On Jim and Jimmy: The Enduring Influence of Jim Hall's Time with Jimmy Giuffre

You don’t need to be particularly hip to dig that Jim Hall is, well, The Man. When The Universe gets its shit together and jazz gets its due, the Hudson River Palisades will be home to a Jazz Guitar Mount Rushmore, bearing the visages of Django, CC, Wes and Jim, no doubt. That said, you probably need to be a click or two hipper to recognize that deep in the Jim Hall oeuvre, before the duo records with Pat Metheny, Ron Carter and the Bills (Frisell and Evans), before the stints with Sonny Rollins, Paul Desmond and Stan Gets, just after he first really made a name for himself with Chico Hamilton, in the late ‘50s Jim played in a couple of hard-working, oddly-configured trios led by the clarinetist and saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre, and, perhaps most notably, either the bassist Ray Brown or the valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. They played a lyrical, melody-forward kind of "post-bop" that presaged much of what became the avant garde in the 1960s and continues to have an outsized influence even now. 

Take, for example, the aforementioned Mr. Frisell. Everyone knows how influential Jim was for Bill, but, as it turns out, even Bill didn’t realize how important Jim’s work in those Giuffre combos was, specifically in regard to his Quartet band, with Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), Ron Miles (trumpet) and Eyvind Kang (violin and tuba). 

"When I put that band together," Bill recalls, "I had been thinking about the World Saxophone Quartet. A band with no bass and drums that still swung. That’s what I was hoping for. 

"One of our first gigs was at the old Iridium in New York. Jim Hall and his wife Jane came to hear us. It wasn’t until that moment that it dawned on me, 'Oh shit! It’s those Giuffre groups with Jim! THAT’S where I’m stealing all this stuff from!' Trying to anyway."

Bill also remembers how Jim embodied Giuffre’s direct influence, as well. "Jim used to talk about how hard he worked getting his phrasing and articulation to match Giuffre’s. The tonguing and slurring … breath … breathing. From what I gather, that early experience with Giuffre had a huge impact on Jim. You can hear it in everything. The way Jim played with (became one with) horn players. Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer, Paul Desmond, etc, etc."

And there are other adherents of Hall who’ve delved into the Giuffre songbook, as well, most notably Nels Cline and Julian Lage (alone and together). My ears also detected a debt to Giuffre in Cline’s recent recording with Ben Goldberg (on clarinet) and Ron Miles (cornet), Good Day for Cloud Fishing, but when I asked him about the record, he shot me down. 

"It didn’t occur to me!" he said. "Julian and I have assayed ‘Brief Hesitation’ as a duo (recorded for our album Room but not included) and my quartet with him plays Carla Bley’s ‘Temporarily,’ which had previously only been recorded by the (NY) 3 [with Paul Bley on piano and Steve Swallow on bass], and whose repertoire is certainly an aesthetic bond between Julian and me." 

An aesthetic bond, indeed, as Julian recorded "Trudgin’," another song from the repertoire of the Giuffre/Bley/Swallow trio, on his latest record, Love Hurts.

But when it comes to wearing the Giuffre influence on their collective sleeve, nothing compares to the so-called "Easy Way Trio," comprised of Ben Allison (bass), Ted Nash (saxophone and clarinet) and Steve Cardenas, the working guitarist’s favorite guitarist. As luck would have it, as my Giuffre obsession was peaking and I reached out to Steve, he was just a few days away from arriving in Seattle for a run at Jazz Alley, playing in Madeleine Peyroux’s band. We found a good time to meet, and enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation, the "Giuffresque" bits of which are excerpted here…

Steve Cardenas: So the whole idea for the trio was really Ben [Alison]’s originally. He was originally thinking Jim Hall's music because we all know what a great composer Jim was, even though ... It's funny, he doesn't really get talked about in that way and he was an amazing composer. It gave me a chance to learn some of these tunes I'd always kind of thought, "Hmm, I'd like to tackle that." But when you have a project it's more like, now I have to learn it. So we did a few gigs and always had a blast and we thought ... Ben said, "We ought to record this sometime," but he didn't make any plans.

But before you know it, Elan Mehler at Newvelle [Records] — Newvelle is a label that only puts out vinyl records and I think the main guy is based in France, but Elan Mehler, I think he lives in the Boston area. He comes down to New York, rents this one particular studio, and they'll do five recordings a year. They'll book a couple of days, they’re taking care of the studio time and all that stuff, and artwork, all that, and they put it out.

So Elan approached Ben just out of the blue, and Ben thought, "Wow, this is the perfect opportunity for this trio." He likes to have a little more control when it's his band. He said, "I don't need to go into something that I don't know what all the variables are. Maybe it's better to have a simpler situation, just the trio." It turned out to be really great. Really nice studio, great engineer. Elan is fantastic. Elan, as he says his name. And so that's that first record, Quiet Revolution.

When I went into the studio with that, or when we went into the studio with that, I brought my [ES-]335 and a nylon string acoustic and a steel string, a Martin, that is in my wife’s family. It's a ‘ 59 000-21. It's just the most amazing instrument. It plays great. Anyway, I thought, "Well maybe I could use that on a couple of tracks." 

There's a whole logic here that you'll get, because I'm going in the studio and I'm thinking, I mean, Jim is kind of the guy for me in so many ways. And the last thing I want to do is come off at all like I'm trying to sound like him. And that would be hard to avoid if I play electric, because I'm just going to go to that tone. So when we're sound checking in the studio, I say to those guys, "Hey, can we just do a pass?" I think we did “Careful” first and, because we were getting sounds, I took out the steel string, and I went back into the control room and I said, "Is it okay with you guys if I play steel string the whole record?" And they were like, "Fine."

Then I just relaxed because I said, "There's no way I'm going to sound like Jim." Not that I would ever sound like Jim anyway, but this way I felt like I could just be me and give it a little different hit on the tunes, just sonically. 

Fretboard Journal: It worked.

SC: I think it did.

FJ: The strange thing is, because I discovered it after Somewhere Else, listening to it, I was like, this almost sounds less like them than the album of material that's not in the Giuffre/Hall oeuvre at all.

SC: Exactly.

So going back a little to the origins of the group, Ben and I started compiling Jim Hall charts, transcribing some stuff and then it was Ben's idea to say, "Hey, what do you think about doing a couple of the Giuffre tunes?" I really love "The Train and the River" and "Pony Express," so he transcribed those.

I mean, we didn't want it to come off as trying to do what they did because they already did it so well. So even when we did those tunes, it's a little... It's just kind of like taking the main themes because, when you listen to their versions, they go off into other... It's kind of truly composed stuff. Sometimes you can't even tell if it's improvisation because they're just so kind of telepathic with each other.

Then Ben would just kind of come up with a little different arrangement. Like I think on "Pony Express" we just kind of went free. We got to the solos and just opened it up and some of that stuff was just happening in the studios because we didn't really formulate a plan other than, "Hey, let's get in there and just see what happens." And then if we're feeling something going a certain direction, we can say, "Hey, let's keep going." Like do another take and keep going with that idea, whatever. It was a really natural and yet exploratory process. 

FJ: You guys have been, the three of you, have been playing together in at least in Ben's projects and I guess a couple of Ted's solo projects too, right?

SC: Well, Ted has played, has a history with Ben that goes way back to the Jazz Composers Collective. And Ted has guested with Ben's band, like when we played in Brazil with this radio orchestra about 10+ years ago. I've been in Ben's band for 14 years now, but Ted hasn't been a member of any of those groups. So really I got to know Ted more through this group.

FJ: I guess he's on a couple of the Medicine Wheel records.

SC: Right, before my time.

When Ben decided to go with guitar...I like to hear him tell it cause it feels more like I'm bragging if I tell it. But I'll just go ahead and say... We met on a Millennial Territory gig, with Steven Bernstein — I would sub for Matt Munisteri sometimes. There were a couple tunes, you know, guitar-featured, and I think maybe I quoted "Come Together" at the end of one (singing). Ben told me that when he heard me do that, he said, "I want to start a band with that guy."

