Dave Brubeck by Erich von Abele (best novels in english .txt) 📕

This review covers only four early albums of Dave Brubeck—the experiments in “time” that I consider to be solid gold:

Time Out

(1959)

Time Further Out: Miro Reflections

(1961)

Countdown: Time in Outer Space

(1962)

Time Changes

(1963).

The musical personnel on all four albums were the same, the best that Brubeck enjoyed, before or since: Dave Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on standup bass, and Joe Morello on drums.

Time Out

is the most famous of these albums (if not of Brubeck’s entire discography)—principally for the song that is probably Brubeck’s most known, Take Five

. In my estimation, however, this album is the weakest of the four assembled here; yet even so, it sparkles in many places with the brilliance of the gold mine it shares with the others. To say it is the weakest is really only a roundabout way of expressing the virtually indescribable excellence of the other three.

Take Five

To deal with the most used coin first—Take Five

—the only quibble we might offer is the overlong drum solo. I tend to find drum solos generally insipid, the only exception being, in fact Joe Morello’s far better explorations in the later albums (particularly Countdown

) we will get to shortly. Not that I do not at times find the Take Five drum solo mildly pleasing; it’s just that it has too much of that sloppy snare drum sound, it tends to be rather too loose and not tight enough, and at the end of the day it seems to have been fit into the model of the song (perhaps by the author, Paul Desmond, himself) as a way to fill time with a song structure that is, frankly, rather sparse. Nevertheless, the alto sax melodies which Desmond has worked out to inform his song gleam like a perfect dry martini.

Brubeck, somewhat uncharacteristically, maintains a passively repetitious comp in the background—one, of course, that the listener recognizes is essential to the feel of the piece. As there are no other 5/4 experiments on this earliest album (1959), and on the liner notes of the immediately following album, Time Further Out

(1961), we are told that Brubeck found the 7/4 rhythm of Unsquare Dance

to be a challenge for him, it seems that Brubeck was a little slower than Desmond was in becoming comfortable with the odder time signatures. In the latter two albums we are examining—Countdown: Time in Outer Space

(1962), and Time Changes

(1963)—we will see that Brubeck eminently catches up with his colleague in his verve and facility for 5/4, 7/4, difficult combinations of 2/4 and 3/4, and even in one instance, 13/8 (unfortunately, the one 11/4 tune that Desmond wrote and shines on relegates Brubeck to a comping mode reminiscent of Take Five,

though executed this time around with considerably more flexibility and ease).

Blue Rondo à la Turk

The real jewel of Time Out,

however, is the lesser known Blue Rondo à la Turk.

It’s basically two different songs fused together at two cross-temporal intersections: one at the beginning and near the end, the second stretching its muscles throughout the long middle. The first song is a fast-paced “rondo” in 7/8 time, exhibiting a classical air as well as a hint of Spanish folk rhythms and even possibly Latin influence, perhaps something Ravel or Bizet might have dashed off in one of their more daring, if capricious, moments. The piano work in this fast 7/8 section, although still predominantly comping, nevertheless displays a good deal of acrobatics with the contrapuntal jabs of bass keys and top chords-cum-arpeggios; and in certain instances does seem to undermine our previous theory about Brubeck’s earlier difficulties with the stranger times. The “blue” part of this piece, laid out in an unctuously leisurely 4/4—intercut in its introductory moments with jagged shards of the hectic “rondo” as it transitions out—, is a consummately polished exercise in the blandiloquence of “cool jazz”, deliciously filled out with Desmond’s alto sax—sounding sexy here rather than dry—as well as Brubeck’s signature style of single notes meandering pointedly on all the right notes. And all the while, Wright on acoustic bass and Morello on drums groove along in a classic walking style.

Strange Meadow Lark

This strange song glides from a stately, romantic prelude of pure piano to a tenderly ethereal yet sensual foray in Desmond’s alto sax that evokes in the listener a Sunday drive on a winding, suburban, deciduously dappled and sun-glinting road on perhaps a warm April day. When that lovely afternoon winds to a close, Morello’s perfectly placed crash cymbal introduces Brubeck’s other signature piano style: soloing in block chords instead of single notes.

Miscellaneous Tunes

This essay is not intended to cover all the ground of these four albums, so I may very well skip certain songs, or only mention them in passing (as with the first three songs on side B: Three To Get Ready,

a smartly twinkling little number, slyly moving back and forth from 2/4 to 3/4; Kathy’s Waltz,

another sun-dappling invention that calls to mind a pleasant drive in a big sedan along maple and poplar-shaded suburban roads; and Everybody’s Jumpin’,

a similarly dapper and winking little divertissement).

