Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way
Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way
7.48 a.m. ET (1148 GMT) June 30, 1999
| By Tracey Middlekauff |  |
NEW YORK — At 78, Dave Brubeck has enough energy to shame a man half his age. The legendary jazz pianist and composer still plays over 80 one-night engagements a year, and says he needs “years and years more” to complete his unfinished projects.
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Way back in 1954, Brubeck appeared on the cover of Time magazine, with a feature that announced the rebirth of jazz. In 1960, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, then consisting of Brubeck, Paul Desmond on sax, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums, released their groundbreaking experiment in time signatures, Time Out. The LP and its two singles, “Blue Rondo a la Turk” and “Take Five,” became the first ever million-selling jazz recordings.
More recently, Brubeck appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York City June 20th as part of the JVC Jazz Festival. His continued joy in playing and mastery of his art form were apparent and infectious.
This week marks the release of his 134th recording, The 40th Anniversary Tour of the United Kingdom, on Telarc Records. According to Brubeck, the CD consists of “things from the ’20s and ’30s and things no one’s heard yet. … It has a picture of a double-decker red bus with Big Ben in the background. It’s a wonderful cover.”
From his home in Connecticut — “Do you hear those crows? I’m sitting here watching otter and squirrels and deer!” — Brubeck spoke with Fox News Online about his kids, his career, popular culture, Miles Davis and the current state of jazz.
Fox: How would you compare your place in jazz today to your place in say, 1945 or 1959, in terms of the reception that you get and the impact you have?
Brubeck: You were at the Carnegie Hall concert — and you can’t imagine a much better reception than that — and it’s that way all over the — used to be all over the world, but I’ve quit going to Japan now and Australia and New Zealand and Hong Kong — and I’m more or less touring in Europe. That’s far enough. My next concert will be the Montreal Jazz Festival — that’s a very great festival — and we’ve just played the New Orleans Festival. But I’m trying to cut down a little, but it seems like it’s impossible.
Fox: Why do you still love to perform so much? Do you get something different out of it every time?
Brubeck: Well — like at Carnegie Hall — that was a blast from that audience — that keeps you young, and I think vital, and you introduce a lot of new music. And we had a lot more we could have introduced at Carnegie Hall but there wasn’t time, that’s the thing. I have so much new stuff. I just set 19 Langston Hughes poems — that will be coming out next year, Hold Fast to Dreams is going to be the name of that, it’s on Warner Brothers. …
Fox: What would you describe as some of the advantages and some of the disadvantages of maturing as a musician?
Brubeck: Well, I’m lucky because I feel like I can do everything I did when I was younger — some things a little better and some things not quite as fast — but it’s very close if you listen. If you listen to the new recording from London you’ll hear me playing some tempos that I couldn’t play when I was young. …
Fox: Does the keyboard still hold surprises for you?
Brubeck: Every night. I’m constantly testing myself and pushing myself to do new things.
Fox: What do you feel like you still have to learn?
Brubeck: Oh, I was up at 5:30 this morning working on the Langston Hughes and, if I had my life to live over again, I don’t think I’d catch up with what I haven’t finished. I mean, I need years and years more to finish the unfinished projects in my studio, so every day I rush to try and get these things finished.
Fox: Are “Blue Rondo a la Turk” and “Take Five” double-edged swords? Even though Time Out ended up bringing jazz to a much wider audience, do you feel limited by being so strongly associated with those two tunes in particular?
Brubeck: No — they’re a challenge … young kids cut their eyeteeth on those, and a lot of old guys still can’t play ‘em. You know what I mean? A lot of older guys do not like to play in 5/4, cuz they grew up playing in 4/4.
Fox: And they can’t adjust to it?
Brubeck: Some of ‘em can and some of ‘em can’t, so there are things I wrote 40 and 50 years ago that are still a challenge to me and to other musicians, like a piece called “Tritonus,” the “Salmon Strikes” is another one — they will challenge you whether you’re young or old, and they’re always gonna make a good player really stretch to play them and then improvise on them. Even “The Duke” that I wrote in 1954, you know, that went through every key in the first 8 bars and a lot of guys had a lot of trouble playing that — it wasn’t even easy for me!
Fox: Do you find something different every time you do it?
Brubeck: Sure — you got to if you’re playing jazz.
Fox: Why do you think people have responded so strongly to those tunes in particular? What do think there is about them that would reach out to people who don’t even listen to jazz and still respond to that?
Brubeck: I don’t know. But [Time Out] wasn’t anything that anybody believed in, especially at Columbia records, and they didn’t want to put it out —
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Fox: Yet it became a million-seller—
Brubeck: Yeah — the president of Columbia was a musician named Goddard Lieberson, and he heard ‘em and said ‘That’s the greatest thing you’ve done, we’ve gotta put this out,’ and he had to fight the whole sales department, publicity department … It broke a lot of rules, because it had all originals, on one LP. They’d let you do originals if you put a show tune or a standard in with it — it was all in different time signatures, and they said, ‘People won’t like this, they can’t dance to it’—
Fox: People loved it!
