have been waiting for.

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American Record Guide
Joe Goldberg : July, 1958

This group plays an individually conceived, improvisational chamber music which draws on all sorts of American popular and folk traditions as well as jazz. Since Bob Brookmeyer’s valve trombone was substituted for bass, it has not only enlarged an already full, truly co-operative, often polyphonic, texture, but has brought about a creative release in the music. There are no “rhythm” instruments and, except for an occasional rhythm passage from Jim Hall’s guitar, there is no real time-keeping but never a question of good time.

The essence of the result is on this record, and Show Me the Way to Go Home and parts of the title piece capture the group at its most creative. Perhaps now some of Brookmeyer’s energetic freedom will rub off on Giuffre, and some of Giuffre’s straightforward seriousness on Brookmeyer. One would also like to see Giuffre’s composing breaking away from the devices and low dynamic levels that show up so often in it. At any rate, what once seemed only the result of good intentions now sounds like it may become an important fact in American music.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : August, 1958

The title piece of this disc suggests that Giuffre has finally found the proper complement for his forlorn lower register clarinet in Bob Brookmeyer’s rugged valve trombone as they urge each other on to create a warmly homely blues, riding on the cushion of Jim Hall’s humming guitar. But after this promising start, Giuffre reverts to his apparent effort to reduce jazz to a shuffling monotone as he and Brookmeyer mumble through several of Giuffre’s tuneless jigs and three eviscerated pop tunes.

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Jazz Review
George Russell : November, 1958

In the broad, overall contemporary jazz scene this album may be classified in a general way as belonging to the folk jazz movement. Within the Folk Jazz idiom it falls into a category which Giuffre himself introduced with his “Tangents” album, and which, if it must be labeled, and it must, (labeling and defining being a vital factor in the process of expanding human knowledge) then it might be called “backwoods impressionism.” Correspondingly I’d say that Giuffre is in the “backwoods impressionistic” period in his creative cycle.

By no means should this imply that Giuffre, in this or any of his albums, is merely a tone poet writing music in which the thematic structure is the arbitrary result of his desire to capture the color of a cloudless blue sky on a hot summer day etc. (see Quiet Time, Teddy Charles Tentet). However, here he seems to have been more concerned with conveying one overall mood that dominates the emotional content of all the music.

This mood, the mood of the hill people, prevails during the entire album, and even Forty-Second Street.

We are allowed to know the hill people more intimately through variations of the overall mood which Giuffre introduces in the music from time to time. For instance as they rest and contemplate (Green Country). Their vigorous activities are captured in the camp meeting chants of Swamp People. Brother Giuffre is taken with the holiness tongue and utters in his ecstasy some phrases of remarkable rhythmic virility. Brother Brookmeyer can’t contain the spirit any longer on Pick ‘Em Up and starts preachin’ an unaccompanied jump and shout sermon that would render any deacon’s deliverance of “Dry Bones” to a chittlin’ fed congregation as downright inhibited.

What this album has to say, it says superbly. Listening to it, especially while watching green things on very late summer afternoons or again in the A.M. one is apt to be transported to the folk country where this music has its origins.

But people have a tendency to get bored even with the best of their friends if they see them in the same context all the time, especially if this context is essentially uncomplicated.

Complexity is a necessary quality of growth. Simplicity prevails when we have settled at a certain level. Therefore, I think that there is not just one overall simplicity but many levels of complexity.

For instance, Bartók used the folk themes of Hungary but he rejected the idea of recreating folk music in a newer idiom. Rather he chose to exalt them in highly complex tonalities and rhythms and forms. Nevertheless, his music has a simplicity and clarity relative to its own high level of technical complexity.

Bartók is more worthy of our attention and respect for having successfully accepted the challenge of establishing a profound and harder-to-come-by simplicity. John Benson Brooks, an extremely talented but essentially unknown composer (Vik 1083 and a forthcoming Riverside album) is now doing and for years has done very interesting things in the folk lore jazz idiom.

Giuffre, a totally dedicated composer of enormous integrity and talent, will probably abandon the security of his present level and head outward for distant unchartered shores. It is a question of whether he can maintain the simplicity he cherishes while searching or whether he will have to sacrifice some of it for a new beauty.

