As previously mentioned in the JazzProfiles feature on Joe Dodge, the drummer in Dave Brubeck’s quartet from roughly 1954-56, I lived and worked in San Francisco for most of the decade of the 1990s.
While there, I was employed in the reinsurance division of a large insurance brokerage and, given the scale of revenues involved in such risk transfer activities, I was often in the company of some of the city’s fairly influential business leaders, one of whom was my boss.
On a particularly lovely, early Spring day, as he was on his way out of the office, said “chief” mentioned that he wanted to see me following a luncheon he was attending at the San Francisco Business Arts Council.
When I joined him later as requested, the program for the luncheon was sitting on the chair in front of his desk. I glanced at it and it said that, on that day, the San Francisco Business Arts Council had presented Dave Brubeck with the Cyril Magnin Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts.
Knowing that Dave was always in demand for performances, especially in the Bay Area where he took the first big steps in establishing his career in Jazz, I figured that he had probably linked the award luncheon to a gig somewhere; but where?
I also guessed that I was holding the answer to this question in my own hands, so when the meeting was over, I asked the Big Guy if I could borrow the luncheon program to which he of course said “Yes.”
When I got back to my own office and read through the awards luncheon agenda, sure enough, there it was: Dave was performing that evening, April 11, 1997 in Berkeley , CA San Francisco
Fortunately, even at this late date, I was able to secure a seat to the April 12th concert the program for which you see posted below.
The following evening, I ate an early dinner at a family-owned restaurant [too few of these are now left in the city] in the upper Fillmore District where I was able to park my car and walk to the church.
I had taken along my copy of John Reeves’ excellent photographic essay – Jazz Lives: 100 Portraits in Jazz– in hopes of getting the portrait of Dave which you see at the beginning of Part 3 autographed.
Instead, I had the good fortune to meet Iola Brubeck, who not only was kind enough to give me her autograph, which you can see just below John Reeves’ photograph of Dave , but also do me the honor of sitting next to me and chatting amiably until the performance began.
That night, my head was so full of the sounds of the wonderful music Dave and others played that evening, as well as, thoughts about my fortuitous meeting with Iola, that I didn’t think to ask Dave for his autograph after the performance. Instead I walked all the way home in such a state of euphoria that I forgot my car in the neighborhood restaurant’s parking lot!
Somewhat ironically, because of its sale and my resultant relocation to Seattle , WA.
We’ve stayed in touch since then and among his many kindnesses is permission to post on JazzProfiles his magnificent essay on DAVE BRUBECK: A LIFE IN AMERICAN MUSIC, which now concludes with Part 3.
More of Doug’s Jazz writings can be found daily on his blog – Riffitides.
His essay in its original form, can be found as part of the accompanying booklet to the Columbia/Sony Records boxed set Dave Brubeck: Time Signatures A Career Retrospective.
Doug is also the author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.
© -Doug Ramsey. Reprinted with the permission of the author; copyright protected; all rights reserved.
THE ADVENT OF JOE MORELLO
"When [Joe] Dodge returned to San Francisco
"Joe Dodge told me he had to leave the group and go back home," Brubeck recalls. "Paul said we should hire Joe Morello. He said Morello was a fantastic drummer who always played softly, with brushes. I went over to hear him with Marian and was knocked out."
Morello says he remembers Brubeck and Desmond coming into the Hickory House in New York City
"I had been planning on leaving Marian's group anyway," Morello recalls. "There was an audition and an offer from Tommy Dorsey, but his manager got cute with money and while that was on hold, Dave called and asked if I would be interested in joining his group."
Morello did not jump at the opportunity.
"I met him at the Park Sheraton in New York
The Brubeck group left on a tour, with Joe Dodge still on drums. When the quartet returned near the end of 1955. Morello says he told Dave , "Let's try it. Maybe you won't like my playing and I won't like the group. There's no use signing anything until we're really sure." In lieu of a contract, they exchanged telegrams confirming their intentions.