FJ: Now, the first record is technically a Ben Allison record, and the second one [Somewhere Else: West Side Story Songs] is Ted Nash…

SC: [At first] Ben basically led the trio and it was asked... So yeah, it made sense for him to be leader.

Then Ted had the idea. It was Leonard Bernstein's hundredth birthday that year, and we had a trip to Cuba. The original idea was that Ted thought, "We're going to do this trip to Cuba. We've been playing Jim's music for a while. I was thinking maybe with Bernstein's hundredth year we could do West Side Story." So for that Cuba trip, we put that music together. And we did it and then people were coming up to us, "You got to record this stuff." And you’re, like, "Yeah, maybe we should."

We got together even before the trip, and Ted brought the full score. So we're all sitting around going, "How are we going to distill this for trio and not lose the essence of the music, and still make it our own?" So with those questions asked, we just said, "Hey, let's just dive in and treat them like we do everything else." Just make it kind of how we play the themes but figure out how what we want to do for the improvisational aspect of it. And so each of us took three or four tunes, and we got together, tweaked things.

FJ: I'm going to have to go back and listen to it more carefully and see if I can figure out whose was whose.

SC: You won't figure it out. Well, I'll give you a clue, though. On "Maria," Ben had written out a chart to that, and it was fairly scripted — the chords, the changes, the tune. He had sort of a Latin-esque feel on it, but loose. We were getting ready to record that tune, and Ted was kind of getting his sounds on clarinet and I just... There's a riff that starts at the beginning of that tune that I do. It's just this thing. I don't know how to describe it. But Ben starts playing the groove in C, and I just play this thing, it even has a C sharp. It's almost like a G Lydian sound, but it's this amorphous tonality. It sounds like it's in C, but it's almost like the Lennie Tristano stuff, where the chromaticism somehow still sounds like it's in the tonality.

And so Ted goes, "I like that, keep doing that." And we just did a take just winging it, totally open. Ted improvised, played a little bit in the melody, and that's the take that's on the record.

FJ: This is going a little off-topic, but was there any thought about some of the classic West Side Story interpretations like Oscar Peterson's...

SC: I listened to Gary Burton's old version of "Something's Coming" from the early ‘60s with Jim Hall and [Steve] Swallow on an upright. It might be Larry Bunker on drums, I can't remember.

FJ: How'd you find that?

SC: The record's called Something's Coming, and I think somebody had ripped it off vinyl. This was years ago. With that stuff I was just kind of like, "Well if I can't buy it anyway, I'm just going to download this," viruses and all.

But I do believe I've since bought it, because now the files are much nicer sounding, and you can get it.

It's really cool. I transcribed their version of ["Something’s Coming"], but they depart so much from the original that it's almost like the only information from the original that's really there is just melody, not much of the harmony, a little bit in the beginning…

FJ: Compared to the Yes version?

SC: Yeah! So, when we got together, I had brought that and then I also transcribed just kind of what would be my own kind of vision on it, which was simple. I think that was kind of the key, that we decided pretty quickly, now let's just do our own thing. Because our tendency is to kind of honor what's there and open it up in our own way.

FJ: Because it was obviously not in the "Easy Way" tradition. Is that why you felt more comfortable going back to the electric?

SC: Yeah, absolutely. I didn't want to do the same thing, and after we did the Cuba gig I realized that electric was going to be a little more lush. The music is so separate from the Jim Hall stuff...

FJ: I guess it kind of needs the sustain of an electric guitar…

SC: It does, it really does. I didn't even play one acoustic tune on that. I just didn't feel like it needed it.

"The Easy Way." Ben was kind of looking through Giuffre's records, and he liked the name of that record and he just...

So this gets into the topic of whose band is it? Now we're kind of feeling like it's all of ours and depending on... So the way we do it now is whoever gets the gig, whoever comes up with an idea for recording, that's who the band leader is. So it's really a collective. I really, at this point, feel like it's more Ben and Ted's because I haven't come up with my own thing. I just did a new record of my own, a separate project.

