Billboard : 10/20/1956
Score of 74

Giuffre plays clarinet almost exclusively in the lower register and his emotion is as limited as his range. Despite superficial resemblances to the clarinet of Lester Young, this is pretty dull stuff. Main interest would be in Giuffre’s avant-garde writing, but there he departs from the jazz idiom. Set will have some appeal to fans who like anything they believe to be “far out.” Striking cover.

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Cashbox : 12/01/1956

One of the less hackneyed approaches on the clarinet is that of Jimmy Giuffre. The usually driving instrument is, for the most part, replace by a deliberate lazy-afternoon type of attack, virtually a sigh into the stick. On the flip side, the jazzman is more forceful on such pieces as Fascinatin’ Rhythm, yet the subtle inspection of the tunes closely parallels Giuffre’s first side excursions. Notables such as Shorty Rogers (trumpet), Shelly Manne (drums), and Bud Shank (alto flute) seem eager to mind the clarinetist’s ideas. Eye catching cover. Fine, off-the-beaten-path jazz disk.

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The Pittsburgh Courier : 12/08/1956
Harold L. Keith : 4 stars

“Licorish sticks” were very prominent during the era of swing. All of the big bands had artists wielding the trick weed.

There were Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Benny Carter, and Omar Simeon, to name a few, who fitted in well with the phrasing of the swinging thirties and forties.

In fact, the clarinet was a strident contrast to the solid phalanx of big brass and reeds which sat behind it on the bandstand.

But, with the advent of the small combo and the accompanying call for the big sound with fewer men, the clarinet went down in popularity went down in popularity, and the rise of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker and others of his ilk didn’t help to stem its decline.

But here, Jimmy Giuffre has shown that there is definitely room for the stick in the modern era. After long years of successful blowing on sax, Giuffre’s clarinet technique is deep, throaty and ofttimes, to use a more delicate term, is enchanting in its treatment of the half-jazz, half-classical numbers on this album.

Giuffre is ably supported by a coterie of woodmen including Bob Cooper‘s oboe, Maury Berman‘s basoon, and Bud Collette with Harry Klee on alto and bass clarinet, respectively.

Also heard are Bud Shank and Klee on alto and bass flute, respectively, along with Dave Pell on English horn, Jimmy Rowles, celeste and piano; Shelly Manne and Stan Levey, drums, and trumpeters Harry Edison, Shorty Rogers and Jack Sheldon.

The group plays My Funny Valentine, Deep Purple, Quiet Cook and Fascinating Rhythm among other things.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 11/11/1956

For a considerable segment of the jazz public, the most important record event of 1954 was the release by Contemporary of the Rumsey All-Stars, Vol. 4 – the album which displayed first the jazz possibilities of flute, English horn and oboe and which marked, in a sense, the founding of “West Coast jazz.”

For the same people, the most important record event of 1955 may have been the release by Pacific Jazz of the first Chico Hamilton quintet album, featuring Buddy Collette on flute, clarinet, tenor and alto and Fred Katz playing horn parts on cello.

Now comes an Atlantic release called The Jimmy Giuffre Clarinet and I am inclined to believe that this may prove (for that particular segment, anyway) the most important record event of 1956.

It is, frankly, a very strange record – not “way out” in the sense of being weird, atonal or unpleasant, but strange in the sense that nobody has ever attempted to play a clarinet as Jimmy Giuffre plays it here and, further, in the sense that Giuffre seems to be interested almost wholly in exploring the possibilities of wood-winds rather than in “playing jazz” (whatever that phrase may mean).

On the first count, Giuffre restricts himself wholly to the lower register, producing (as the liner notes say) “a thick soft nightish sound” – comparable to a bass flute. Around this he succeeds in wrapping, on track after track, different combinations of woodwinds of somewhat the same timbre – flute, alto flute, bass flute, oboe, English horn, bassoon, bass clarinet, alto clarinet and, on one track, trumpets and saxes. The result is not always jazz – some of it would have delighted Debussy and some would have pleased Mozart, who loved the limited woodwinds of his time. (Though I suspect the frequent absence of a beat would have disturbed Mozart as much as it will some jazz fans.) But much of it is fine jazz. For a real thrill, play Giuffre’s Funny Valentine against Chico Hamilton’s version on the record mentioned above, or compare Giuffre’s The Side Pipers (an original) with Warm Winds on the Lighthouse album.

