Jimmy Giuffre 3: 1961

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "Jimmy Giuffre, the adventurous clarinetist, composer and arranger whose 50-year journey through jazz led him from writing the Woody Herman anthem 'Four Brothers' … to striking experimental orchestral works, died on Thursday. … From the mid-’50s on, Mr. Giuffre taught music, initially at the Lenox School of Jazz. … It was at Lenox that Mr. Giuffre first encountered Ornette Coleman, a scholarship student at the school, in 1959. Mr. Giuffre was knocked sideways by Mr. Coleman’s conviction and freedom and had a sort of ecstatic transformation. … The result was the moody, overlapping improvisations with no fixed key or tempo that characterize the playing of his trio with Paul Bley on piano and Steve Swallow on bass, heard on the ECM reissues '1961' and 'Free Fall.' This trio lasted for less than two years. … But when '1961,' a pairing of trio albums, was reissued in 1992, it was greeted with awe by some younger musicians and critics for its prescience about the post-1960s jazz landscape. The album received a five-star rating in Down Beat" (4/26/08).