"Jimmy Giuffre used to play mostly in the lower register on the clarinet and rarely went above the break--the end of the first register. We used to kid him by saying, 'When are you going to play above the break?,' which is a big step when you're learning the clarinet. Jimmy laughed and said, 'I'm working my way up.' He loved that soft sound."
--Lennie Niehaus [pictured in 1954], during a phone conversation with Marc Myers in March 2010.
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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