The personnel, varying widely on the different tracks, includes Collette, Bud Shank, Harry Klee, Shelly Manne, Bob Cooper, Dave Pell, Ralph Peña, Harry Edison, Shorty Rogers and others.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 10/27/1956

While we are in the chamber jazz vein, we call attention to several works featuring the limpid, low register clarinet of the California arranger and reed specialist, Jimmy Giuffre. This medley takes up various matters, from dulcet blues accompanied only by Giuffre’s own foot-tapping to a nine-piece performance which sounds like a lazy, entranced Count Basie. One of our own favorites is a polyphonic trio jo on Fascinatin’ Rhythm in which Giuffre is joined by Jimmy Rowles, piano, and Shelly Manne, drums. It may be noted that some of the music on this disc is outside of jazz, in the sense that the regular beat is jettisoned.

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Down Beat : 11/14/1956
Nat Hentoff : 5 stars

The Jimmy Giuffre Clarinet is an extraordinary lesson in how a man with limited technique on an instrument can nonetheless center an entire LP on himself as soloist on that horn and have it emerge as one of the best of the year. Giuffre, to begin with, cannot be regarded as a major jazz clarinetist until he is at inventive ease on all of the instrument, not just the lower and lower middle register as now.

But Giuffre can certainly be regarded as possessor of major jazz imagination as writer-clarinetist in view of what he has done here. The first rack is just Giuffre – “a very slow blues, recorded in pitch dark with just clarinet and the sound of my foot tapping.” It is, in its bare, pulsing self-expression, a primal jazz performance, one with which to open a lecture series on the history of jazz.

Next are Giuffre and Jimmy Rowles on celeste in an expansion and deepening of Deep Purple in what are largely blues shades. A fascinating written play of reed colors follows with Giuffre, Bud Shank on alto flute, Harry Klee playing bass flute, and Shelly Manne using just his fingers on the drums. There is just a short clarinet cadenza and ad lib solo that are improvised, but the feel of the piece is jazz, and its structuring remains rewarding after a number of listenings.

The first side ends with Giuffre; Bob Cooper, oboe; Dave Pell, English horn; [Artist999279,Maury Berman, bassoon; Ralph Peña, bass. This Valentine is largely unfolded in a slow motion counterpoint (not strict counterpoint) that is strangely lucid and compelling, like a valentine to a girl who digs Kafka and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Cook, inspired by Basie‘s Miss Thing, is just Giuffre, Peña and drummer Stan Levey. It simmers fast and soft although somewhat too long. Peña and Levey are excellent in support. There follows a written piece – except for one clarinet solo – with Jimmy, Buddy Collette on alto clarinet, Klee on bass clarinet, and no rhythm section. Again, there is unique coloristic imagery, this time partly with a neo-near-eastern flavor, and it all flows. The penultimate track has Giuffre, Rowles, and Manne in a delightful implicit rhythm illustration that is “mostly written out, except each man has an ad lib solo.” The satisfying close involves a “soft, mellow big band sound” with Giuffre, Harry Edison, Shorty Rogers, Jack Sheldon, Cooper, Pell, baritone saxist Maury Berman, Peña, and Levey. At the very end, there is cyclically just Giuffre, his “haunted pastoral” clarinet, and his foot tapping.

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Liner Notes by W.G. Fargo

Both as an arranger-composer and an instrumentalist, Jimmy Giuffre is one of the most persuasive and ingratiating figures in contemporary jazz. He is presently introducing into jazz a new, distinct, and intensely personal lyricism. This quality, like all substantial innovations, has deep, traceable roots:

In the mid-Thirties, musical fashion and the hard, appled winds of the Depression knocked the stuffings out of hot jazz. Soon after, as if in revolt against the long tenure of hot peppers, hot fives, and feetwarmers, a select band of musicians appeared who had discovered that jazz can be just as compelling and far more subtle – and so lasting – if it is played without blare, stomp, and sweat. They dedicated themselves to the soft, the delicate, and the lyrical. Some of them were: Bill Coleman, Frankie Newton, Joe Thomas, Buck Clayton, Hal Baker, Pee Wee Russell, Benny Morton, Herschel Evans, Lester Young, Count Basie, Nat Cole, Irving Fazola, Ben Webster, Red Norvo, Clyde Hart, and Sid Catlett. Although they possessed the originality in all dissidents, they had a common approach that was oblique, studied, and rather poetic. They savored their notes, hung behind the beat, and constructed choruses of great melodic beauty.

Then, in the early Forties, a kind of second hot core appeared in jazz. It had at its center Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Max Roach and the big, steamy bands of Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway. Again, after this resurgence began to dissolve, a second and parallel group of lyricists, who should, however, not be confused with “cool” musicians, appeared in the persons of such as Joe Wilder, Shelly Manne, Tony Scott, Hank Jones, Jimmy Raney, John Lewis, and Jimmy Giuffre. Their predecessors – men of light rain and limpid skies – never dented the main body of jazz much. But Manne, Lewis, and Giuffre will leave a firm, if subtly won, imprint on jazz.