"Two days later," Morello says, "I got a call from Tommy Dorsey's manager. He said, 'You got the job. Tommy's gonna give you the money.' I told him it was too late, I'd just signed with Brubeck. 'Oh, you don't want to play in Birdland all your life,' he said. 'Look what we did for Buddy Rich and Louis Bellson.' I told him, 'You didn't do anything for Buddy Rich and Louis Bellson. Look what they did for your band.'"
Brubeck sent Morello some of the quartet's records so he could hear the pieces they would play on his first appearance with the band, a television show in Chicago Chicago Dave got there barely in time to do the TV program. Those were the days before videotape. The performance was live and, in the quartet's case, unrehearsed. Morello's debut with the band was flawless.
"When it was over, Dave said to the guys, 'Joe played these things like he wrote 'em.' But, really, they were very simple. So it went fine, and then we went into the Blue Note for a week."
The first night at the club, Brubeck had Morello use sticks as well as brushes and gave him a short solo. Joe says the solo got "a little standing ovation" and that Desmond left the stand for the dressing room, where he turned to face Brubeck and deliver an ultimatum: "Morello goes or I go."
"Joe could do things I'd never heard anybody else do," Brubeck says. "I wanted to feature him. Paul objected. He wanted a guy who played 'time' and was unobtrusive. I discovered that Joe's time concept was like mine, and I wanted to move in that direction."
Brubeck had begun his time experimentation in 1946 with the octet. Cal Tjader was a drummer with a natural aptitude for time flexibility, as he demonstrated on the octet's "CURTAIN MUSIC" and with the trio in "SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN ," another venture into the mysteries of six-beat bars. "Cal Dave says, "and the first night he brought vibes to the job, it was as if he'd been playing them all his life." Brubeck's swimming accident ended his and Tjader's extension of jazz time signatures, and now Morello represented a chance to revive it.
Morello was not a famous drummer when he joined the Brubeck Quartet. He was a respected one, particularly among other drummers, for his speed, control, flexibility, and technique. It was frequently said that only the formidable Buddy Rich had more technique ('"chops," in the argot of the trade) than Morello. There were serious disagreements among musicians over whether Morello's feet may not have been just a trifle faster than Rich's. Morello wasn't about to let all those chops go to waste, which was okay with Brubeck. But it was clear to Desmond from the outset that in his musical life, Lester Young's ideal of a little tinky-boom was a rapidly receding golden memory.
THE BLUFF
"In that first week, Paul said I had to get another drummer," Brubeck says. "I told him I wouldn't. I didn't know whether Paul and Norman would show up that night. They came to a record session for Columbia Chicago
"So, I went to the job and, boy, was I relieved to see Paul and Norman. But I wasn't going to be bluffed out of Joe. It was not discussed again. That was the end of it.
''Paul knew that Morello was one of the greatest drummers who ever lived, but what he wanted was a steady beat. Some nights Joe would do more than that and Paul would say, ‘Please don't do adventures behind me.' Later, of course, Joe and Paul became very close."
In the months following the failed bluff, what Brubeck has called an "armistice" was set up, but the situation more closely resembled an edgy cease-fire. It was described by Robert Rice in a New Yorker profile of the quartet: "...bloody war was likely to rage whenever the quartet played, with Brubeck doing his best to mediate between Morello on the one hand and Bates and Desmond on the other."
Brubeck was able to make the center hold through all the internecine battles over tempos, volume, and drum fills during solos. Despite their powerful disagreements about how Morello's skills should be deployed, Dave was able to take advantage of the respect Morello and Desmond had for one another's abilities. The respect was ultimately to grow into genuine affection, but that was at the end of a rough road.
“For a while it was uncomfortable with Paul," Morello told me in 1992. "But as time went on, it worked out. We became very close and used to hang out together. The last four or five years we hung out quite a lot, actually." Morello's phrasing and inflection were uncannily like Desmond's when he said that.
