Who Is Dave Brubeck?

Dave Brubeck came out of rural northern California, an idealistic and brilliant young pianist, composer and band leader. He rose to prominence in the 1950s during the great popular surge of interest in modern jazz as the leader of the most popular quartet in the business, featuring alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Their sound, combining Desmond's airy improvisations and Brubeck's harmonically rich compositions converted millions, largely college students, to a love of the artform.

To this large sector of the public Brubeck became synonymous with modern jazz. To many New York based critics, however, he represented a more conservative jazz rooted in European classical music. Actually, as Len Lyons points out, he was neither: rather a strong original voice in jazz who preferred harmonic and rhythmic complexity to melodic pyrotechnics. His stylistic trademark was his "ever-spreading, steadily thickening blockbuster chords." (Lyons, 103)

Brubeck is one of the outstanding jazz composers to emerge since the Second World War, counting oratorios and orchestral and ballet scores among his accomplishments. Paul Desmond shared the spotlight with Brubeck for 17 years in the Brubeck Quartet, and he never sounded as good outside of it. Numerous pianists including Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Cecil Taylor claimed Brubeck as a major influence from the late 40s on. He created some of the best, most original, and most popular jazz to emerge in the 50s and 60s.

Brubeck has won many polls: Down Beat, Metronome, Esquire. He was, along with Louis Armstrong, the first musician elected to Playboy's Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1960, despite his record company's misgivings, he scored with a million-selling jazz instrumental, Time Out, insuring him both jazz immortality and the suspicion of many critics and fans conditioned to the minority of their musical tastes.

He became one of the best known and most beloved jazz pianists, contributing a number of compositions to the repertoire which have become jazz standards, notably "Take Five" (composed by Paul Desmond), "Blue Rondo a la Turk," "In Your Own Sweet Way," and "The Duke." His quartet was one of the longest-running jazz groups in the business performing from 1951 to 1967. After it disbanded he began playing not only with other recognized players, but with his own sons, who have staked out recordings careers on their own.

Origins

David Warren Brubeck was born in the small town of Concord, California (pop. 12,000), a little north of Oakland December 6, 1920. His mother's father was from Cornwall, England, her mother was Eastern European. His father was of German descent, with possibly some Modoc Indian, and a champion rodeo roper. His mother had intentions of becoming a concert pianist and studied with the famous Tobbias Matthay (1858-1945) in England. Matthay was the originator of the method of touch on the piano which produced a large, warm tone.

At one time the Brubecks owned five pianos. Dave was playing by age four, but preferred to pick out his own melodies rather than to learn by any method. He got quite good at this, and so managed to avoid learning to read music.

His father managed a 45,000 acre cattle ranch (25 miles across at some places), and Dave, the youngest of three brothers, acquired all the skills of a cowboy: riding, roping, branding and tending sick cattle. He even had decided to go into veterinary medicine at one point, telling his pianist mother: "Ma, you've got two musicians; I want to be a cattleman." (Time, 69) His father gave him four Holstein cows when he graduated grammar school to prepare him for his would-be future career. Later when times got tough Brubeck always knew he had a place to come back to, and knew he had an income waiting for him in cattle rearing if he wanted to give up music.

Education

Brubeck attended the College (now University) of the Pacific, majoring in pre-med. There the head of the zoology department, perceiving where Brubeck's really passion lay, told him to give up science for music. Meanwhile he met his future wife, Iola Marie Whitlock, a theater and speech major, who was the codirector of the campus radio, where he played for a weekly show.

Brubeck changed majors, but he was still shy about it, since he had never learned to read music. His oldest brother Henry, 11 years his senior had graduated as a violin and percussion major and was already teaching. His middle brother Howard was also an outstanding musician. He wrote "Dialogue for Jazz Combo and Symphony Orchestra" which Dave performed with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1959. Dave felt he had to hide his reading handicap, out of fear of disgracing his family.

Nearly Blocked from Graduation

Brubeck was gigging at night, getting little sleep, then falling asleep in class. Fellow students told the story that when their ear training professor would play a progression that no one could identify, he'd tell someone to "wake up Brubeck." Then when the chord was played Brubeck would identify it as the opening chord of a particular tune, but not be able to name it. Finally a piano teacher he liked realized after five minutes with him that he couldn't read music. She told the dean, who told Brubeck he was a disgrace to the conservatory and that he would not let him graduate. When his counterpoint, ear-training and harmony teachers found out, they went to the dean and told him he was making a mistake, that he was one of their most talented students and had written the best counterpoint of anyone. So the dean made a bargain with him: Brubeck could graduate if he agreed never to teach. Brubeck agreed, graduated, and was immediately drafted (Lees, 46).