Giuffre was born in Dallas and received a Bachelor of Music from North Texas State Teachers College in 1942. He has since studied composition, for ten years, with Dr. Wesley La Violette, in Los Angeles. From 1942 through 1954, he worked with Boyd Raeburn, Jimmy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, and Howard Rumsey‘s Lighthouse All-Stars. Giuffre is, of course, a prolific arranger-composer. Ten years ago, he appeared to be a cut above the average jazz composer (Four Brothers, Four Others, etc.), but it is now clear that he belongs, by virtue of his recorded work in the past three or four years, with Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Mingus, Teddy Charles, and John Lewis. Giuffre is not the spoiled revolutionary who acts because he gets to feeling knobby and cantankerous about his environment, but rather is a rebel because he feels hobbled and troubled the the limitations of his form. His first important experiments were with rhythm. In an album released last year (Capitol T-634), he used, in addition to a trumpet and his own clarinet, a bassist and drummer who functioned only as melodic pivots for the horns. They ignored completely a sounded beat. The results were, by and large, extremely encouraging, although one occasionally felt that the lack of an audible rhythmic pulse and the intense swing with which the men played made the implied beat even stronger than an actual one. Nevertheless, there was an unmistakable and exciting sense of continuity and suppleness throughout the album. Giuffre’s reason for the experiment is simple; for many years a sounded beat had given him the feeling that it tied down melodic invention. Out of this experiment has come the fact that he is, primarily, an extremely inventive melodist. Many of his turns, if they are not blues, are blues-tinged and have a sort of haunted pastoral quality to them. They often suggest white leaves just before a storm. And, as a melodist, Giuffre is fascinated by timbers and textures, which was clear in both his albums. He has said, in fact, that he is interested in getting the right sound, the pleasing sound, and let structures (he has broken ground here too), forms, categories, and harmonies fall where they may.

In a sense, his quiet approach to jazz is pinpointed in his work as a clarinetist. Until three years ago, he had given the instrument up almost entirely, but, at the suggestion of his wife, he took it up again. His style has become almost unique. He plays entirely in the lower registers, and gets a thick, soft, nightish sound, akin to the clarinet of Lester Young. This is more pleasuring to him than the upper register, in which, he says frankly, he doesn’t as yet feel technically at home. He moves up, however, a quarter tone every couple of months. He uses little vibrato, and plays short, simple phrases, which are sometimes composed of a single repeated note.

Giuffre plays only clarinet in this album, which is, however, as varied and thoughtful a piece of jazzwork as has yet been produced on LPs. The personnel and instrumentations, as well as the mood and approach, differ on every track. Here are some comments by Giuffre on the individual tunes:

SO LOW: “A very slow blues, recorded in pitch dark, with just clarinet and the sound of my foot tapping. I wanted to get the effect of a musician playing in his back room all alone.”

DEEP PURPLE: “In playing backstage one night with clarinet and celeste, I was so impressed with the sound that I vowed to use it. This tune has long been a favorite of mine and is good for jazz.”

THE SIDE PIPERS: “This piece is atonal. It is without key. We used a 5/4 time signature in the first section. All of it is written except for one short section in the middle where the clarinet has an unaccompanied cadenza followed by an ad lib solo with background. There is an extremely soft sound throughout. (Shelly Manne uses only his fingers).”

MY FUNNY VALENTINE: “Very slow and moody with clarinet featured. This is a ballad that really fits into modern jazz and seems to lay good for the clarinet. This instrumentation and writing approach give it a little different picture.”

QUIET COOK: “Very bright tempo. A soft, light mood, with dynamics. Inspired by Basie’s Miss Thing. Here we attempt to “cook”, but very softly. Thus the title.”

THE SHEEPHERDER: “All of this is written except for the clarinet solo in the middle. It has a folky, mellow sound. We used three horns (clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet), without any rhythm section. Buddy Collette plays the alto clarinet, a practically extinct instrument.”

FASCINATIN’ RHYTHM: “We emulate the Benny Goodman trio in instrumentation but without the pulsating beat. Mostly written out, except each man has an ad lib solo.”

DOWN HOME: “A funky blues with an after hours atmosphere. Medium slow. The end resolves into clarinet alone with my foot tapping, just as the album began. I wanted to get a soft, mellow big band sound here.”

Giuffre continues: “It has been said that when jazz gets soft it loses its gusto and funkiness. It is my feeling that soft jazz can retain the basic flavor and intensity that it has at a louder volume and at the same time perhaps reveal some new dimensions of feeling that loudness obscures.”