"I think the world of Paul," Joe said.
"No, it was more than that. I loved the guy."
“I've always tried to hire great musicians," Brubeck says. "But they've got to be great people too. There has always been real closeness, going back to the days with Cal, even after he left, and Ron Crotty, Joe Dodge, and the Bates Brothers, all those guys. Bill Smith started with me in the fall of *46, and he begins and ends this collection." And, echoing Gene Wright, Brubeck adds, "You can't imagine how much love there was in this band."
Since I began hearing the quartet in person as often as I could in the mid-1950s, I've been convinced that one of the reasons for its huge success, though obviously bound up in the music, is non-musical. It was the musicians' huge, open, unselfconscious enjoyment of one another. Call it the "yeah" factor.
A lot of the hype surrounding the Brubeck Quartet portrayed them as representative of cool jazz. Their stage manner, like much of their music, was anything but cool. Listening with intensity and appreciation to one another, Desmond, Brubeck and the others expressed approval. "Yeah" is an expression of high praise among jazz musicians. This band had a high "yeah" index, and it was infectious. If they liked each other that much, it was difficult for an audience to be aloof from four tall men having a very good time creating serious music.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EUGENE WRIGHT
The quartet was entering its period of greatest success. With the departure in 1958 of Norman Dave Brubeck Quartet disbanded on December 26,1967 .
Wright had led his own band when he was in his early twenties in his native Chicago, then worked with Gene Ammons, Count Basic, Arnett Cobb, Buddy DeFranco, and Red Norvo. When he joined Brubeck, he had been the bassist for three years in the remarkable edition of the Cal Tjader Quartet that also included pianist Vince Guaraldi. A powerful bassist known for his steadiness and swing, he satisfied Desmond's basic requirements.
But Wright was also interested in Brubeck's time explorations and during his first months with the quartet grew significantly in that dimension. An educator by temperament, and later in fact a conservatory teacher, Wright's roots were always firmly attached to the basics and his mind was always open to new musical ideas. In late 1959 or early 1960 I listened to an intermission conversation, recounted in my book, Jazz Matters, in which the rapidly developing young bassist Freddie Schreiber was telling Gene that his goal was to be as funky as possible.
"Come on, man," Wright told him, "get past that funk thing. Once you get that out of your system, you'll find music opening up to you. There's a lot more beauty in store. That's what's exciting about working with this band. We're into 5/4 time, for instance. Here's how you count it... 1,2,3 — 1,2... 1,2,3 — 1,2. This band is where it's all happening."
In a recent conversation, Gene recalled his doubts when Brubeck asked him to join the band. They resembled Morello's. He told Dave he wasn't sure they were compatible. "I went over to his place so we could try each other out," Wright said, "and we had a ball playing, hit it off right away. We both love to swing. But I told him, 'I don't know if I can make it with your friends.'"
When he got together with all three, Wright discovered a high level of musicianship, naturally, and he found a bond with Morello that resembled the instant rapport Brubeck and Desmond had discovered a decade earlier.
"Right away, Joe and I were as one. It was like Jo Jones and Walter Page with Count Basic. It was right from the beginning. When musicians used to ask me how I could play with that band, I told them they weren't listening. I told them I was the bottom, the foundation; Joe was the master of time; Dave handled the polytonality and polyrhythms; we all freed Paul to be lyrical. Everybody was listening to everybody. It was beautiful. Those people who couldn't accept it were looking, not listening."
Wright was not the first black musician in the Brubeck quartet. Wyatt "Bull" Ruther was the bassist in 1951. Drummer Frank Butler also worked briefly with Brubeck in the early days. Joe Benjamin replaced Wright for a period in 1958, during which he recorded the Eurasia album and Newport
He canceled an extensive and lucrative tour of the South when promoters insisted that he replace Wright with a white bassist. He refused an appearance on the "Bell Telephone Hour," a Friday evening television program of immense prestige and huge audience, when the producers insisted on shooting the quartet so that Wright could be heard but not seen. The networks were convinced that the public was incapable of accepting the sight of black and white performers together. Brubeck found the hypocrisy insupportable.