The Army

Drafted into the army in 1942, Brubeck stayed for 46 months. He was immediately put into a band and married Iola on a three-day pass. Right before D-Day (June 6, 1944) the band was mobilized into the infantry and Brubeck was shipped overseas as a rifleman. He arrived three months after the landing and was immediately sent into action with Patton's Third Army near Verdun, France. He was there during the Battle of the Bulge. It was a very confusing time, with the front moving back and forth around him. At one point the Germans had come through in U.S. uniforms and killed many U. S. soldiers. Brubeck found himself behind German lines and had to convince U. S. troops that he was a genuine American in order to get back. Luckily he came up with the right password at that moment and was admitted.

He was playing in a band entertaining the battle-weary front line troops, who only accepted the entertaimnet because most of his band members were wearing Purple Hearts. His musical involvement may have saved his life. He spent the rest of the war in the band, integrating it, making it possibly the first integrated unit in World War II. When the Radio City Rockettes came over to entertain and tour Europe, Brubeck's band was tapped to accompany them, and their accommodations went from misery to luxury overnight.

Studies with Milhaud

Once out of the army, Brubeck stayed focused on making the most creative music he could, developing his considerable composing and arranging skills, rather than seeking commercial outlets. He had met Stan Kenton in 1943 in Los Angeles at NBC, while he was still in the army and given Kenton one of his arrangements. Kenton was touting himself as the purveyor of "progressive" jazz, although the term had little meaning for musicians. Kenton tried out the arrangement but found it too advanced for him and told Brubeck to bring it back in ten years.

From 1946 to 1949, taking advantage of the G. I. bill, Brubeck studied with the famous French composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland. Brubeck considered Milhaud the worldwide expert in polytonality and polyrythms, two areas of Brubeck's interest. Milhaud had also been the first composer to use jazz idioms in a classical setting in The Creation of the World in 1923, a year before Gershwin had used them in Rhapsody in Blue.

Milhaud respected the young Brubeck and took an interest in him. Brubeck studied fugue, counterpoint, and orchestration, but not piano. Milhaud knew he couldn't read, but admired his compositional talents, assuring him he would be successful, but in his own way. He said it was too late for Brubeck to acquire a European background. So Brubeck never played classical piano, although many critics pegged him as a classical pianist playing jazz. In fact, he was a jazz pianist making use of some of the more sophisticated techniques of contemporary serious composition. Havin acquired new skills and insights from Milhaud he needed an outlet to put them into practice.

The Octet

Brubeck formed an octet of some of the best players around, including Paul Desmond on alto sax, Dave van Kreidt on tenor, Cal Tjader on drums and the very creative Bill Smith on clarinet. They played Brubeck's Milhaud-inspired originals, Smith's arrangements in odd meters, and tried out other things, including a prepared piano set up by Smith. Smith later was one of the first people to experiment with synthesizers, electronically wiring the bell of a clarinet, and playing three notes at once on his horn.

"That was the trouble with the octet," said Brubeck. "We did this stuff and people thought we were insane....What do you do when you've got a group like that? You starve." The octet recorded, and some of its output is available today. It only had three paying jobs during its existence from 1947 to 1948, after which Brubeck created a trio out of the group's rhythm section and for years just played standards (Goldsmith, 30).

Brubeck Nearly Gives Up on Paul Desmond

During the time that Brubeck was studying with Milhaud he was working with a trio called the Three Ds, Dave, Darryl and Don. Paul Desmond came and sat in every night. Finally Desmond got his own gig at a place called the Band Box and hired Brubeck's bass player and the female vocalist away. Desmond offered Brubeck the piano chair at $42 a week, against the $100 he had been making at the other place. Since the other group was effectively dissolved Brubeck had to accept the gig, even though the money was too little to live on. Still, he enjoyed playing with Desmond. Then Desmond received an offer from the Feather River Inn, where he had easy access across the state line to Reno to gamble. Brubeck, realizing he couldn't go back to the other job told Desmond he was going to take over the Band Box gig and hire Bill Smith on clarinet. Desmond blew up at him: he was only going to Feather River for three months, and it was his gig; he had found it, and he wanted it waiting for him when he got back. But he never did come back; he went on the road with another band. Meanwhile, without a horn player, Brubeck lost the gig at the Band Box. He was out of a job and never wanted to see Paul Desmond again.

