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| Dave Brubeck |
I was saddened to hear of the death of the pioneering Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck this week. At just a day short of 92 he was unusually long-lived for a Jazz musician and had consequently witnessed most of the important developments in the genre and worked with many of it’s major players. Brubeck himself became a prime exponent of progressive Jazz and particularly the 'Cool' style that emerged in the late 50s.
I won’t pretend to be
familiar with his entire oeuvre but have often returned to his classic 1959
album - ‘Time Out’ over the
years. It’s the perfect embodiment
of his stated intention to explore alternative approaches to rhythm and harmony
within an approachable framework. ‘Time
Out’ has an undeniably easy-going
West Coast cool that can’t obscure the fact that Brubeck and his quartet were
applying a consciously experimental approach to style, structure and time
signature over its seven tracks.
It’s also a showcase for the sinuous saxophone work of Paul Desmond
who’s ‘Take Five’ became a
massively successful and immediately recognisable single.
Ultimately, I guess Brubeck's main
creative achievement was to demonstrate that music could be seductively
listenable and still present a satisfying artistic challenge. His musical scope was
considerable and he was well versed
in High Modernist theory and had even studied with Arnold Schoenberg. Nonetheless, to this day it seems that,
whenever I’ve played ‘Time Out’,
someone in the room will claim they "don’t normally like Jazz but really
like this".
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| The 'classic' Dave Brubeck Quartet. (L-R): Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Brubeck, Eugene Wallis |
The other facet of Brubeck
that his Californian hip credentials and commercial success might obscure was
his integrity in matters of civil rights.
Having recruited the black bassist Eugene Wright into the quartet he was
to cancel several gigs and at least one Television appearance in opposition to
the segregationist attitudes of club owners and producers.
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