Nels Cline on Jim Hall & The Jimmy Giuffre 3

Extras from my recent Aquarium Drunkard interview

Last week, Aquarium Drunkard published an interview I did with Nels Cline called “The Telepathy Is Evident.” In it, the Wilco guitarist shared some fascinating thoughts about his new album with the Consentrik Quartet and some of the contents of his old Case Logic CD book.

“I started listening to The Jimmy Giuffre 3, the 1961 version, in the ‘70s, when I became aware of Paul Bley. I became a Paul Bley fanatic. So when I learned he and Steve Swallow were in Giuffre’s group—their record Fusion, on Verve, it’s still a desert island disc for me. The writing is so concise and the aesthetic is so dialed in. The telepathy is so evident and it has this restrained quality and instant compositional aspect that makes it, I think, just a go-to listen almost any time, an ‘always be inspired’ kind of recording. And then the two records with that band are equally important to me.

And then years later, ECM released the first two Verve records on a double CD called 1961, and did a lovely remastering job. And that was something that I traveled with back in the day when we used to travel with CD wallets and stuff, that along with Ravel and Erik Satie piano music, those were things I always had with me on tour as a kind of oasis.”

In a fit of ridiculous bravado, I ended that interview with a suggestion that Cline and Consentrik Quartet cover Jim Hall’s “Young One, For Debra.” It’s a song I’ve brought up to another one of my other favorite guitarists, Mark Lightcap of Acetone and Dick Slessig Combo. That kicked off an interesting back and forth with Cline that wound up on the cutting room floor, which I’m pleased to share here.

“That’s an interesting one to keep in mind for the Quartet. I hate the ritual encore thing, but sometimes you can play a real encore. And it's nice to pull something else out of your that like that.

On the Jim Hall front, I don't know if you've heard this record These Rooms. It's on the Denon jazz label from Japan. You'd have to get a compact disc of it, but maybe it's streaming somewhere?

[Editor’s note: It’s not streaming readily, but you can find selections on YouTube]

I think it's a masterpiece. It’s a very long jazz compact disc. This is another record that I always traveled with, It’s got Joey Baron on drums, Steve LaSpina on bass, and Jim, and then there's this Danish saxophone player who's on some of the tracks, Tom Harrell.”

“The record is stylistically all over the place, it’s almost like chamber music, and then there’s a totally straight ahead ballad, and then kind of a Latin song, and then a really open, super-advanced structural head scratcher. There's a lot of beautiful music on that.”

“Around the same time, he did a record called Subsequently. I highly recommend that as well. That's with Larry Goldings on Hammond organ and piano; Terry Clarke’s on drums. Steve LaSpina on bass. Rasmus Lee is this Danish tenor player—he’s on a few tracks. And that's another really, really cool forward-leaning Jim Hall record from around that same time.”

Consentrik Quartet is now available from Blue Note Records and unlike that first Jim Hall recommendation, it can be streamed wherever.