FJ: The Easy Way thing. I thought that was chosen because that's the bass, guitar, sax/clarinet... Anyway, I'm sort of developing this little obsession when I'm writing about players: who's a really good band leader for guitar players? Jimmy Giuffre is obviously one…

SC: Chico Hamilton, Gary Burton…

FJ: Steven Bernstein's come up a couple of times, Brian Blade, Scott Amendola… There are these people that just seem to keep coming up.

SC: That seem to know whether they're writing their own music or just formulating the concept for the band with other music. They seem to have a sense of how a guitar will work in their band, and they utilize it to its fullest.

FJ: Is that what you think lends the Giuffre music to this format that you guys have chosen or...

SC: So, there's kind of like two periods, right? I consider... even though there was the guitar, bass and clarinet and saxophone and then there's guitar, trombone and saxophone, but because Jim was in all of that, I kind of considered that it's just a variation [of one band]. And then you got the Paul Bley and Swallow period, which is a bit more, you know… Now I forgot your original question.

FJ: What do you think it is about Jimmy's work that lends itself to making, letting guitar players shine?

SC: Honestly, I think it was Jim. I totally get what you're saying, and I think there's probably truth to that with Giuffre's music. But I also think that Jim, just the kind of musician and player that Jim was, was probably the impetus for that.

Jim was, when you think about it...I mean, it's no secret that Frisell was influenced by Jim, as pretty much all the… like Scofield and Metheny and all those guys, Abercrombie ... When listening to the Giuffre music in particular, the jazz guitar playing within a folk style, it's kind of the first time that emerges as far as I can tell.

FJ: Yeah, especially in the Western Suite stuff.

SC: Right. That really set the stage for, to me, this expansive concept of what jazz guitar is instead of just being... I mean, Jim was still playing an archtop box, but it wasn't all bebop or just... He didn't even see himself as a bebop musician, anyway. He said he thought of himself more as a swing musician.

FJ: The other weird thing is Julian [Lage]’s last record has "Trudgin'" on it, which is from the Paul Bley/Steve Swallow group. Julian was talking about how he's kind of more into the improvisational music these days. So I think that later period stuff kind of has a little bit more... He was loathe to mention... It seemed almost like he was trying not to say "free jazz."

SC: Well, because that's a funny term. I think when people say free jazz... Because I won't. I'll talk about this at workshops sometimes because what do you think of? It's always... People think it's atonal and loud. It's like, "No, 'free' just means that you're making it up." So you can have parameters, you can have tonality. Actually, you need all the options. You need to choose tonality if you want or not. You need to use dynamics, extensively... timbre, colors. That's the thing, it's always thought of as avant-garde, out, and, no, that's one little area.

FJ: It can almost sound composed sometimes. Ornette had songs that have themes that come back and have, almost, a structure to them….

SC: We have a free tune on my new record that … we did four different takes. All I did was write this [three-note] figure that just goes (singing) and that kicks it off. I just wanted something that bookended, that was really short and just... each take we did, we were having so much fun we did four takes. But it was the fourth one, we just hit this thing, and it's referencing a little of Miles [Davis], but there's stuff that happens and I'm just like, "How did we do that?" I mean, it sounds like we wrote that. It’s when you listen to each other.

FJ: Especially if you're playing with musicians that you've developed a vocabulary with and a chemistry with. 

SC: Absolutely.

FJ: It’s almost impossible to totally have a disconnection, that kind of thing. I guess people think that, especially, like some of the Sonny Sharrock stuff that's just a wall of sound…

SC: I love that stuff. But that's one area of that. On the Jim Hall/Metheny record that they did, they do these things on "Improvisation No. 1" and "No. 2"…those are improvisations! And there's a couple of those that are astounding how they're completely following each other tonally, and going through all these little wormholes. Their instincts are just so developed at that point, especially Jim, that they could follow each other on a dime… or smaller than a dime.