Brubeck landed a radio spot on NBC through San Francisco disk jockey Jimmy Lyons. He was beamed up and down the coast and out to sea, so that sailors heard him and came looking for him on his gig. The show was also syndicated, and Desmond heard it in New York. He made his way back to the Brubeck's house, and Iola let him in despite Dave's prohibition, since he was such a charmer and looked forlorn. Desmond was contrite, groveling if Brubeck would only let him back in the band. He offered to wash their car and baby-sit for them. Brubeck relented, and a few months later they got together and stayed together 17 years.

Brubeck Distances Himself from Bebop

Brubeck, influenced by Waller, Tatum, Ellington and Milhaud, was exploring ways to enrich jazz by studying the compositions of 20th century masters, and coming up with his own original formulations. Meanwhile, the bebop revolution was unfolding in New York. It had taken over the contemporary jazz sound while he had been overseas fighting the war, as he says it,

When I came back from the Army in '46, I came back to bebop. And everybody was chasing each other's tail, you know? If Parker hadn't played it, it wasn't worth playing. It was a sick kind of period for everybody but Parker and Miles and Dizzy. The rest were imitators, mostly, and I didn't want to get caught in that (Goldsmith, 30).

At one point he got a call from bassist, composer, band leader Charles Mingus who needed a piano player. When asked if he knew the "bebop" changes, Brubeck said he had no idea what was meant, so he was told just to play background and not take any solos. But at the first break Mingus told him he was the only guy there who could play. Later in the early 50s Mingus was quoted as saying that Brubeck was the only white guy out there not imitating somebody (Goldsmith, 30).

Unusual Meters

Although Brubeck's biggest seller, the 1960 LP Time Out, introduced the wider public to his metrical explorations, he had begun his odd-meter explorations much earlier. The Octet had recorded clarinetist Bill Smith's "Ipca" and "Schizophrenic Scherzo," which uses two against three and four against three respectively, and an arrangement of "What Is This Thing Called Love" with the bridge in 7/4. Brubeck also recorded the Livingston and Evans tune "Alice in Wonderland" in a combination of waltz and 4/4 time in 1949. No one paid it much attention, and Bill Evans did the same thing to great acclaim many years later. Evans always gave Brubeck credit for his originality, however, and recorded Brubeck's tunes "The Duke" and "In Your Own Sweet Way," among many other musicians who did.

Fantasy Records

In 1949, the Octet and Trio recorded for a label called Coronet, but the musicians were not paid for the session and the records were not released. Brubeck then went to his friends Sol and Max Weiss who gave him $400 to pay the owner of Coronet for the masters. This became the nucleus of the Fantasy label, and Brubeck managed to bring in top quality jazz artists to record for it, including vibist Red Norvo, Charles Mingus with guitarist Tal Farlow, and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. Brubeck was realizing a dream of having artistic control over a quality jazz label, and all because his groups hadn't been paid. Fantasy is now one of the biggest jazz labels in the world, with subsidiaries Pablo, Milestone and Riverside and a movie production house.

Accident in Hawaii

The Brubecks had been living in an apartment in San Francisco and wanted to buy a home there, but Dave got a gig at Zardi's in Los Angeles, and they moved into a rented two-room house on the beach in Santa Monica. Then they put a down-payment on a house in San Francisco and drove all night, Iola slapping his face all the way, to make the closing in the city, but when they got there the deal had collapsed. They now had no place to live, and their things were in storage.

Then a job came through at the Zebra Lounge in Honolulu, so it was off to Hawaii. They were so hard up they had to buy cut-rate cases of baby food which had been in a fire. But the children wouldn't eat it, so Dave wound up eating the burnt baby food himself in Honolulu.

The first week there he dove into a wave which suddenly disappeared, struck a sand bar with his head, and twisted his body. He sustained serious nerve damage, and ended up in traction in the hospital for 21 days. The Brubecks had to return to San Francisco, where Dave couldn't work because of his injury. Now he needed Desmond, since he was no longer capable of carrying off a trio by himself. He played fewer lines and more chords during his recovery, which lasted several years but did not tell anyone the reason at the time.