Among Brubeck's champions was Charles Mingus, the bassist whose high standards and volcanic temper persuaded many people that he was rigid in his views about music. In fact, he admired styles he was unlikely to play and encouraged quality in any area of music. Mingus and Brubeck had known one another since the late 1940s in San Francisco Los Angeles
LIKE, BOP CHANGES
"All the musicians were bebop players," Brubeck says. "They asked me if I knew the bop changes, and I asked them what they were talking about.
"'Like, you know, man, the bop changes,' they said.
'No,' I said, 'I don't think so.'
'Look, man, do you know "ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE ?"?'
'Yeah, I know that.'
"'HOW HIGH THE MOON?'
'Sure, I know that.'
"'Okay,' they said. 'Play those chords, but just don't play any solos.' So, the session went along, and I played the chords. During the first intermission, I walked outside, and Mingus came out and stood next to me.
“'Man,' he said, 'how come you're not playing?' I told him the others had warned me not to take any solos.
"'What?' he said, 'You're the only cat in there who can play.' That was the beginning of a long friendship. We did not hang out alot together, but there were many serious conversations over the years. His importance to me is the faith he always had in my approach to music, when others were skeptical."
In 1962, Mingus and Brubeck again played together. The occasion was the making of a British film, All Night Long, an attempt to place Shakespeare's Othello in a modern setting. Despite the presence of Richard Attenborough in the cast, the movie was a misfire, except for some of the music, notably the Brubeck/Mingus duet.
"My contract for the film specified that I would not play with Charlie Mingus," Brubeck says, "because I knew how demanding Charlie could be and I just wanted to avoid it. It was out of respect." Brubeck pauses a long two beats. "And fear."
"In certain situations, Charlie could be difficult, and I wanted to keep our friendship. He did not want to do his feature with the English musicians on the set. 'These guys can't play my music,' he said. And these were top guys. 'I want some musicians I heard in a club last night.' He brought them out the next day, and none of them could read a note. He fired them.
"The director called me over and said that Charlie had told him, The only guy I want to play with is Dave .' The director knew what my contract said, but he really wanted Charlie in the movie.
"I told him that there were ways I would play with Charlie. 'We don't rehearse,' I said, 'we don't have to synch, and we shoot it live on the set.'"
Standard practice in movie-making is to record sound separate from the film, then later synchronize sound and picture. But the director agreed to Brubeck's stipulations and the duet, called "NON-SECTARIAN BLUES" is a high point
"When it was over," Brubeck says, "Charlie picked me up off the floor and gave me a big bear hug. It was wonderful."
Because of his frequent appearances on college campuses, Brubeck was often accused of diluting the black heritage of jazz in an arena of primarily white intellectualism. He responded by pointing out that he was integrating audiences in Southern universities, doing box office business at places like the Apollo Theater in Harlem and winning polls in The Pittsburgh Courier and other black publications.
"I assume," Brubeck says with a certain wryness, "that the readers who voted in those polls were black." So were many of the giants of the music who went against the grain of the critical establishment to publicly express admiration for what the quartet was doing. They included Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Rushing, Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, and the protean stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith. Listening to several unidentified pianists in a Down Beat blindfold test, The Lion picked Brubeck as the best blues player of the bunch.
"I like the piano [player]," Smith told Leonard Feather, "because he plays like the guys I told you about at the brickyards in Haverstraw , New York
where the blues was BORN …. He has heavy hands, but hits some beautiful
chords... You could put this on at anybody's house, and they'd dance all night."