Brubeck: Yeah — (laughs) they were proven wrong — and it had a painting on the cover, and they hadn’t done that with jazz, so I did four in a row after that … one after the other, and we kept doing those odd time signatures. A lotta guys learned to play in different time signatures and they’ll say, ‘You know, I’ve done what I’ve done, and it’s because of that Time Out album.’
Fox: Were other people doing anything similar to that at the time you were getting interested in it?
Brubeck: People — didn’t like me doing that — some people — and said it wasn’t jazz—
Fox: Drummers, especially, I guess—
Brubeck: No … (laughs) Well, some drummers. But not Joe Morello and Max Roach. But there was a meeting up … in Lenox, Mass., and there were the best known jazz musicians, and we were all discussing different approaches to jazz, and somebody brought up what I was doing, and they discussed whether it was good or bad. And the wonderful Dr. Willis James, one of the first Afro-American musicologists, got up at the meeting and started singing an African work song. It was very complicated, and when he finished he said, ‘Who knows what time signature that’s in?’ And I’ll tell ya, it was the best musicians in the country sitting there, and nobody raised their hand. And he said ‘That was in 5/4, and Brubeck is on the right track.’ So that kinda silenced a lot of people, if they were smart enough to know who Dr. Willis James was. ‘Cuz he was taking what I was doing right back to the African roots, which wasn’t always in 4/4 by a long shot.
Fox: [Miles Davis'] Kind of Blue and Time Out came out around the same time. I wonder how you’d compare their respective influence on jazz.
Brubeck: Both of them were very strong at that time, and I think they were very different — they still — when you listen to them, they both are very individual — Miles and I were thinking in our own sweet way.
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Fox: Do you think that different people have been influenced by those two records and have gone in different directions because of it?
Brubeck: Well, if I told you what I really think a lot of people would say I’m tootin’ my own horn — But I’ll give you some facts.’Some Day My Prince Will Come’ I recorded way before Miles — and then he came out with an album called Someday My Prince Will Come — and then Miles recorded ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’ — thank God he did — and he recorded ‘The Duke’ — which were two originals of mine. So we were both aware of each other, and many musicians who played with Miles were influenced by me. … I could tell ya maybe 30 real great pianists that really broke new ground that came out of listening to me when they first started, and a lot of them are admitting it more and more — they’re not afraid to come out of the closet.
Fox: What do you think of the state of jazz today? Is it still vital?
Brubeck: Oh, it’s plenty vital — there’s all kinds of young kids that are 10, 11, 12, 13, that I know that are playing like they’re old men …
| Sometimes blues are so happy that it makes me smile. These old blues players… I just sit there with a smile on my face. | ||
Fox: Is there anything that’s come out lately in terms of popular music that you like or find intriguing?
Brubeck: Well, I’ll tell ya, through my kids I get acquainted with some people … My son Matthew is opening for the Rolling Stones in England tonight with Sheryl Crow, do you know her? And last year he played with Jewel, and then he has his own group that’s very avant-garde, and he plays with the Berkeley Symphony when he’s not on tour. But he’s always introducing me to new things. And then my son Chris… who just had his trombone concerto played by the Boston Pops last week — and he just recorded it with the London Symphony Orchestra. And then my son Darius, who has a world music-type group, he just played in Peru for the State Department … so he introduces me to a lot of world music, so through my kids I’m constantly bombarded with all kinds of new things.
Fox: So what do you think of the Rolling Stones?
Brubeck: Oh, they’re a classic old rock group.
Fox: I remember reading in your liner notes to the ‘96 reissue of Time Out you had said you heard a jungle version of ‘Take Five.’
Brubeck: Yeah!
Fox: And I’m really curious first of all where you heard it.
Brubeck: It was on Telarc Records — very weird recording — and when it first came out in England there were great arguments with DJ’s … some refused to play it, some were playing it all the time.
Fox: And what did you think of it?
Brubeck: Oh — it was different! I’ll tell you that!
Fox: One thing that’s been said — sometimes as a criticism — is that your music is happy. What’s wrong with happy? Why is that necessarily a criticism?
Brubeck: My favorite musicians make me smile … if I listen to Louis Armstrong — most of the time it’s just plain happy.
Fox: And he was criticized sometimes for being happy —
Brubeck: Yeah, but who were these critics — one of my friends said, ‘They criticized Louis Armstrong and he had a hit 10 years after he’s dead’ — I think that’s so wonderful. That was when ‘What a Wonderful World’ came out, and here the guy had been dead for 10 years, and he comes out with a hit that just made you feel so good.
Fox: So I guess you probably don’t agree with the myth that to make great art or great music you have to suffer?
Brubeck: It doesn’t hurt, but you rise above it, and that’s what’s great. The blues rises above the suffering — and you can feel both — but sometimes blues are so happy that it makes me smile … These old blues players — I just sit there with a smile on my face.
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