• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2012 / December / Archives for 5th

Archives for December 5, 2012

TT: Dave Brubeck, R.I.P.

December 5, 2012 by Terry Teachout

1101541108_400.jpgDave Brubeck, a wonderful artist and an uncommonly kind and decent man, died today, on the eve of his ninety-second birthday. The Los Angeles Times obituary is here.

Much will be said about Brubeck in days to come, so I’ll confine myself to a purely personal note: I learned how to play jazz bass as a boy by plucking along with my father’s battered copy of Jazz Goes to College, the 1954 live album that made Brubeck a star. It’s as listenable today as it was six decades ago. So are most of his other records, this one in particular.

Here’s a rare kinescope of the Dave Brubeck Quartet performing “The Duke,” a tribute to Duke Ellington that was Brubeck’s best-known composition. Paul Desmond is the saxophonist, Bob Bates the bassist, Joe Dodge the drummer:

And here’s my all-time favorite Brubeck record, a performance of his own “Summer Song” in which he accompanies none other than Louis Armstrong. Iola, Dave’s wife, wrote the lyric:

TT: Snapshot

December 5, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Clifford Brown performs “Oh, Lady Be Good” and “Memories of You” in 1955 on Soupy Sales’ Soup’s On. This clip is believed to be the only surviving performance film of Brown:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

December 5, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit–some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures.”
Loren Eiseley, The Invisible Pyramid

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

December 2012
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Nov   Jan »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Snapshot: FDR’s 1933 inauguration
  • Almanac: Ralph Ellison on power
  • Lookback: “Call me Bartleby”
  • Almanac: Thomas Fuller on memory
  • Just because: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays Ravel

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in