Through the 1950s and '60s, the track led straight ahead through the slings and arrows of outrageous critics, the good fortune of a gold single ("TAKE FIVE ”/
"BLUE RONDO A LA TURK”) and much of Earth's geography. In 1958, following a series of concerts in the United Kingdom, the band played in many of Europe's major cities and toured for the Department of State in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, India, East and West Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. Later, there were tours of Australia New Zealand Japan Mexico South America . Behind the Iron Curtain, there were a dozen memorable concerts in Poland Yugoslavia Hungary Romania Dave Brubeck Quartet finally had the opportunity of performing in the then Soviet Union . Included here is the version of "TRITONIS," recorded on that memorable trip to Moscow
INSPIRATION ABROAD
Some of the quartet's best performances took place during these trips, among them the 1958 Copenhagen ARCH ,""LA PALOMA AZUL,""RECUERDO," and "BLUE RONDO A LA TURK"— all represented in this collection.
Travel also led to the title of the book Desmond talked about for years but never quite got around to writing. The title was to be a question he claimed was asked by airline stewardesses around the world: "How many of you are there in the quartet?"
The book, in fact, was one of the reasons the quartet broke up after 17 years. Desmond wanted time to write, an activity George Bernard Shaw and Charles Dickens, but very few others, have found compatible with constant travel. Dave had been stockpiling ideas for long-form classical compositions and had worked on some of them off and on for years. He needed extended periods to bring them to fulfillment. Concentrating on these big works, Brubeck produced his first oratorio The Light In The Wilderness (1968), followed by The Gates Of Justice (1969) and Truth Is Fallen (1972), all recorded.
He has composed six other works for orchestra and chorus, including the Easter oratorio "BELOVED SON " and the Christmas cantata La Fiesta De La Posada (Sony Masterworks IM 36662), which has received hundreds of performances in the Christmas seasons since its publication. For Pope John Paul II’s visit to San Francisco ROCK ," which was heard in Candlestick Park
After 1967, although often immersed in composition, Brubeck continued to perform with a quartet. There were many concert tours and a number of recordings with his old friend Gerry Mulligan in a group with Alan Dawson and Jack Six on drums and bass ("SAPITO,""RECUERDO,""ST.LOUIS BLUES"). He and Desmond performed in separate groups at the 1969 White House celebration of Duke Ellington's 70th birthday.
BRUBECK, BRUBECK, BRUBECK, BRUBECK
As the 1970s unfolded, so did the careers of three of Dave 's sons. He had done financial planning to provide for the educations of all six of his children, with no thought that they would choose his career. But, perhaps inevitably, some of them did. Just as inevitably, they wanted to work with the old man. A new quartet evolved. At first it was called Two Generations of Brubeck, a name Dave resisted, then The New Brubeck Quartet. Whatever it was called, it had Darius on a variety of electronic keyboards, Chris on electric bass and bass trombone, and Danny on drums. On a few occasions when Desmond rejoined the family for special concerts, Danny quickly became one of his favorite drummers.
In 1974 when I visited the Wilton Hilton, the Brubecks were preparing material for a world tour. In an interview that appeared in the magazine Different Drummer, long-since defunct, Dave told me, "I'm just a side-man. I do what the kids tell me." The progress of the rehearsal suggested otherwise; leadership dies hard. The tour was a success. Dave has performed ever since with various combinations of his progeny, and now among them the youngest, Matthew, a cellist (Quiet As The Moon Music-Masters 65067).
As for Paul, he did publish one chapter of what might have become the book. It was an account in the British humor magazine Punch of the quartet's misadventures among the livestock and volunteer firemen’s' demonstrations at a county fair. "Dawn," it began. "A station wagon pulls up to the office of an obscure motel in New Jersey
Desmond accepted a few club dates, mostly in Toronto East Side restaurant, bar, and hangout for writers.
THE ROAD AGAIN
As 1976 approached, an irresistible idea suggested itself to a promoter, who suggested it to Brubeck, who with trepidation suggested it to Desmond, Wright, and Morello; a tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Dave Brubeck Quartet. To Dave 's surprise, the other three liked the idea. So, there they were, on the road again eight years after everyone had agreed to put the road behind them; 25 cities in 25 days, traveling in a customized bus on an expedition that brought the four even closer, particularly Desmond and Morello.
