I studied with Giuffre privately for about 6 years on and off. I studied jazz sax and composition and occasionally, clarinet. Giuffre was the first teacher I ever had who told me to call him by his first name. Jimmy was not an especially warm person, and he insisted on doing things his way. Once I complained to him that he was spending too much time on embouchure. Jimmy said quietly, "There are a lot of other saxophone teachers out there you could go to." That was the end of my complaining. Jimmy believed in detailed study. We spent a lot of time working on phrasing jazz tunes. It was kind of cute that we took turns playing chord changes on the piano. He was a very rudimentary-level pianist. We taped all the lessons - kind of a rarity back then. Jimmy was the first (and one of the few) teachers who treated me as a colleague. Even though I was just a teenager, he considered me a fellow-musician. Jimmy emphasized the beauty of music rather than precision and skill. This had a huge impact on me. Jimmy was one of the few teachers who played with his students - a lot. This way I had his beautiful sound as a model. In some ways, the problem that we had was that he was from an earlier generation. He sometimes came off as an old-school hipster. He had no interest in, say, Frank Zappa. and in the late 60s he wasn't part of the current jazz-rock scene. In fact, he wasn't performing too much then and it wasn't very high quality, either. Despite his lack of warmth on a personal level, Jimmy was the sort of person who was there when you needed him. He was very helpful to me when I didn't have too much money. He gave me a free lesson once, and he let me sit in regularly with his NYU band. In his own way, he gave me a lot of confidence in my ability.Jimmy Giuffre's music is neglected in jazz history. Also neglected and nearly forgotten are his colleagues George Handy (1920-1997), George Russell (whose ex-wife Juanita became Mrs. Giuffre), John Benson Brooks, Teddy Charles and John Carisi - all first-rate jazz composers with big ears whose heyday was the 1950s.