Dave Brubeck

"Colonel William G. Bass: Well, I met Coach Taber. He won't let blacks play on his team. The way I see it, if these boys can fight a war together, they can play football together. Now, he's a pretty good runner. "- from the motion picture Remember the Titans

I have been listening to Dave Brubeck for a while. Even if you are not an acoustic jazz aficionado you might have heard Take 5 or some other Brubeck songs Woody Allen sneaks into his movies I had no idea he was a Rosa Parks like figure. And I was also surprised to know he is still among the living. So let me pay a small tribute to him while he is still among us. If by any chance you do not know who Rosa Parks is, please do your humanity a favor and read up on her courageous story.

You do not have to be a jazz nut to appreciate his stuff. A lot of it quite accessible . His quartet probably laughed at the time all that unplugged stuff was in fashion in the 90s. Hope you get something out it.

Ed

http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2006-11/Dave_Brubeck.html

DAVE BRUBECK:

Ambassador of Cool

By Meredith Hindley

From the opening bars of the Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five," listeners are swept away by a swinging beat, a lilting piano line, and a sax that has been described as the perfect dry martini. Released in 1959, "Take Five" became the best selling jazz single of all time, ensuring Brubeck and his West Coast jazz sound a permanent place in the American soundtrack.

There is more to Brubeck, however, than the essence of cool in a melody. "The Times of Dave Brubeck," a new traveling exhibition by the College of the Pacific Library, shows another side of Brubeck as a champion of social equality.

"He maintained his level as a musician while also being a humanitarian," says Michael Wurtz, the archivist who oversees the College of the Pacific's Brubeck Collection. "It's rare for musicians to do that. It's either one or the other."

Brubeck learned to play the piano from his mother, a pianist and music teacher, and by the time he was in his teens, he was playing professionally with local dance bands. After graduating from the College of the Pacific, Brubeck was drafted into the army in 1942, leading a service band that was part of George Patton's Third Army.

Brubeck followed up his army stint with graduate work at Mills College in Oakton, California, studying under Darius Milhaud, a French composer known for developing polytonality, the use of different keys simultaneously. With Milhaud's encouragement, Brubeck began to compose and formed the Dave Brubeck Octet, playing a style of jazz that reflected his interest in polytonality and polyrhythm.

"I always wanted to try and develop the idea of playing in two keys or three keys at the same time," explains Brubeck on an audio track that is part of the exhibition. "With a piano, you divide your left hand, which usually keeps the original key, and with your right hand you develop a new key." Brubeck's compositions also stood out for their use of complex time signatures. Rather than use a traditional 3/4 or 4/4 beats per measure, Brubeck used 5/4, 9/8, 11/4, and 7/4.

In 1951, he formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond on saxophone. The quartet quickly gained a following among jazz critics and fans. By 1954, Brubeck had become the master of West Coast jazz, landing him on the cover of Time magazine, the first for a jazz musician. Not everyone, however, dug Brubeck's sound. Some critics deemed it too intellectual and too removed from the tradition and passion of New Orleans and New York-based jazz. Despite the naysayers, Brubeck's popularity continued to grow. In 1959, the quartet released Time Out, featuring the iconic "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo."

Brubeck used his fame to champion civil rights and democracy. He believed that the jazz community-and his racially mixed quartet-offered an alternative to segregated America. "Jazz," he wrote in 1961, "reflects the American ideal of social equality with its own musical framework."

He battled with clubs and campuses in the South who wanted to hear his quartet's music, but would not allow African-American bass player Eugene Wright to play. In 1960, Brubeck cancelled a twenty-five date tour of the South at a major financial loss when only two colleges would allow the quartet to perform. "If Brubeck's stance," observed the Pittsburgh Courier, "doesn't serve as a step to be taken by other mixed groups who face segregation in the South, it should become a yardstick by which to measure their consciences."

Brubeck's devotion to civil rights also influenced his work. Collaborating with his wife Iola, he wrote The Ambassadors (1960), a musical that tells the story of Louis Armstrong's experiences-some demeaning, some heartening-as he toured the world as a jazz ambassador. The writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., also served as the inspiration for an oratorio, The Gates of Justice (1969), and a cantata, Truth Is Fallen (1971).

Like Armstrong, Brubeck served as a jazz ambassador. At the behest of the State Department, the Dave Brubeck Quartet went on a three-month tour in 1958, performing in Poland, Turkey, Pakistan, Ceylon, Iran, and Iraq. "At last a jazz dish of the greatest quality," proclaimed a Warsaw newspaper after one of their performances.

The Voice of America's music programs had created an appetite for jazz behind the Iron Curtain and in the Third World, but for Brubeck the tour was not just about connecting with fans. It offered an opportunity to show a better vision of America. Writing for the New York Times Magazine about his tour experience, Brubeck observed:

Jazz is color blind. When a German or a Pole or an Iraqi and an Indian sees American white men and colored in perfect creative accord, when he finds out that they travel together, eat together, live together, and think pretty much alike, socially and musically, a lot of the bad taste of Little Rock is apt to be washed from his mouth.

For Brubeck, jazz also represented freedom with a capital "F." It was not a coincidence, he believed, that dictatorships in Europe outlawed jazz-or that when freedom returned, so did the playing of jazz. "Musically, by its very nature, it is the most creative, the freest and the most democratic form of expression I know."

Despite touring Communist Europe, Brubeck did not perform in the Soviet Union until 1987 after the signing of a new cultural treaty. For decades, Soviet cultural apparatchiks had derided jazz as "revolting rubbish" and barred its performance. The following year, Brubeck returned to the Soviet Union, this time as part of President Ronald Reagan's landmark trip to Moscow. Secretary of State George Schultz believed Brubeck's performance, which had both Soviet and American officials tapping their toes, helped break the ice between the two governments.