As for the groups lack of a rhythm section, Jim Hall plays a rhythm instrument doesn’t he? And all three “soul brothers” are great supporting players.

Hall is really marvelous both in solo and support. Listen to his backgrounds of minor sevenths played chromatically or his quasi-bass lines.

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Jazz Quarterly
Larry Gushee : October 1958

Giuffre, in attempting to combine several approaches to jazz, has come up with one that is distinctly his own, but up to the present, not really successful. It fails because it is repetitious, particularly in emotional tone and in harmonic color. He is still fighting the battle that only few men—like Duke and Mingus—have engaged in heretofore. Rather than accepting the melodic and harmonic practices as handed down by some nameless tradition, he would like to compose, to control his material in the way a classical composer controls it. More than this, and this is what makes his task particularly difficult, he wants to retain improvisation, to let his sidemen express themselves. I leave to dialecticians the question whether these two desires are fundamentally incompatible or not. At any rate, some of the faults of this record stem from a conflict between these two concepts, others from the leader’s special failings as an improviser.

When he uses a popular song as the framework of a piece, Giuffre breaks up the monotony by interspersing slow sections among the fast. In Show Me this is particularly effective, because the triplet subdivision of the beat, so often heard in jazz, is restricted to the slow section, while the fast section abounds with odd rhythmic patterns, e.g.:

Such deliberate control finds expression in harmony, especially in Swamp People. The 12-bar structure is, of course, reminiscent of minor blues, but the scale avoids the flat sixth and, less, the minor third, giving all phrases a pentatonic character, and putting more emphasis on tonic and dominant tones (although the V7 chord is not heard). The modal scale implicit in the blues is made even more modal by this use of major 6th—and supplanting the normal dominant chord with minor V chords and dominant pedal points only re-emphasizes the modal tendency. Along this same line, Giuffre dips into Anglo-American folk-song idiom, and most of his playing is either thoroughly bluesy or folksy, depending on your idea of what the blues really are (or is).

Brookmeyer does not go all the way with Giuffre, and indeed, one of the major discrepancies (or sometimes charms, as in Swamp People) is between a modal and more conventional harmonic melodic style. But Brookmeyer helps this record in other ways: his playing seems far more spontaneous than Giuffre’s; it is lyrical and not so much marred by the fearsome redundance heard in Giuffre’s improvisation and composition. It seems as if most short phrases have to be repeated once again, usually on the same pitch. Accordingly, the music does not flow as it should, but proceeds by discontinuous jumps: chunk, chunk, chunk.

Giuffre is very conscious of the necessity of motivic development, and a goodly part of his appeal is achieved by economy of melody, and telling re-use of melodic fragments. Hear the closing bars of The Lonely Time, where the descending Bb A G figure Giuffre plays first at a fairly fast tempo is dissected and dragged out so long that it just barely retains its identity as a motive.

As a foil to the other two thirds of the trio, Jim Hall is vital in providing rhythmic accents, and sometimes bass line, in the absence of other rhythm. His virtues do not stop there, however. His melodic sense (listen to Trav’lin’ for example) is less conventional than Brookmeyer’s, more varied than Giuffre’s. He swings easily, and his sound—almost harp-like on Green Country—is pure and never vulgar.

This group, and its near relations, is most notorious for the absence of a conventional rhythm section. Giuffre thereby achieves a certain degree of freedom: changes of tempo are easier to manage, and cadenzas are more appropriate (Pickin’, 42nd St.), although in the latter tune, there is too much senseless finger wiggling. On the other hand, he seems forced to use a peculiar eight to the bar meter, especially on up tempos, and Brookmeyer is frequently reduced to playing an almost mechanical ostinato part.

Despite different titles, and Giuffre’s own statements as to the varied impressions that provided the stimulus for his compositions, the listener may be bothered by the sameness of emotional tone. It can be described as effete, passive, nostalgic, and not a little self-conscious; it lacks guts and depth. On the other hand, in smaller doses it is easy and interesting listening. The standard of musicianship is high, and the group is notable for the sensitivity of the musicians to each other, and control of dynamic level. Still, a musician has to have a great deal in him to express, to sustain a 12″ LP, the more so if his expressed intentions pretend to something more sophisticated and artistic.

All of this should not detract from the principles behind Giuffre’s trio (independent and simultaneous melodic voices, the absence of an unwieldy rhythm section, departures from time-honored harmonic practices, etc.) nor from his sincerity. I think, however, that Giuffre will have to find a way to infuse more plain backbone into his music, to ride the tiger, if it is to become more than pleasantly intriguing, although, heaven knows, he may aspire to little more than that.

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Miami News (Miami, FL)
William G. Moeser : 06/29/1958
Four stars

“That drive that makes for pulsation must be inside you,” notes Jimmy Giuffre, in the liner notes to Trav’lin’ Light, (Atlantic 1282), the Giuffre Three’s latest release.

The Three — Jimmy playing the reed horns, Jim Hall on guitar and trombonist Bobby Brookmeyer — then proceed to exemplify the leader’s remark in as thoroughly a pleasant, introspective jazz session as heard for some time. Controlled volume and a deep insight into each other’s ideas, coupled with a melodic function for each instrument makes the trio tick.

All three instrumentalists have major voices in the slow-motion counterpoint ramblings that are Giuffre’s trademark. Here is a logical presentation of each musician’s voice, in excellent Atlantic sound.

Nothing blatant, due respect for each other, and a swinging feeling minus the usual rhythm foundation, make this LP a worthwhile jazz experience.

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New Yorker
Whitney Balliett : 06/21/1958

Trav’lin’ Light: The Jimmy Giuffre 3 (Atlantic 1282) is a conscientious, peculiarly static series of embellishments on the techniques—intricate, partly written contrapuntal ensembles; short solos; the absence of a sounded beat—evident in Giuffre’s one previous trio recording, which, even in its more mournful moments, had a buoyant, Panlike quality. One reason for this deliberateness is a change in instrumentation; the bassist has been replaced by a valve trombonist, Bob Brookmeyer, a remarkably inventive instrumentalist, whose work resembles the light, glancing trumpet of Bill Coleman and Joe Wilder. (Jim Hall, the guitarist, remains, and Giuffre, as usual, alternates between the clarinet and the tenor and baritone saxophones.)

At the same time, the tonal qualities of Brookmeyer’s instrument both fill in and blur the outlines of the original trio, which had a pleasant brittleness. Another reason is Giuffre’s predominant use of ensembles—there are almost no solos—in which the three voices wind heavily around one another, like garrulous people gossiping away a hot summer evening. There is, however, excitement in such numbers as Forty-second Street, Show Me the Way to Go Home, and The Swamp People (there are, in all, four numbers by Giuffre and four standards), but it evaporates in the slow, lyrical pieces, in which Giuffre sticks to the clarinet, playing it in a pale, hesitant, gloved manner, as if he were trying to imply rather than state his music.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 05/31/1958

I come now to another question of nomenclature. The new Jimmy Giuffre 3 consists of the leader on clarinet and saxophones; Bob Brookmeyer, valve trombone; and Jim Hall, guitar. This little group makes a good deal of serene, pastoral music—deep Southern in suggestion—largely on the basis of Giuffre’s delicate linear writing (Atlantic 1282). In this mood, theirs is a charming and nostalgic art. I merely raise the question as to whether it is not often too evanescent to be called jazz. During much of the trio’s work I do not hear the rhythmic urgency (it does not need to be assertive—it can be richly insinuated) which I have always regarded as jazz’s very foundation.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON, Canada)
Roger Feather : 07/05/1958
Four stars

The intriguing work of the Giuffre 3 is exhibited to excellent advantage on this LP. Within its highly stylized and even restricted context, the validity of which is debatable, Giuffre’s music is warmly inventive and expressively thought-provoking. Because the instrumentation, material, and manner of playing offer little contrast, the music must be finely shaded and exact, which it is with admirable taste.

Four of the eight tunes are Giuffre originals. The Swamp People has some scurrying excitement with good Brookmeyer. Bob’s lines and solos throughout the album are penetratingly inventive but less flowing than his past work with more legitimate groups. The Green Country emits a subdued, pastoral impression and The Lonely Time has an apt weary, melancholy feeling.

Trav’lin’ Light is slow and sad, Show Me The Way To Go Home is moody and California Here I Come is happy with some out-going, conclusive Jim Hall. Forty-Second Street which features Giuffre on three horns is the album’s longest number. It is multi-tempoed moving from a scurrying, cluttered feeling to a slow serene mood in the process of portraying vivid impressions.

The three horns moving in a linear, slow-motion counterpoint result in fascinating music. Although the sound is pleasant and the folksy quality universal, the impact is not immediate. After close listening this engaging album offers gratifying results.

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Down Beat : 07/10/1958
Martin Williams : 4.5 stars

Giuffre’s intentions have been evident—a uniquely conceived, improvisational chamber music which draws on all kinds of American popular and folk forms as well as jazz. The substitution of Brookmeyer’s trombone for bass has not only enlarged an already remarkably full texture but has opened a formerly tight and self-limiting structure into a free and widening one. The lack of time-keeping (except occasionally from Jim Hall’s highly adaptable guitar) is no loss, but a release in almost every respect.

The new quality is here, and Show Me and parts of the title piece catch the group at its most creative.

Perhaps some of Brookmeyer’s freedom will rub off on Giuffre, some of Giuffre’s straightforward seriousness on Brookmeyer (both have an emotional depth which, I think, their playing has yet shown only occasionally). And one would like to see Giuffre’s composing-arranging breaking away from those devices and dynamic levels which show up in it so often, and the rather “documentary film” quality of the way, say, The Green Country is done.

At any rate what seemed a good intention now sounds like it may become a significant fact in American music.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

The incorporation of Bob Brookmeyer into the Jimmy Giuffre 3 makes this unit even more intriguing, both in its present capacity to work tri-linear subtle sorcery on the listener and in its indications for the future to other jazz players.

There is, for example, no bass, drums and piano in this ensemble—to the initial shock of a number of musicians who had become accustomed to pianoless and even drumless combos but began to mumble, Saroyan-fashion, “There’s no foundation all along the line” when informed of the new instrumentation of the Jimmy Giuffre 3. Those who heard the group’s debut, however, at New York’s Village Vanguard soon forgot the absence of the traditional rhythm section because the group swung more fully than it ever had before. Even some musicians don’t wholly remember that the ability to swing must first reside in the musician. If he depends on a rhythm section, no matter how infectious that section may be, to swing him, then he is in the position of the rejected suitor who cannot understand that one must be able to give love to receive it.

“That drive that makes for pulsation,” notes Mr. Giuffre, “must be inside you. I don’t understand the necessity for someone to prod you.” Jimmy is anxious that his development away from the “normal” rhythm section in his groups not be misinterpreted as a crusade to annihilate the tradition. “I love a wonderful sounding rhythm section,” he emphasizes, “but it shouldn’t necessarily be used on every tune all the time.” And in this edition of the Giuffre 3, it doesn’t have to be used at all, because individually and collectively, these three generate a beat that flows, even when most “implicit.”

In terms of temperament, the addition of Brookmeyer is especially logical in the present context. For Giuffre’s kind of music to work, the participants have to be similar enough in emotional structure to really hear each other, to hear “the feeling over the mathematical idea” (as Giuffre puts it), and to react to each other’s feeling patterns with stories of their own that will complement the overall tapestry the group is weaving. Each of the Giuffre 3 is almost transparently candid, most of all with himself; each is unusually sensitive to a wide range of stimuli which he in turn can transmute into music; and each is strong in a deeply lyrical rather than a stomping or raging or melodramatic sense. Each, moreover, is a serious musician and I do not mean that to connote that they are glum jazz-academicians. The reverse is true in that they enjoy music making so thoroughly that they get many more kicks by not goofing and by becoming exhilaratingly involved in what Frank Lloyd Wright calls “organic architecture,” a phrase Giuffre is fond of quoting.

