Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time

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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.” JJM . The first instance of their playing music from Time Out live was at Newport in July, 1959. What was that like? 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: 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.

In a May 26, 2020 interview, Clark discusses his book with Jerry Jazz Musician editor/publisher Joe Maita. 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…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.”

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. 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.

One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.” A Letter From the Publisher An appeal for contributions to support the ongoing publishing efforts of Jerry Jazz Musician In This Issue A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Summer, 2023 Edition

JJM .Since your father was a painter, is it possible he was attracted to Time Out because of the album cover art, or did he buy the record after hearing it on the radio? For all the quartet had become famous for carefully executed compositions, they could also play entirely free. The next night, Dave came to the club unsure if Desmond or the bass player Norman Bates were going to show up, and if not, he and Morello would have to play alone. Just as Dave and Morello got to the bandstand, Desmond and Bates walked in and everything seemed fine and they played. That didn’t mean Paul was happy, and the resentment went on for months – everything Joe and Paul said to each other had to be passed between Dave because they wouldn’t talk to each other. JJM .Clearly, Columbia was concerned about it. There didn’t appear to be a lot of support in their offices other than the now legendary A&R man George Avakian and the label’s president Goddard Lieberson…This interview took place on May 26, 2020, and was hosted and produced by Jerry Jazz Musician editor/publisher Joe Maita PC . It was used for a piece in Jazz Review, but he gave me much more material than I ever could have used in a piece like that, and I would say that I hadn’t heard at least 80 percent of the material since 2003. down into his fingers, he gained ownership of them in a way unlikely had notation acted as an intermediary. 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. 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.