The Brubecks Move East

Tired of moving around, Brubeck told his lawyer he just wanted to stay in San Francisco and work local gigs. His lawyer wouldn't hear of it, however. Brubeck had split from Fantasy records, and his lawyer set him up with Columbia, whose president, Irving Townsend, offered Brubeck his rental home in Connecticut. The landlady welcomed artists, and there was a piano in every room. The Brubecks were finally comfortable for the first time.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet was by now a stable group. Paul Desmond insisted that Brubeck sign a contract with him (not the other way around), stating he'd never fire Desmond and that Desmond received 20% of everything. Desmond never signed anything with Brubeck, and he never looked at any contract. Desmond died in 1977, and left everything to the Red Cross, which still receives royalties on "Take Five" and the rest of his tunes.

Time Cover Story

Traveling around the country, frequently appearing at the Blackhawk in San Francisco or the Haig in Los Angeles, the Dave Brubeck Quartet gained notoriety, sold records and won magazine polls in the early 50s. Brubeck was on the cover of Time, November 8, 1954, heralding a new jazz age, especially among college students. The article, entitled "Man on Cloud No. 7" shows the young Brubeck with three of his four children, ages 2 1/2 to 7 on the first page and offers a snapshot of healthy state of jazz at the time. The text of the unsignedTime article is revealing on several fronts: it is full of the pretense of inside knowledge, yet betrays a deep ignorance about the current jazz scene, while trying to take on "hip" language. There is no indication that the writer is aware that jazz is a product of black culture, or that important black players such as Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver and Erroll Garner, were also quite active. But the article also indicates the widespread popularity of jazz at the time, heralding a second "jazz age" following the one during the 20s and 30s.

Pianist David Brubeck, described by fans as a wigging cat with a far out wail (an intellectual jazzman with an experimental or complex swinging beat) and by more conventional critics as probably the most exciting new jazz artist at work today, has strong ideas about how his audiences should behave while he plays. There should be no loud joking or talking; no table-hopping; no eating....Nowadays people listen.

They listen to some of the strangest and loveliest music ever played since jazz was born. They listen in garish cellars and august concert halls. They listened last summer in Los Angeles' Zardi's, last month in Boston's Storyville and Manhattan's Basin Street, and a fortnight ago they listened and cheered him in Carnegie Hall....[I]n a matter of five years Brubeck fans have grown from a small, West Coast clique to a coast-to-coast crowd-particularly on college campuses. What people hear and cheer in Brubeck is not only a new type of jazz. It is the same exuberance that is causing a tremendous boom in all types of jazz-the birth of a new kind of jazz age in the U. S.

The New Jazz Age. Across the U. S. the joints are really flipping. In Manhattan, clubs jumping again front-paged The Billboard. "A flock of nighteries and eateries have switched or converted to a jazz policy," specified Variety. The story is repeated in many cities.The new jazz age has impressed even such long- (and gray-) haired musicians as Pianist Artur Rubinstein. "The Americans are taking jazz very seriously," says he. "There is so much money in it" (67).

Notice that the implication is that the success of jazz comes at the cost of sales of classical music. The rock revolution, which would soon steal the college crowd, was still two years away. To a large extent the Brubeck Quartet galvanized broad interest in jazz the way Elvis Presley did for rock and roll, when he appeared on the national scene in 1956. The sad fact is that jazz never recovered its broad appeal once the simpler rock music had established itself in the public mind.

The Quartet Stabilizes

In 1956, Brubeck added drummer Joe Morello to the group, and in 1958, Eugene Wright on bass; these musicians along with Paul Desmond became the long-term members of the band. Just as he had done in the army and a number of times since then, Brubeck now had an integrated band (Wright is an African-American). He continued to fight racism, canceling 23 out of 25 concerts in the South because of objections to mixed bands, and refusing to do a Bell Telephone Hour on TV because the producers wanted to keep Wright off-camera. Duke Ellington got the job instead and never knew the circumstances.

Time Out Sells a Million

After more than a decade of experimenting with odd time signatures Brubeck decided that the jazz public was ready for an album which focused on them. Jazz was so overwhelmingly stuck on 4/4, descended as it is from ragtime and the march, that Brubeck wanted to shake things up a bit, open new perspectives. He met with resistance from his label, Columbia, as he tells it:

Even in the late 50s when we recorded Time Out , there was a lot of controversy over whether to ever release the album. We broke all the rules. An album with all originals. An album with a different concept, exploring odd time signatures. Using a painting on the cover. I wanted to use Joan Miro. Everything I was trying to do the sales people and the art people were all afraid of. And the day of the session, Goddard [Lieberson, president of Columbia records] said, "Give me 'Blue Rondo' and 'Take Five' today. I want to take those to the West Coast and try to get a single." Here's Lieberson that excited about the concept, and still it took them over two years to release that single. So this is what you're fighting with record companies. They wait till it's really safe. Now, let all the record companies think about Time Out. It broke every one of their so-called rules, and it was the first million-seller in jazz. It showed that the public is not stupid, that radio stations are not stupid. If the record market is not being manipulated, people will gravitate to things that are interesting....(Goldsmith, 40).