While Brubeck made his mark during the heyday of the West Coast jazz movement of the 1950s and 1960s, successive decades have taken him in other directions. The Dave Brubeck Quartet broke up in 1967, but Brubeck continued to perform with a quartet, even being joined by his sons in recent years. He also drew on his classical music training, composing orchestral works and a ballet. This past fall, the Monterey Jazz Festival featured the debut of the Brubeck-penned Cannery Row Suite, a jazz opera based on Steinbeck's novel.

To create the exhibition, the College of the Pacific's Library drew on the more than 350-plus linear feet of papers, photos, memorabilia, and audio recordings that comprise its Brubeck Collection.

The exhibition, which has already traveled to the University of Michigan and was featured at the Monterey Public Library during its jazz festival, is scheduled to visit California public libraries in 2007.

Meredith Hindley is a writer for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The University of the Pacific Library received $9,273 from NEH to support the creation of "The Times of Dave Brubeck" traveling exhibition.

Humanities

, November/December 2006, Volume 27/Number 6

http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo17/dave_brubeck.htm

Dave Brubeck

Biography, CDs and concert review
For sheet music by HYPERLINK "http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/a/phrase.html?id=56490&phrase=dave%20brubeck"Dave Brubeck click here
Article added on July 10, 2001

CDs by Dave Brubeck


Dave Brubeck: Double Live - From The USA & UK. 2 CDs, Telarc, 2001. Get it from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr or Amazon.de. The Double-CD gives the best possible impression of the level on which Brubeck and his Quartet still perform today. Although at the concert in Lucerne in 2001, the program was largely different, the overall musical-impression was comparable. The Double-CD includes Take Five, Broadway Bossa Nova and Take the A Train.


Ken Burns Jazz Collection: Dave Brubeck. Sony/Columbia, 2000. Get it from Amazon.com. The 15 tracks naturally include his best known recordings such as Take Five (Desmond), The Duke (Brubeck), In Your Own Sweet Way (Brubeck) and Blue Rondo a la Turk (Brubeck).


Dave Brubeck: The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall. 2 CDs, Sony/Columbia, 2001. Get it from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Directmedia Schweiz.


Dave Brubeck: Time Out. Sony/Columbia, 1997 (1959). Get it from Amazon.com or Directmedia Schweiz. The re-edition of the original album that includes the first jazz instrumental to sell over a million copies: Take Five.

Biography of Dave Brubeck

Dave (David Warren) Brubeck was born in Concord, California, on December 6, 1920. Until the age of 11, he received early training in classical music from his mother, a pianist and teacher. Two of Dave's brothers are music teachers and four of his sons are professional jazz musicians.

By the age of 13, Dave was performing professionally with local jazz groups. He received a B.A. in music from the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He studied composition with the classical composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California. From 1940-42 he played in The Band That Jumps. Then he joined the army and played with the Wolf Pack Band in Europe (1944-45). After discharge, he went back to study with Milhaud between 1946-49. With fellow students, Dave founded the experimental Jazz Workshop Ensemble which started recording in 1949 as the Dave Brubeck Octet. It included Paul Desmond (Paul Emil Breitenfeld: 1924-77), Cal Tjader and Bill Smith.

In 1949, Dave created the Dave Brubeck Trio with smooth-swinging bassist Gene Wright and hard-swinging drummer Joe Morello. In 1951, with the addition of the lyrical and witty alto saxophonist Paul Desmond , it became the famous original Dave Brubeck Quartet (1951-67). It was one of the most popular jazz groups of all time, selling millions of records. In 1954, Brubeck even made the cover of Time magazine. The LP Time Out, recorded and released in 1959, was the first jazz album to sell over one million copies.

Despite his popularity, Brubeck was an experimental musician who introduced unusual time signatures such as 5/4, 5/8, 9/8, 7/4 and 11/4 to jazz. Paul Desmond's Take Five is in 5/4 metre. It was relased together with Brubeck's Blue Rondo a la Turk in 9/8 metre, grouped 2+2+2+3, on Time Out.

In 1959, Brubeck appeared with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic orchestra. In the early 1960s, he began to compose extended works including Points on Jazz for the American Ballet and the musical theater piece The Real Ambassadors, written with the help of his wife Iola, a lyricist.

In 1967 Brubeck disbanded the Dave Brubeck Quartet to concentrate on composing. In 1968, he formed a new quartet that included the more swinging Gerry Mulligan in place of the retiring Paul Desmond as well as Alan Dawson and Jack Six. They played together until 1972. Then, Dave began to play with his sons Darius (keyboards), Dan (drums) and Chris (bass guitar and bass trombone). They stayed together until 1974. Again, Brubeck retired to write extended works, including the oratorio The Light in the Wilderness.

From 1977 to 1979, Dave formed a new quartet with Jack Six, Rand Jones and Bill Smith (clarinet) or Bob Militello (reeds). In 1987, Brubeck composed and performed music for the papal visit. He has also played for every American president since John F. Kennedy. From the 1980s on, Dave received numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement award in 1996 from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

In 1995, in celebration of his 75th birthday, Brubeck played two concerts in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. He performed an hour-long Mass, To Hope! (A Celebration) and premiered the choral work This Is the Day.

In his career, Dave Brubeck has collaborated with Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae, Jimmy Rushing and many others.

Brubeck's piano style is described by Feather/Gitler as "heavy in touch and thick with complex harmonies [which] evolved in later years into a richer more melodic, but no less provocative, form of expression".

As the concert in Lucerne proved (see the review on the right), Brubeck still plays at his best and continues to compose. According to his manager, an album with new compositions is to be recorded this fall.

Biographical sources: Grove Online; Leonard Feather/Ira Gitler: The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz.