Dave Brubeck: Classic [Update December 2012 - RIP]

I was there! I'm not proud of the review I wrote, but if it got across the point that it was awesome then it was good enough.

HOORAY! Dave Brubeck was kind of godly, wasn't he?

(Be honest; what did you think of the chorus?)

The chorus was fine, but coulda used a little more punch in the bass section. Whether that means better bass singers or just more of them, I don't pretend to know.

Are you going to any of the festival?

Speaking as one of the basses onstage, I'm relieved that that's the worst criticism! It's always tough singing stuff like that because you always lose the lower voices (esp bass ESP when most of your bass section are actually baritones and don't have huge lower ranges).

The group did that piece on something like four weeks of rehearsal, with the ringers from Boston getting the last week and a half, so I'm just happy we didn't completely crash and burn.

I think Brubeck was on "Piano Jazz" last Sunday, but I missed it. I can never get up that early.

I'm not a jazzist, and personally, I like that he (re)introduced a certain element of compositionality to popular jazz--I imagine he, along with groups like Modern Jazz Quartet, influenced Mingus on to some of his greatest works. I've wondered how much this is attributed to his "whiteness," and therefore how much it has to do with his disdainability amongst jazz-heads. He was both too popular and too avant-garde, I guess.

assail the unassailable:

he has just about the worst rhythmic feel of any major jazz pianist - SOOOOO stiff

^

i once had an entire auditorium of jazz students throw shit at me when i suggested he was, when it came to rhythm, a square.

A visiting Israeli dude was just telling me the other night how he could get Dave Brubeck tickets for *only* $35 - I didn't have the heart to tell him that he could probably just stick his $35 on the end of an arrow and shoot it in the air in the West Village and find better jazz to see than the Brubeck of 2007.

I am reviving this because I am on my second play of "The Gates of Justice" today and dude is a genius.

I am reviving because I picked up "Jazz Impressions of Japan" and while I have some reservations with the conceit it is a smokin record and I just love me some Brubeck.

It is a good record.

Could anyone really say "dud"? I should hope fucking not.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, August 12, 2004 6:51 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

me. i say dud.

oh you do not either.

don't like.

big diff between not liking something and calling it a "dud".

yeah, okay, maybe dud is kinda mean. he had his moments i suppose. but anyone who made as many boring records as dave brubeck is never gonna be on my hit parade. too many boring records to count!

just to prove i'm a nice guy i'm actually listening to dave brubeck and jimmy rushing album right now. it's pretty good. thanks to jimmy rushing.

let's just say that i'm all set when it comes to white jazz piano nerdz

http://www.hollowearth.org/images/jazz/bill_evans/bill_evans_portrait_in_jazz.jpg

scott I'm a huge bill evans fan but what you're saying is like saying "I don't need darkthrone because I have blue cheer"

Loving this exchange from the previous thread revival.

Anyway, dude hits 90 on Monday.

All this celebratory activity has been tempered somewhat by the pacemaker surgery Brubeck had in October. His recovery was so unexpectedly protracted that he had to postpone previously scheduled performances. (You figure that it had to have been a pretty serious problem for someone so devoted to making his gigs that he once did 120 straight days of travel for concert dates.)

"It was tough," Brubeck says of the procedure, which was supposed to have kept him hospitalized overnight but led to an 18-day stay. "They had to go into muscle instead of skin … and that caused all the problems."

Actually I'd missed he was a University of the Pacific grad -- pretty cool, that's my mom's alma mater as well.

Now that's a long life lived. RIP.

Amen and amen

RIP incredibly awesome dude

aw, rip dave

RIP. john d. otm upthread about Jazz Impressions of Japan, that one is killer. the quartet w/ brubeck is a great band.

RIP. A great musician and man. Every time I see that clip of him choking up on Ken Burns' "Jazz," I tear up myself. Here's the full transcript from the interview. I can't find a video:

Question: There's one other very important and vivid experience you had with your dad that really made an impression on you in terms of fighting racial inequality. Tell me about that.

Brubeck: I think I may have been six or seven, but I have to guess. And I don't know what was in my father's mind, but we were together. I used to go with him sometimes when he'd buy cattle. [We were down] on the Sacramento River. And my wife's uncle always hung out with a black rodeo rider. His name, believe it or not, was Shine. And so my dad just brought me up to this guy and he said "open your shirt for Dave and show him your chest." And he did and there was this brand on his chest. And my dad said "something like this should never happen again.." …You've gotta remember I'm around cattle branding and I know what it's like, that hot iron, 'cause I've branded hundreds of cattle. And the hotter the iron, the less it will hurt and the quicker you can get off, get off the burning and the smell of that burnt hair and skin. So you want to get that fire as hot as you can. And the whole picture came to my mind, because I've been around branding as long as I can remember. And to see a, a wonderful man having had to go through that was just too much for me….It had an impact on me that I'll never forget. All of my life I thought what I can do about this. It's like my dad telling me to do something about it.

wow.

sad. RIP.

time out was my first jazz record and it still flexes its influence over my taste. just the melody of "blue rondo a la turk" which seems in danger of spilling over, of unlocking totally, and yet it is so controlled, but it's also fluid enough to dance capably in and out of the 4/4 sections

RIP....the album Jazz Impressions of Japan has been a favorite of mine the last couple of years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDB4K5zCcfk

Too soon?

@KenJennings
Is it wrong to be sad that Brubeck died on 12/5 instead of 7/4 or 5/4 or 9/8?

I... cannot resist that joke. A+

Here's the Ken Burns "Jazz" clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu-ZTKgyl-U&feature=youtu.be

Or not. I'll get back to ya.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu-ZTKgyl-U

Yay!

wow...

Ordered a budget box of all five "Time" albums from BestBuy.com for $16. At one point, I had the deluxe 2CD Time Out that came out in 2009, but I want to hear the other four, and that's an unbeatable price.

"take five" was one of the 1st jazz records i'd ever listened to ... whatever appreciation for jazz i have is b/c of that record.

rip dave brubeck.

Take Five, with a mischievous intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjU1yYFQZfs


"Dziekuje" (Thank you). Solo piano, just beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uddIMgBwAJw

RIP.

Time out was also my introduction to jazz. RIP melody man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAIIqCfoq10

This here is where I am at tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IbbFAi9h4Y

at carnegie hall is like the coolest record imaginable

the chunky piano chords toward the end of "for all we know" .... just wonderful

Lewis Porter wrote a really good article on Brubeck for WBGO's website last month.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfZruW3NI6c

holy fuck this is so good. everyone on point but shout out to brubeck's typically dense and outré chord accumulations and joe morello tearing shit up

paul desmond's playing is just impossibly soft focus and lyrical

Listened to the Time Out LP this morning (as one does with breakfast and coffee in October!) and followed it up with the More Time Out LP, which I'd never heard, and to my ears today is even better.