Brubeck's Jazz Standards

Brubeck's body of rich, outstanding compositions include such gems as "Weep No More," "One Moment Worth Years," "Strange Meadow Lark," "Bossa Nova, U. S. A.," "It's a Raggy Waltz," and "Two Part Contention," among many others. The hits of Time Out were "Take Five," a Paul Desmond composition, and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," included in this collection. But the Brubeck tunes which became jazz standards are "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke."

Brubeck wrote the first of these around 1953, when Desmond said after a concert that they needed some original material, so they should look for someone to write some. Brubeck immediately protested, saying he could write two originals in a half-hour. He then wrote "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Waltz." Desmond gave the first one its title, and it has been recorded 56 times to date by major jazz artists, including Miles Davis and Bill Evans.

Brubeck wrote "The Duke" in his head while driving his son Chris, who eventually became his bass player, to nursery school. It was meant as a tribute to Ellington, one of Brubeck's influences, and reflects Ellington's style that Brubeck first heard in the 30s. Brubeck explains that he originally had wanted to call it "The Duke Meets Darius Milhaud," but that would have been unwieldy, although the music then makes more sense. The opening eight bars Brubeck found reminiscent of something Ellington had done with his bassist Jimmy Blanton. The tune's radical flavor comes from the fact that during the first eight measures the bass hits all of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, and the bridge is polytonal.

Brubeck on the Critics

Brubeck had this to say about jazz critics:

The critics will help you when you're coming up. I had all the help in the world coming up. John Hammond was writing glowing things about me when I was an unknown. But get to the top and see what happens. The same structure that helped you up is gonna turn that wheel on you and try to put you down. Almost everybody does a full 180-degree turn. The guys that didn't like you start liking you, and the ones that discovered you say you've gone commercial. Why have you gone commercial? Your records are selling. You haven't changed... (Goldsmith, 42)

Life After the Quartet

When the Quartet broke up in 1967, Brubeck and Desmond played together for a while, then Brubeck played with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, an association which lasted six years (Mulligan's last recording "Gerrygoround," was with Brubeck on Lions and Tigers ). Eventually he formed a band with his grown sons Darius on keyboards; Chris on bass or trombone; and Dan on drums; along with Jerry Bergonzi on tenor sax. They continued to tour into the 1980s. In 1993 Brubeck made a trio recording with Chris and Dan called Brubeck Trio (Musicmasters Jazz), which features solid performances of standards and Dave Brubeck originals.

All this time Brubeck also wrote music other than jazz. They All Sang Yankee Doodle is his symphonic tribute to the multi-ethnicity that makes up the U. S. population, with special emphasis on native Americans. He has also composed six large orchestral works each of which includes an improvised section for himself. The most famous of these is The Light in the Wilderness, which he composed as his Quartet was breaking up. In addition he has composed oratorios and ballet scores. One of his formal pieces, the 13-minute "Quintet Sonata" appeared on a CD entitled Jazz Sonatas (Angel) along with works by Dick Hyman and Roland Hanna. Constance Emmerich plays the piano part on the Brubeck piece. An upbeat, charming work, it includes a delightful excursion in contemporary counterpoint.

These days Brubeck keeps up an active schedule, having played 80 concerts in 1996 and has as many commitments in 1997, and he is still actively composing. At present he is working on a commission for the Pittsburgh Symphony, called "Theme and Explorations." The Cincinnati Symphony will be recording Brubeck's orchestral suite "Joy in the Morning" in February. The Brodskey String Quartet is recording a work he wrote for them.

Telarc is about to release Brubeck's next CD with his four sons, Ode to a Cowboy, Darius on piano, Chris on electric bass and trombone, Daniel on drums, and Matthew cello.

Bibliography

• Lees, Gene. Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and White. New York: Oxford, 1984.
• Lyons, Len. The Great Jazz Pianists Speaking of Their Lives and Music. New York: Quill, 1983.
• Feather, Leonard. "Dave Brubeck." Contemporary Keyboard, June 1977, 48. "Man on Cloud No. 7." Time, Nov. 8, 1954, 67-71.
• Goldsmith, Owen. "Dave Brubeck. Contemporary Keyboard, Dec. 1977, 26-42.