Pick Up Sticks

We could never forget Pick Up Sticks,

however. While we touted Blue Rondo à la Turk

as the crown jewel of this album, Pick Up Sticks

is nevertheless singular—unique, even, not only to this particular album, perhaps, but to all four albums under consideration here (if not Brubeck’s entire oeuvre). The piece opens immediately, with no preface, on the smashing sound of Morello’s ride cymbal juxtaposed to the first deep tone of Wright’s ingeniously repetitive bass line—followed a split-second later by Brubeck’s blockish chord style, which continues a while until Desmond’s alto sax enters on an incisively neat solo. It is when Desmond’s solo subsides that Pick Up Sticks really picks up: Brubeck here delivers one of his best single-note solos I have ever heard, only toward its close filling out with his en bloc chord style. His single notes punctuate the texture of the grain so ably supported by Wright and Morello—the former’s deeply grinding bass undergirding the latter’s smoky blues club ride cymbal—with deadly slick expertise and impeccable calculation.

Unsquare Dance

This album has its “star” too, just as Time Out

had its Take Five

—in this case a witty little caprice that, although not nearly as famous as Take Five,

has its own ensconced notoriety among musicians, music teachers and the public television and arts crowd. We are of course referring to Unsquare Dance

: an exercise—indeed, an unashamed gimmick—in 7/4 time, constructed as a square dance in turn based on the 3-chord blues pattern. Not only is the title a play on the musical style it is parodying, it is also a wink to the then current late 50s, early 60s beatnik slang whereby most things “square” were to be mocked and avoided at all cost.

Maori Blues

Not so cute as Unsquare Dance,

is the interestingly intelligent number written by drummer Joe Morello, Maori Blues. For the creation of a drummer, it is noteworthy that Maori Blues

is dominated by Brubeck’s piano: indeed, the entire song is one long piano solo—riprapped, to be sure, by the supple and keen dexterity of Morello’s drum art, in this song utilizing more variety than usual, in a myriad subtle ways, ranging from the rapid fire on the center disc of the ride cymbal to his cunning tom-tom work, here and on Far More Drums inspired indirectly by Maori folk music. I’ve always wondered, for the more than two decades I’ve listened to Brubeck, whether Morello actually wrote out all the piano that Brubeck plays here, or whether he just laid down a loose structure and let Brubeck go to town on it. It’s hard to tell, because Brubeck’s solo style, as I theorize, is very structured and definitive: he does not sound like the typical jazz musician who tends to go into the recording studio and just improvise completely ad lib. His solos may have begun as free-form improvisations, but I get the sense that he works them over laboriously until he crafts exactly what he wants to play when the tapes run—and from then on, the solo is frozen. And who could fault him for that, when one hears the solos? They are, as far as I can tell, indisputably perfect. At any rate, whoever is responsible for the piano of Maori Blues

—and it’s likely to be, at least in certain areas, an intimate collaboration of both Brubeck and Morello—it proves to be one of the coolest, smartest songs the Brubeck Quartet ever recorded.

Bru’s Boogie Woogie

Then there’s Bru’s Boogie Woogie

: the best damn foot-tapping boogie woogie in recording history. The driving pulse throughout the song is the classic three-chord boogie-woogie scheme, and it starts with a bang, takes off like a speeding train, and during the long middle section, flies off the ground like a cropduster meaning business. Desmond’s horn is not present throughout, but it doesn’t seem to matter: Brubeck’s instrument rules the melodic tectonics through a joyous logic—whether spidercracking a kaleidoscope of individual keys or hammering those block chords he wields so effortlessly—that burns the house down and shakes the earth under our shuffling feet, at least until he eases up toward the conclusion to bring everything to a nifty end.

Blue Shadows in the Street

Many of Brubeck’s song titles are creative, and some are more evocative than others: such is the case with Blue Shadows in the Street.

The somber, stately, cool blue tones that usher it in, and move it along like a dark, sleek vehicle following behind, evoke what the title says: a street, perhaps one of those secluded, cushy streets of brownstones in older Manhattan lined up and a small shop or two, planted with seasoned, burgeoning, copiously leafy trees that in the early night, or late twilight, dissect the lamplight—and perhaps also a shifting moonlight amid patchy clouds—into blue illuminations and blue shadows in jagged designs upon the sidewalks, across the