The making of a masterpiece 💫

 

“ Again, Giuffre listened to the playback with his eyes half shut. This time Swallow’s eyes were on him, as they had been while they were playing. Suddenly everyone realized that all three of them at one point had spontaneously fallen into playing a little traditional jazz phrase. “Yeah that’s a good figure there,” said Bley quietly. Later he turn­ed to Swallow. “You see, when we set him up, that Giuffre really plays a good solo.” They laughed and then listened carefully to the way Bley had finished the piece with an unusual sound from the piano.

“We ought to end with that,” said Giuffre.

Creed: “You mean end the record!”

“Yes,” said Giuffre and Swallow in unison.

Giuffre looked at his watch. “Hey, we’ve still got the studio for half an hour, haven’t we, Dick? Let’s hear it all back again. We’re all finished. We’ll call this album Thesis.”

“Finished now”!”

“Sure. After all, we only did one piece twice; there isn’t much choice to make, and there’s no editing. I’ll spell it for you. F-i-n-i-s-h-e-d.””

This is an extract from an old review (click here for the complete essay) from BBC Jazz Journal magazine… 

I wrote about the ECM double-vinyl set sometimes in the past and I’ve been chatting on the matter with a gentleman and Blog reader, Mr. Alun Severn, who so gladly found and brought to my and all attention this great insight about Jimmy Giuffre, Paul Bley and Steve Swallow’s day in the studio.

Alun was speculating about the sometimes wobbly, always different sound of recording and he found that the hiiigh ceiling of the Olmstead’s studio and moving around musicians made it so lively… real people in a real venue masterfully captured my cleverly positioned microphones.

Anyhow, this music was made possible by the individual sensibility of three young men interacting and listening to each other’s… and preserved on record for posterity…

It’s a matter of fact that this discs were so profoundly influential to Manfred Eicher for the aesthetic of his new-born ECM, Bach in 1969!

… and he was wealthy, he paid kudos to this masterpiece, reissuing on ECM, in gorgeous form.

I truly hope this post call for new listeners to this music 💫🥇💎💫

Thanks again to Alun and to Jazz Journal 🙏