Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck (1920–2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He is often seen as a leading figure of cool jazz. His music often used unusual time signatures and mixed contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities. He also blended styles such as classical music, jazz, and blues. For the album, see Dave Brubeck Quartet (album).

Brubeck was born in Concord, California. He was drafted into the US Army, but he was spared from combat when a show he had played for the Red Cross became a hit. In the Army, he formed one of the first racially diverse bands. In 1951, he formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which kept its name even as its members changed. The quartet was most successful between 1958 and 1967, when it included saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello alongside Brubeck. A 1958 tour sponsored by the U.S. Department of State inspired several of his later albums, most notably Time Out from 1959.

Time Out was unusual because of its unusual time signatures, yet it became Brubeck's best-selling album and the first jazz album to sell over one million copies. Its lead single, "Take Five", was written by Desmond in a rare 5/4 time and became the best-selling jazz single of all time. Other songs from the same series, such as "Blue Rondo à la Turk" and "Unsquare Dance", also became hits. Brubeck kept releasing music until his death in 2012.

Brubeck's music ranged from refined to bold, and he drew on his mother's classical training. Together with Desmond, he used elements of West Coast jazz near the height of its popularity. He was also influenced by the French composer Darius Milhaud. Brubeck's blend of classical music and jazz became known as "third stream." John Fordham of The Guardian wrote that Brubeck's real achievement was to blend European composing ideas, demanding rhythms, jazz song forms, and improvisation in ways that were both expressive and accessible. Brubeck received many honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, induction into the California Hall of Fame in 2008, and an honorary doctor of music degree from Berklee College of Music. His album Time Out was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005. The Los Angeles Times called him "one of Jazz's first pop stars," although he rejected his fame and felt uncomfortable when Time put him on its cover ahead of Duke Ellington.

Ancestry and early life

Brubeck's father's family had Swiss roots, and the family name was first spelled Brodbeck. His mother's parents were English and German. He was born on December 6, 1920, in Concord, California, and grew up in the small country town of Ione, California. His father, Peter Howard "Pete" Brubeck, was a cattle rancher. His mother, Elizabeth (née Ivey), had studied piano in England with Myra Hess and had planned to become a concert pianist. She also taught piano to earn extra money. Brubeck did not plan to become a musician, though his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, were already heading in that direction. He still took lessons from his mother. He could not read music during those early lessons. He blamed his poor eyesight, and he "faked" his way through well enough that few people noticed.

Brubeck planned to work with his father on the ranch, so in 1938 he enrolled at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California to study veterinary science. The head of zoology at the time, Dr. Arnold, encouraged him to change his major to music. He told Brubeck, "Brubeck, your mind's not here. It's across the lawn in the conservatory. Please go there. Stop wasting my time and yours." Later, Brubeck nearly got expelled when one of his music professors found out that he could not sight-read. Several others spoke up for him, saying his skill at writing counterpoint and harmony more than made up for it and showed his understanding of music notation. The college was still worried, but it agreed to let Brubeck graduate if he promised never to teach.

Military service

After graduating in 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the United States Army and served in Europe with the Third Army under George S. Patton. He volunteered to play piano at a Red Cross show, which was a great success, so he was spared from combat service. He helped create one of the first racially integrated bands in the U.S. armed forces, called "The Wolfpack." In the army in 1944, he met Paul Desmond. After nearly four years of service, he returned to California to study at Mills College in Oakland. There he studied with composer Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to study fugue and orchestration but not classical piano. Earlier, while on active duty, Brubeck had two lessons with Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA, hoping to learn high modernist ideas. Those lessons did not go well, because Schoenberg believed every note should be accounted for, and Brubeck could not accept that approach.

Brubeck's son Chris said that a twelve-tone row appears in The Light in the Wilderness, Dave Brubeck's first oratorio, where Jesus's twelve Disciples are introduced, each singing his own notes. In 1949, Jack Sheedy, who owned San Francisco-based Coronet Records (which had recorded local Dixieland bands), was convinced to record Brubeck's octet and later his trio. Sheedy could not pay his bills, so he gave up his masters to his record stamping company, the Circle Record Company, owned by Max and Sol Weiss. The Weiss brothers soon renamed their business Fantasy Records. Brubeck's first records sold well, and he made new records for Fantasy, which soon shipped 40,000 to 50,000 copies of his records each quarter and made a good profit.

Career

In 1951, Brubeck formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond on alto saxophone. The group played at San Francisco's Black Hawk nightclub and toured college campuses, recording a series of live albums. The first was Jazz at Oberlin, recorded in March 1953 at Oberlin College. Its live sound was credited with making jazz respected at Oberlin, and it is one of the earliest examples of cool jazz. Brubeck later returned to record Jazz at the College of the Pacific. After that, he signed with Fantasy Records, believing he had a stake in the company. He worked as an artists and repertoire promoter, encouraging the label to sign Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, and Red Norvo. When he learned the deal was only for a half interest in his own recordings, he quit and signed with Columbia Records. In June 1954, the quartet released the album below, which was a collection of its college visits.

