In the 1950s and
'60s, few American jazz artists were as influential, and fewer still were as
popular, as Dave Brubeck. At a time when the cooler sounds
of West Coast jazz began to dominate the public face of the music, Brubeck proved there was an audience for
the style far beyond the confines of the in-crowd, and with his emphasis on
unusual time signatures and adventurous tonalities, Brubeck showed that ambitious and
challenging music could still be accessible. And as rock & roll began to
dominate the landscape of popular music at the dawn of the '60s, Brubeck enjoyed some of his greatest
commercial and critical success, expanding the audience for jazz and making it
hip with young adults and college students.
David Warren Brubeck was born in Concord,
California on December 6, 1920. Brubeck grew up surrounded by music --
his mother was a classically trained pianist and his two older brothers would
become professional musicians -- and he began receiving piano lessons when he
was four years old. Brubeck showed an initial reluctance to
learn to read music, but his natural facility for the keyboard and his ability
to pick up melodies by ear allowed him to keep this a secret for several years.
His father worked as a cattle rancher, and in 1932, his family moved from
Concord to a 45,000-acre spread near the foothills of the Sierras. As a teenager, Brubeck was passionate about music and
performed with a local dance band in his spare time, but he planned to follow a
more practical career path and study veterinary medicine. However, after
enrolling in the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, Brubeck played piano in local night spots
to help pay his way, and his enthusiasm for performing was such that one of his
professors suggested he would be better off studying music. Brubeck followed this advice and
graduated in 1942, though several of his instructors were shocked to learn that
he still couldn't read music.
Brubeck left college as World War II was
in full swing, and he was soon drafted into the Army; he served under Gen.
George S. Patton, and would have fought in the Battle of the Bulge had he not
been asked to play piano in a Red Cross show for the troops. Brubeck was requested to put together a
jazz band with his fellow soldiers, and he formed a combo called "the
Wolfpack," a multi-racial ensemble at a time when the military was still
largely segregated. Brubeck was honorably discharged in 1946,
and enrolled at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied under
the French composer Darius Milhaud. Unlike many composers in art
music, Milhaud had a keen appreciation for jazz,
and Brubeck began incorporating many of Milhaud's ideas about unusual time signatures
and polytonality into his jazz pieces. In 1947, Brubeck formed a band with several other
Mills College students, the Dave Brubeck Octet. However, the Octet's music was a bit too adventurous
for the average jazz fan at the time, andBrubeck moved on to a more streamlined
trio with Cal Tjader on vibes and percussion
and Ron Crotty on bass. Brubeck made his first commercial
recordings with this trio for California's Fantasy Records, and while he
developed a following in the San Francisco Bay Area, a back injury Brubeck received during a swimming
accident prevented him from performing for several months and led him to
restructure his group.
In 1951, the Dave Brubeck Quartet made their
debut, with the pianist joined by Paul Desmond on alto sax; Desmond's easygoing but adventurous approach
was an ideal match for Brubeck. While the Quartet's rhythm section would shift
repeatedly over the next several years, in 1956 Joe Morello became their permanent
drummer, and in 1958, Eugene Wright took over as bassist. By
this time, Brubeck's fame had spread far beyond Northern
California; Brubeck's recordings for Fantasy had racked up
strong reviews and impressive sales, and along with regular performances at
jazz clubs, the Quartet began playing frequent
concerts at college campuses across the country, exposing their music to a new
and enthusiastic audience that embraced their innovative approach. Brubeck andthe Quartet had become popular enough to
be the subject of a November 8, 1954 cover story in Time Magazine, only the
second time that accolade had been bestowed on a jazz musician (Louis Armstrongmade the cover in 1949). In
1955, Brubeck signed with Columbia Records,
then America's most prestigious record company, and his first album for the
label, Brubeck Time, appeared several months later.
A steady stream of
live and studio recordings followed as the Dave Brubeck Quartet became the most
successful jazz act in the United States, and in 1959, they released one of
their most ambitious albums yet, Time Out, a collection of numbers written in
unconventional time signatures, such as 5/4 and 9/8. While Columbia were
initially reluctant to release an album they felt was too arty for the
mainstream, their fears proved groundless -- Time Out became the first jazz album to
sell a million copies, and in 1961, it bounded back into the charts when
"Take Five" unexpectedly took off as a single, rising to 25 on the
pop charts and five on the adult contemporary survey.
As Brubeck enjoyed increasing commercial
success, he began exploring new musical avenues; in 1959, the Brubeck Quartet performed with the New York Philharmonic, performing
"Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra," a piece written by Howard Brubeck, Dave's brother. Dave's own composition "Elementals," written for
orchestra and jazz ensemble, debuted in 1962; "Elementals" was later
adapted into a dance piece by choreographer Lar Lubovitch. And Brubeck and his wife, Iola, wrote a song cycle called "The Real
Ambassadors" that celebrated the history of jazz while decrying racism; it
was performed at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival, with contributions from Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae, and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. the Brubeck Quartet also became
international stars, with the State Department arranging for them to perform in
locales rarely visited by jazz artists, including Poland, Turkey, India,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sri Lanka.
In 1967, Brubeck dissolved the Dave Brubeck Quartet and began
devoting more time to composing longer works that often focused on his
spiritual beliefs, including an oratorio for jazz ensemble and orchestra,
"The Light in the Wilderness," which debuted in 1968; "The Gates
of Justice," first performed in 1969, which melded passages from the Bible
with the writings of Martin Luther King, and "Upon This
Rock," which was written for Pope John Paul II's visit to San Francisco in
1987. Brubeck continued to perform in a more traditional
jazz format as well, forming a new combo in 1968 featuring Jack Six on bass, Alan Dawson on drums, and Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax. In the
'70s, Brubeck also toured with a group
featuring his sons Darius (keyboards), Chris (bass and trombone), and Dan (drums);
dubbed Two Generations of Brubeck, the ensemble
performed a bracing fusion of jazz, rock, and blues. In 1976, Brubeck reassembled the classic lineup
of the Dave Brubeck Quartet for a 25th
anniversary tour; the reunion was cut short by the death of Paul Desmond in 1977.
From the mid-'80s
onward, Brubeck maintained a schedule that would
befit a rising star eager to make a name for himself rather than a respected
elder statesman. He continued to compose orchestral works as well as fresh jazz
pieces, and recorded and performed on a regular basis with a variety of
accompanists. Perhaps the most honored jazz artist of his generation, Brubeck received awards from two sitting
United States Presidents -- Bill Clinton presented him with the
National Medal of the Arts in 1994, and Barack Obama presented him with the
Kennedy Center Honors in 2009. Brubeck also received a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, a lifetime achievement Grammy from the National Academy
of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Medal, and honorary degrees
from universities in five different countries, among many other awards for his
life in music. When he died of heart failure late in 2012, just one day before
his 92nd birthday, his life and his work were celebrated around the world.
To visit DAVE BRUBECK'S website CLICK HERE
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