During the tour, there was a worsening of the eye problems that had plagued Morello all of his life. Already without vision in one eye because a detached retina could not be repaired, he began losing what little sight remained in the other. At first, Morello recalls, Brubeck wanted him to hold out to the end of the tour but when he realized the seriousness of the threat to Joe's retina, insisted that he leave the tour and return to Boston, where his doctor was eventually able to operate and restore slight vision. Danny Brubeck took over the drum chair for the remaining three days of the tour.
Before they parted, Morello extracted a promise from Brubeck that they would all play together again. But before a projected tour of Europe could be planned, a medical checkup for a minor complaint uncovered the devastating fact that Desmond had lung cancer. Chemotherapy showed no effect against the disease and caused side effects Paul was unwilling to endure. He led as normal a life as possible under the circumstances. He went on tour with the Brubeck family group, even joining them in Mexico New York City February 4,1977 . He even recorded on a Chet Baker date a few days before his death. Brubeck says Morello was devastated.
"Toward the end of Paul's life, Joe was so torn up by his being ill,"Dave says. "He insisted that one of his drum students stay with Paul and look after him." The student, Steve Forster, had also helped Morello through his crisis.
Charles Mingus, Desmond, and Brubeck remained friends. Mingus sat at Paul's bedside in May of 1977 when Desmond was dying. Once, as he awakened, he saw Mingus, a massive figure in his black hat and cape, looking down at him. Nat Hentoff told the story in the Village Voice:
"Paul, his eyes opening, struggled to focus on the apparition and then, sorting through memory, found the hooded harvester in The Seventh Seal. 'Okay,' Paul said to Bradley Cunningham, who was standing near his bed, 'set up the chess board.'
"And grinned."
Paul died on Memorial Day. He was 52.
Whenever we talk, Dave says, "Boy, I sure miss Paul Desmond." At the annual Memorial Day family gatherings at the Wilton Hilton, much of the conversation, and the laughter, concerns Paul, his wit, his kindnesses, his enigmatic comings and goings, how the Brubeck kids thought of him as Uncle Paul.
Boy, I sure miss Paul Desmond.
Mingus asked Brubeck, "Will you come see me when I am dying?"Dave assured him he would. Less than two years after Paul's death, Dave learned that Mingus was in the final stages of Lou Gehrig's disease and being treated in Mexico Cuernavaca
Brubeck's own heart problems have been addressed by the miracles of modern cardiac surgery in the form of a triple bypass operation. One of his newest compositions, Joy In The Morning, celebrates the gift of life. It is based in part on the 30th Psalm, which among other stanzas of joy and gratitude, reads: "Oh, Lord my God, I cried to thee for help, and thou hast healed me."Joy In The Morning was given its premiere in the summer of 1991 by the Hartford Symphony and Hartford Chorale.
Darius is at the University of Natal Durban , South Africa Dave 's other children, the legion of musicians who learned about jazz from the quartet and were inspired by its example, are everywhere. Brubeck and Bill Smith, the incredible clarinetist, continue to give concerts and record together with the present quartet, consisting of Randy Jones on drums and Jack Six on bass.
71 at this writing, Brubeck is composing and improvising with the same zeal and energy he has shown for more than 50 years. There's a good deal of traveling, because demand for Dave Brubeck never seems to stop. When he goes, lola is with him, in Moscow playing for Gorbachev and Reagan, in London on his 70th birthday performing with the London Symphony, in Monaco conducting clinics for young musicians, in a plush room high in a hotel in Santa Monica looking at the beach where, not so many years earlier, a cramped little cottage was their latest refuge from the road and they dreamed of a home of their own.
And back in Wilton when it's quiet and plans have been made for the compositions, concerts and tours to come, they think about the struggle they shared, as a young cowhand unable to read music transformed himself into one of the most celebrated musicians in the world.”
— Doug Ramsey