Main article: Jazz Goes to College

Jazz Goes to College included songs recorded at Oberlin College, the University of Michigan, and the University of Cincinnati. Brubeck was featured on the cover of Time in November 1954, the second jazz musician to appear there after Louis Armstrong. Brubeck found this honor embarrassing, because he felt Duke Ellington deserved it more. When Ellington came to show him the cover, Brubeck said, "It should have been you." Over the years, the group's bassists included Norman Bates and others, and in 1956 Brubeck hired drummer Joe Morello. In 1958, African-American bassist Eugene Wright joined for a Department of State tour of Europe and Asia, and became a permanent member in 1959. Brubeck strongly supported Wright's place in the band. He canceled several concerts when club owners objected to an integrated band, and in January 1960 he canceled a 25-date tour of colleges in the American South because 22 of the schools refused to let Wright perform.

Main article: Time Out (Dave Brubeck Quartet album)

In 1959, the quartet recorded Time Out, which used unusual time signatures, especially for jazz. Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson agreed to release it on the condition that the group also record a more conventional album, Gone with the Wind, to lower the risk of Time Out being a commercial failure. The album, with cover art by S. Neil Fujita, received mixed critical reviews, but it quickly went gold and was later certified double platinum. It reached number two on the Billboard 200 and was the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies. Its single "Take Five" became a jazz standard. Later albums followed a similar approach, including Time Further Out: Miro Reflections, Countdown—Time in Outer Space (dedicated to John Glenn), Time Changes, and Time In. Several of these used paintings by Joan Miró, Franz Kline, and Sam Francis as cover art. In the early 1960s, clarinetist Bill Smith replaced Desmond on a few albums. In 1961, Brubeck and his wife, Iola, created the jazz musical The Real Ambassadors, which was performed at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival. Brubeck also appeared in the British film All Night Long, which starred Patrick McGoohan and Richard Attenborough. He worked as program director of WJZZ-FM (now WEZN-FM) while recording with the quartet. In 1968, he produced The Gates of Justice, a cantata that mixed Biblical scripture with words by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1971, Columbia Records decided not to renew his contract, as it wanted to focus on rock music, and he moved to Atlantic Records. His music was also used in the 1985 film Ordeal by Innocence.

Personal life

Brubeck founded the Brubeck Institute in 2000 with his wife, Iola, at their school, the University of the Pacific. It began as an archive of the Brubecks' personal papers and has grown to offer fellowships and jazz education to students. One of the streets where the school is located is named Dave Brubeck Way in his honor. In 2008, Brubeck supported the Jazz Foundation of America, which works to help elderly jazz and blues musicians keep their homes and their lives, including those who had survived Hurricane Katrina. He performed at its yearly benefit concert "A Great Night in Harlem."

Brubeck married jazz lyricist Iola Whitlock in 1942, and the couple were married for 70 years, until his death in 2012. Iola died from cancer in Wilton, Connecticut in 2014, at age 90. The couple had six children, and four sons became professional musicians, including Darius, a pianist, producer, and educator, Chris, a multi-instrumentalist and composer, and Matthew, a cellist. Brubeck became a Catholic in 1980, shortly after completing the Mass To Hope, which Ed Murray, editor of Our Sunday Visitor, had commissioned. In 1996, he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was awarded the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.

Death

Brubeck died of heart failure on December 5, 2012, in Norwalk, Connecticut, one day before his 92nd birthday. He was on his way to a heart doctor appointment with his son Darius. A birthday concert had been planned for him, with family and famous guests.

A memorial tribute was held in May 2013. Brubeck is buried at Umpawaug Cemetery in Redding, Connecticut.

Legacy and honors

The Los Angeles Times noted that he "was one of Jazz's first pop stars," though he was not always happy with his fame. He was bothered that Time featured him on its cover before it did so for Duke Ellington, saying, "It just bothered me." The New York Times noted that he kept playing well into his old age, performing in 2011 and in 2010, only a month after getting a pacemaker. Its writer described his playing at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City as "the picture of judicious clarity." In The Daily Telegraph, Ivan Hewett wrote that Brubeck had "endless curiosity combined with stubbornness" and called him "truly a marvel." In The Guardian, John Fordham praised how Brubeck blended European ideas, demanding rhythms, and jazz with improvisation. Brubeck's son Chris compared one of his pieces to the best work of Aaron Copland, such as Appalachian Spring. Robert Christgau called Brubeck the "jazz hero of the rock and roll generation." The Economist wrote that he was a modest family man who could not live without performing. After Brubeck died, Chick Corea and Gary Burton paid tribute to him on tour in Toronto by playing "Hot House," and Corea played "Strange Meadow Lark" from the album Time Out. In the United States, May 4 is informally called "Dave Brubeck Day," and it is written "5/4" in the format most used in the U.S., recalling the time signature of "Take Five."

In 1975, the main-belt asteroid 5079 Brubeck was named after him.

Brubeck received many honors. In 2008, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presented him with a Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced he would join the California Hall of Fame at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. He also received honorary music degrees from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, Berklee College of Music, and the George Washington University, where he received a doctor of music degree (DMus honoris causa). In 2009, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named him a Kennedy Center Honoree, and President Barack Obama said, "You can't understand America without understanding jazz, and you can't understand jazz without understanding Dave Brubeck." In 2010, he received the Miles Davis Award at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, and Bruce Ricker and Clint Eastwood produced the documentary Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way for Turner Classic Movies. His other honors included the National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame, a BBC Jazz Lifetime Achievement Award, and an honorary fellowship from Westminster Choir College.

Discography