Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time

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Dave told me about being on a coach with Parker, talking with him about what Darius Milhaud had taught him, and the whole concept of polytonality, and he shared thoughts with him about Stravinsky, Bartok, Ravel, Satie and Debussy. He would have an in-depth conversation like that with Parker on one night, but on the next Bird would be so out of it and unapproachable, presumably desperate for a fix. One time Parker was being sought after by the mob, seeking cash for drugs, and Dave remembered advising him not to get involved with these people. So, there was a close bond between them while they were on the road, but their friendship, for whatever reason, isn’t well documented.

down into his fingers, he gained ownership of them in a way unlikely had notation acted as an intermediary. In a May 26, 2020 interview, Clark discusses his book with Jerry Jazz Musician editor/publisher Joe Maita. Blue Rondo” was the start of my interest, and I subsequently plundered my dad’s record collection, which included lots of classical music but also records by people like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Pee Wee Russell, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong. Everything I have done in music started with that experience with “Blue Rondo.”

Paul] Desmond is fiddling with the melody line, so there are bits where it’s in a minor key and suddenly goes into the major, and the transitions aren’t quite worked out. [Eugene] Wright is trying to work out his bass part, and Dave is desperately trying to glue the whole thing together. They try 12 times. Then Dave says let’s do another tune. JJM .When Columbia issued their 50th anniversary edition of Time Out, they didn’t include any of the outtakes, but you’ve heard things other people haven’t. What did you discover in those studio outtakes that you’d like to share with us? For all the quartet had become famous for carefully executed compositions, they could also play entirely free.

It’s a completely different rhythmic feel,” he said. “They all really struggle with it and it never really works. [Joe] Morello, who was a miraculous drummer, can hardly play it. He keeps tripping over it and he can’t quite get it to fit into the groove. Hopefully these quotes give an idea of the intense, well informed discussion that Philip Clark presents. Also, if you have lingering doubts abouts Dave's Jazziness, listen to the fabulous gem (imho of course!) of "Ode to a Cowboy" which is described by Philip as: Ninety per cent of what he told me about Take Five was completely undermined by the rehearsal tapes,” he said. “He insisted that the famous Take Five rhythms were in place at the beginning. Then I listened to the rehearsal tapes and the rhythm they were working with originally was unrecognisable.” Layering one raw tonality against a different tonality has a complex psychoacoustic effect. Chords retain their basic identities while spawning a spectrum of notes, now forced into unlikely alliances, that blend and clash unpredictably. The brain, hopefully, grasps increasingly complex interrelationships between unrelated chords as our ears acquire a taste for a tarter and more aromatic harmonic palette. JJM . The first instance of their playing music from Time Out live was at Newport in July, 1959. What was that like?While the earlier version had been “much more driving and faster” with a lopsided Latin rhythm, this had a sexy 5/4 Take Five beat which “sits in the groove”, said Clark.

PC . Yes, with limits. He loved talking, and in one instance he was remembering an album he made with Anthony Braxton when, for whatever reason, we moved into a conversation about Time Out, and I sensed immediately that this topic would be problematic simply for the reason that he couldn’t remember much about it. There was certainly more reason for him to remember it than the Dave Digs Disney sessions or any of his other recordings, but I think he had been asked about it so much that he had become as confused as anybody else where fact ended and myth began. The quartet finished the sessions in the summer of 1959 and I am sure that he hadn’t listened to any of the outtakes or any of the other material between then and 2003. He was 82 years old and being asked to remember something that had happened 50 years before. So yes, it was a strange thing to ask, and there are still unanswered questions about certain aspects of how Take Five evolved.

This interview took place on May 26, 2020, and was hosted and produced by Jerry Jazz Musician editor/publisher Joe Maita After that all the rehearsal tapes are lost, so we don’t actually know what happened between the rehearsal and the rhythm we now know.”

PC . The idea of modernism was an exotic strand of American culture at the time, and Columbia Records honed in on that as a marketing tool. Lots of people were afraid of modernism, of course, but a lot of people were attracted the idea of modernist painting, literature, architecture… Truth” begins with a propulsive vamp followed by an atonal explosion within the composition. Dave’s solo reflects that by starting with lines played in an incredibly nimble, fast jazz time, and after a chorus or two the left hand and right hand start moving away from each other as he moves into these extraordinary clusters, and any sense of regular meter or groove dissipates – it becomes a dialogue, really, between Dave and Alan Dawson. There are numerous points in the solo when you think that Dave is playing so many clusters so densely that he can’t possibly go any further ; but he keeps on pushing and pushing and pushing, moving further and further out. The energy momentarily dips, then he spins the rhythm around, and rotates the energy in another direction. The incidental discussion about time signatures, other muso's of the time, and the music label (and executive) influence on recordings produced is fascinating. Hopefully the following quotes give an idea of the style:

Around that same time a magazine called Jazz Review started, edited by Richard Cook, whose death from cancer in 2007 was a big loss to British journalism. At one time he wrote for Classic CD, which is when we met, and I told him I would like to write for Jazz Review, so he gave me some stories. After that it just snowballed. I started writing for The Wire, then Gramophone and newspapers. There wasn’t any great plan, it just sort of fell into my lap.