Jimmy Giuffre’s album Western Suite was recorded on December 3, 1958 in NYC and Connecticut, produced by Nesuhi Ertegun, and released on the Atlantic label (LP1330) in 1960. Giuffre plays clarinet, tenor saxophone, and baritone saxophone with Jim Hall on guitar and Bob Brookmeyer on piano, and valve trombone. It’s in the cool jazz style.
Thom Jurek of Allmusic wrote this about the release:
Giuffre, ever the storyteller, advanced the improvisation angle and wrote his score so that each player had to stand on his own as part of the group; there were no comfort zones. Without a rhythm section, notions of interval, extensions, interludes, and so on were out the window. He himself played some of his most retrained yet adventurous solos in the confines of this trio and within the form of this suite. It swung like West Coast jazz, but felt as ambitious as Copland’s Billy the Kid”.
The structure of the album has the first half, the title track “Western Suite,” featuring a “country music/folk-inspired suite,” by Giuffre and the second half a version of the standard “Topsy” (Edgar Battle, Eddie Durham) and Monk’s “Blue Monk.”
This one is really worth a close listen and must have been a bear to improvise on without a rhythm section.