DAVE BRUBECK - A Life In Time
Written by Philip Clark
Published by Da Capo Press
Is there a more misunderstood figure in jazz than Dave Brubeck? Think of your own reaction to the pianist. Do you go along with the conventional view that the Brubeck quartet is only interesting when Paul Desmond is playing? Philip Clark's biography might change your mind.
Clark encountered the music of Brubeck on a family holiday in Spain. He had just discovered a cassette of Brubeck's 1973 album 'We're All Together Again for the First Time'. As they drove, they played the first track 'Truth' 'This was Brubeck at his wildest, vaulting free-form clusters around the keyboard before entering into a gladiatorial dialogue with drummer Alan Dawson.' The music changed the young Philip Clark's life.
Everything about Brubeck's rural beginnings was not what we associate with jazz. He was a farm boy, knew all about horses and only gradually found his way into music. Eventually, he studied with Darius Milhaud but always he was keen to compose and to improvise. Clark quotes Brubeck: 'Improvisation, to me, is the core of jazz. Because I believe this, my style of piano is one shaped primarily by the material, or ideas which I am attempting to express—not by a system or a search for an identifying 'sound.'
Brubeck's early interest was writing music for an Octet. He found it difficult to interest a wider audience or record companies in the group but the music that survives shows that Brubeck was going his own way. Unfortunately, as the book describes, much of the Octet's library was lost.
The arrival of Paul Desmond is an interesting moment. Desmond is almost a shadowy figure in the book. Occasionally he is presented as almost as a dilettante figure who would rather be sipping whisky in Bradley's club in New York. Desmond eventually admitted that the Brubeck group was the probably the best place for his gifts. If you want a more complete picture of the lyrical alto player the best place is the Doug Ramsey book: Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.
Brubeck's wife Iola was an important influence on the pianist. Throughout their seventy-year marriage, she was largely responsible for convincing the pianist to explore the college circuit which eventually gave the quartet a great deal of exposure and a contract with Columbia.
Clark in describing some musicians' negative attitude to Brubeck cites tenor saxophone player, Billy Root who expressed what many thought when he described Brubeck's music as 'pseudo jazz. Dave has horrible time. He sounds like he's jumping up and down on the piano with his feet…...He's neither a good classical nor a good jazz pianist.… Don't settle for halfway people. I'm afraid I must consider Dave Brubeck one of these.'
Brubeck's fight against racism was particularly deeply felt. The quartet was due to leave on a tour of Eastern Europe shortly after Brubeck had employed bassist Eugene Wright. Ironically part of the tour would promulgate American democracy. Before they left, they were due to play at East Carolina College in Greenville, North Carolina, on February 5, 1958. The college authorities thought that they had booked an all-white quartet. The dean of the college told Brubeck, just before the concert was due to begin, that Wright could not perform. Students hearing the news insisted that the group should be allowed to play. The concert went ahead. The next year Brubeck turned down a twenty-five-date tour of the Southern states because the promoters did not want Eugene Wright to be part of the quartet.
I wish that drummer Joe Morello was featured more in the book. He was a phenomenal player. His skill in managing the complex time signatures that Brubeck challenged the group with was an essential part of the creativity of the quartet. Yet I left the book feeling that I had not learnt all that much about the great drummer. The most interesting story was that Desmond recommended the drummer to Brubeck because he had heard Morello play with Marion McPartland. The kind of playing that Morello did with McPartland was subdued brushwork. As soon as Brubeck realised the drummer was at ease with polyrhythms, he unleashed the drummer, so much so, that Desmond confronted Brubeck with the challenge: 'It's either him or me.!' Brubeck did not back down. Desmond and Morello did not speak for six months.
When reading the book, it is helpful to have access to the albums that Brubeck produced over the years, especially as Clark is adept at describing some of the key recording sessions, sessions such as 'TimeOut' in 1959 which produced 'Blue Rondo A La Turk', 'Pick Up Sticks' ,'Three to Get Ready' and 'Take Five'.
One particularly valuable section in the book is when Clark analyses different piano styles in order to better understand Brubeck. 'Line, in bebop, was everything. After listening and learning from Parker and Gillespie's approach to improvisation, bop pianists like Bud Powell, Dodo Marmarosa, and Duke Jordan took lines for extended walks. Brubeck, though, didn't seem especially interested in line. The backbone of his solos were block chords, which, depending on your point of view, had nothing to do with jazz—or brought something entirely fresh to the table.' His knack of upending the predominant mood music of a solo by abruptly asserting the precise opposite character, mood, texture, or flow of energy, was also about the unfolding of his material dictating the shape of an improvisation, rather than relying on dependable narrative arcs'.
Clark sees Brubeck as closer to Cecil Taylor and Monk. Professor Lewis Porter has recently made very much the same points about Brubeck's idiosyncratic approach to the piano. Ethan Iverson ex of Bad Plus, Keith Jarrett and Don Pullen have acknowledged the influence of the pianist and his high-risk style as have Anthony Braxton, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Andrew Hill.
This is a very fine book. Clark is evangelical about his subject. He became a friend of the Brubecks towards the end of the pianist's life. The closeness has enabled him to write well about an important pianist and composer to illuminate both his composing and particularly his playing. Clark enables the reader to understand Brubeck the pianist. Myths are demolished. It is the kind of writing that will drive the reader back to the records enabling the reader to hear the music as if for the first time.