Jimmy Giuffre 3 Dept. - The Train & The River

Reid Miles' original, unused cover design

This album has had a confusing history of releases, under different titles and covers, but the story is more complicated than even the scattered Discogs listings suggest. Reid Miles, the graphic designer whose bold style revolutionized the way jazz was presented, tells the story in his autobiography Cover Story [Alfred A. Knopf, 1968 - Ed.]:

"The original title of the album was The Train And The River, and that was the brief I worked to, credited to The Jimmy Giuffre 3, and I had to work in the names of the other two guys, Ralph Peña and Jim Hall. So I got in touch with Winston Link, the railroad photographer, and asked him if he had any suitable shots, and he sent over some contact sheets, and I chose one with a locomotive steaming over a river, great shot, beautifully lit, and used that for the layout. What I didn't know is that Giuffre, whom I never met, wanted the album title to be changed to The Jimmy Giuffre 3, to make more of his name.

Then I showed the proofs to Winston Link, and he objected to me removing the car from under the bridge [left - Ed.], which was crazy, it really affected the focus of the design. The album wasn't called The Car Under The Bridge. Retouching had to be done by hand in those days, and I used ink and a brush, but Link wasn't happy, I hadn't asked him, and he made a point of it, but by the time his objection got through to the right desk at Atlantic, they'd gone with Giuffre's title change and sourced a cheesy group shot for the cover, so I quit. It was one of my real regrets, it was a nice image."

Luckily, the music is unchanged (although different editions have different track lists), and here's some screed what I prepared earlier:

Airy, zen-like minimalism. Not only are there no keyboards, but there's no drummer. Bass, guitar, reed, and that's it. Bearing in mind there was no click track back then coming over the non-existent headphones, the way these guys kept to the (often complex) beat is nothing short of telepathic. There have been other drummer-free combos (The Hot Club Of France, for one), but they've tended to compensate for the lack of percussive timekeeping with strong rhythm guitar/keyboards. Here, the musicians are continuously floating around each other, keeping that invisible beat between them. None of them is plodding away like a metronome - they're playing with the beat, dancing with it, passing it around, never nailing it down. And they're having an incredible time, reveling in each other's virtuosity. What a gorgeous sound!

 

This post funded by Aetheric Communications Corp, Blavatsky, CT.