Earlier today (26 April 2008) I came upon an obituary for Jimmy Giuffre, a marvelous musician who I’ve enjoyed for fifty years. I wasn’t surprised. It had been a long time coming. I may have heard a record earlier, but my first memory of him is at the beginning of the film, Jazz On A Summer’s Day, where, with Bob Brookmeyer and Jim Hall, he’s playing The Train and The River. It’s a terrific performance; the camera rarely moves, it is almost stationary, but Jimmy moves in and out of the frame. It’s dramatic filmmaking and a great way to begin the film. I also saw him perform the song on The Sound a Jazz a year or so earlier, but it was on a small screen, in black and white with bad sound. It didn’t make the same impression.

The paper said he was born in Dallas in 1921 and went to North Texas State Teachers College. I knew that and may have even been in Denton, Texas, when he was there. I was little more than a baby in 1942, but my uncle, Roy Will, taught theory at North Texas State in those years, and with my father away in the Pacific, we sometimes lived with my uncle and his wife. When I asked Roy about it in the 1990s, he remembered Jimmy very clearly, and said he was a wonderful student. I’d asked Jimmy the same thing in 1991, and he remembered my uncle, so I guess it was true. Perhaps my Uncle Roy had a tiny effect on him; he certainly had a firm understanding of music theory.

I remained a fan and in April 1973 I had the opportunity of presenting Jimmy in concert at my Jazz Ramble series at The New School in New York City. He was working with a trio in those days, usually bass and drums, and he presented an evening of original compositions. His instruments of choice were flute and clarinet. Nearly twenty years later he was part of the 1991 edition of The Floating Jazz Festival. He graduated to a quartet, but Randy Kaye, the drummer he’d used in 1973, was still with him.

It seemed to me that Jimmy wasn’t nearly as robust as I remembered him; in 1991 he was only seventy. He played beautifully on clarinet and a variety of flutes and was, of course, one of the few groups on the ship that wasn’t mainstream. He’d been mainstream once upon a time, but he’d outgrown the Four Brothers decades earlier. His concerts weren’t crammed and I tried to sneak in as often as I could. I also managed to grab a couple of photographs in Club Internationale and during the Saxophone Spectacular in the theater, but none were very good. There was no easy way to take one, with all the music stands and electronic keyboards or shooting from the balcony. I should have tried to arrange for a special photo shoot, but I ran out of time and, besides, there would always be another year.

But there wasn’t. I asked Jimmy a couple of times; he was busy the first time and by the time I tried again, he was already in the grip of the disease that claimed him a couple of days ago. He was a terrific, innovative musician, a good guy, and perhaps the first great talent to come out of that sleepy little teacher’s college in Denton, Texas where legions of great musicians have followed in his footsteps.

 Jimmy Giuffre, Saga Theater aboard the S/S Norway at sea, October 30, 1991