Each is also a composer. Since each is skilled in that discipline as it applies to jazz, “each one of us,” notes Giuffre, “can supply that kind of technical knowledge on top of the feeling that will enable him to best complement what the other man is playing. A key reason, of course, is that we want to play together, and that we are able to in terms of feeling and compositional approaches. You can make any kind of sound and the other two will find some way to work with it. And if any one slows down in a solo, another will take the initiative and spin the pattern out further.”

Giuffre has spoken before of his regard for Jim Hall. About Brookmeyer, he says: “He has all the qualities you could hope for. Every time he puts his horn up to his lips, a phrase with the quality of a standard tune flows out. When I hear him solo, I get the feeling I ought to run and write down what he’s playing.”

From the beginning of his work with the 3, Giuffre has based the music on a conviction he developed from years of studying Dr. Wesley La Violette’s conception of slow-motion counterpoint. Every member of the group has a line to play. “The more I studied,” Jimmy explains, “the more I realized that here were human beings playing music. It was more than things on a piece of paper. And each player should have space to express himself—I don’t mean only in ad lib passages—and accordingly, each player should have a melody to interpret. Certainly, there are times in a piece when there are subordinate lines, but I try to make all the lines equally lyrical.”

As a result, when Jimmy has used drums in the past couple of years, the drummer usually did not play all the time and did have a melodic function when he did sound. When there was a bass in the unit, Jimmy got to the point where he was “writing music in the bass parts as though it were a wind instrument and there was a minimum of idiomatic writing for the instrument itself. You see, it doesn’t matter what the instrument is so long as it has a line to play, through which the player can express himself. In time, in this unit, we plan to interchange all the parts. There’s no reason why we can’t—or shouldn’t be able to.”

Obviously, with a trombonist and guitarist as his colleagues, Giuffre is more able than ever to assure each man a melody. And with this instrumentation, he can fulfill even more variegatedly his principle that “the accompaniment patterns should be different for each piece. There oughtn’t necessarily be just one type of accompaniment for each piece for every night. A different type of accompaniment pattern should evolve from each piece—form following function. And if you utilize ‘organic architecture’ in composing, then the original germ of an idea can be spun out and developed while being also used in various ways for accompaniment, etc. Accordingly, we all attempt to improvise in the way we compose, having our improvisation come out of and return to this organic development of the original germinal idea.”

Another factor that’s necessary in this closely interrelated a group is volume blending. “It’s the same as when you’re sitting and talking with someone. You try to complement them and blend with them in some way. You don’t scream at them, while they’re whispering.”

In summary, this is the essence of the Giuffre 3: “When you get the volume together, you need to have three men who think alike, feel alike. Each has to be prepared to play an individual part, a melody of his own that may be pulsating or may not be and that will complement the other parts.”

As for this album, it’s somewhat of a journey into itinerant autobiography. It begins with Trav’lin’ Light, explains the logical Mr. Giuffre, “because we’re traveling around the country in a light Volkswagen bus and we have a light trio (no drums, piano or bass).” An additional factor in the choice of the title song is the fact that Jimmy has been intrigued by the tune since he first heard the Paul Whiteman recording of it with Billie Holiday while he was still in Texas in the early forties. It was not only Billie’s gently anguished vocal that caught him, but also the Skip Layton cup-muted trombone solo “which had such great feeling.”

“This,” Jimmy returns to the album, “is a musical story and a true one.” After the opener comes The Swamp People which came into the book as a result of impressions from seeing some of the scenery and people while driving through the swamps. “The people along the highway seemed to be fishing all the time.”

The Green Country, which could pass for an Elizabethan tune nurtured for centuries in the Appalachians is instead an impression of New England landscapes. (The subtitle is New England Mood.) The Apple’s Forty-Second Street is self-explanatory. The Lonely Time is indigenous to life on the road (“You get lonely out there, away from the family and all that”) despite the traveling impetus generated by the preceding Pickin’ ‘Em Up And Layin’ ‘Em Down. The program accelerates to a close, especially for Jimmy, in the prospect of Show Me The Way To Go Home and California Here I Come.

“What happens with us,” Giuffre concludes, “is a result of natural forces. I didn’t know in front that this would be the instrumentation the 3 would have nor did we plan our music beforehand on graph paper. It all worked out this way because we followed our feelings.”