• Home
  • About
    • Doug Ramsey
    • Rifftides
    • Contact
  • Purchase Doug’s Books
    • Poodie James
    • Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
    • Jazz Matters
    • Other Works
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal
  • rss

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Desmond Redux In Berlin

November 29, 2008 by Doug Ramsey

We may as well keep the Desmond string running through the weekend. After the Dave Brubeck Quartet disbanded at the end of 1967, Desmond did not play for more than a year. It wasn’t a matter of simply not performing in public or not recording. He did not take his saxophone out of the case, allegedly concentrating on writing How Many Of You Are There In The Quartet? the book that never happened. He also lolled around in the Caribbean. Toward the end of 1968, he relented to the extent of recording for the A&M label’s Horizon subsidiary. He was existing comfortably on his invested quartet earnings and the royalties from “Take Five,” but in the early seventies something within told him that he needed the gratification of regular playing. He began appearing as a guest with Brubeck’s reconstituted quartet or with Dave and his sons in the Two Generations Of Brubeck group. The Desmond interregnum period is covered in (here comes the shameless book plug) Chapter 29 of Take Five: The Public And Private Lives Of Paul Desmond.

Brubeck had taken less time to succumb again to the compulsion to play jazz. He continued to write his long-form concert works, but he assembled a band with Jack Six on bass and Alan Dawson playing drums. Gerry Mulligan, whom his friend Desmond once described as “the consummate prima donna bandleader,” put aside his own leadership and a fraction of his ego to tour with Brubeck. When Desmond joined them, they often played one of his favorite Mulligan pieces, “Line For Lyons,” as they did in a performance at the Berlin Jazz Festival in 1972. This clip, new to me, materialized on You Tube in the past few days.

 Desmond was costumed in the glen plaid garment known as The Suit, nearly inseparable from him in his later years. We get closeups of both in another performance from the Berlin Festival. Paul is featured on a ballad he cherished, “For All We Know.” 

 

Have a good weekend.

Related

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. Alexander Cohen says

    November 29, 2008 at 11:06 pm

    Shameless book plug notwithstanding, what nice riffs on Jeru and Paul. Ich liebe Line 4 Lyons. Counterpoint uber alles! Much appreciate the memories. Let me also recommend: the excellent cd reissue “The Paul Desmond Quartet” on Verve (A&M recorded 10 and 11/75 in Toronto) with liner notes by the shameless DR. It features a tasty “Line for Lyons” culled from those sessions but not appearing on the original vinyl. The Quartet include Canadian Masters Ed Bickert on guitar, Don Thompson on bass and Jerry Fuller on drums. Wendy would be my favourite track.

  2. Mel Narunsky says

    November 30, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    Alexander, “Take Five: The Public And Private Lives of Paul Desmond” really is a book well worth having. I know because I own a copy. The only things I have against it are that it is cumbersome and heavy and difficult to store.
    I am going to print out all these Desmond posts and comments to keep with the book.

  3. Dr. Mike Baughan says

    December 1, 2008 at 10:37 am

    Many thanks, Mr. Ramsey, for the book — read it cover to cover — and more tidbits like above as they trickle in, & for ‘Desmond on the Nature of Fame’. Us DesManiacs can’t get enough of ‘Uncle Paul’ & his great works while on this earth.

  4. Kenny Harris says

    December 1, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    Just had to say “What a gem,” FOR ALL WE KNOW. That’s a keeper.
    Thanks, Doug

  5. Old Baleine says

    December 1, 2008 at 10:17 pm

    Thanks again, Doug, for more sweetness and beauty. It’s always such a pleasure to drop in on your site, it’s almost a guilty pleasure!

  6. Frank Roellinger says

    April 30, 2009 at 11:10 am

    Doug, Thanks for this, and for your excellent biography of Paul. He once played “For All We Know” at my request. Anybody know whether there is a DVD of this available? The sound on YouTube is not very good. “All The Things You Are” may be downloaded from drummerworld.com as a very high quality video. I inquired at this website, which offers other DVDs, and got the response that this “was from a TV show”.

  7. Matt Hogan says

    November 12, 2009 at 5:52 am

    “For all we know” later moved down a minor third and became “Emily” with a few small modifications… Wish there was some video of the Canadian Quartet! Doug – LOVED the book, there’s at least one big Desmond fan here in Tokyo.

    • Robert LaRue says

      July 28, 2011 at 2:31 pm

      Not “Emily,” but “Wendy.” Desmond liked and often played “Emily,” the theme from the movie “The Americanization Of Emily.” But “Wendy” is the name of his composition based on the changes to “For All We Know.” See Mr. Ramsey’s book for how Desmond’s tune came to have that tile.

    • Ted O'Reilly says

      July 29, 2011 at 2:15 pm

      Matt, there is some video. The Desmond/Bickert/Thompson/Fuller group appeared on a Canadian TV show “Take 30” There’s some talk with Paul, show chatter with the two co-hosts and about 20 minutes of music. It’s lovely, as I know Doug can attest…

      • Doug Ramsey says

        July 29, 2011 at 5:37 pm

        Yes, I can attest——and protest. Ted may be able to get the full interview and quartet performance in Canada, but someone—perhaps the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—has blocked it in the United States. I included the video in a Rifftides post a year and a half ago. Now, when you try to play it, you get a black screen with white letters announcing, “The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”

        Nonetheless, if you go here, you can read background about the interview. Then, go here for some of the interview bookended by segments of the CBC’s Mary Lou Finlay and Paul Soles discussing Desmond on Finlay’s Take 30 program. (Sorry about the goofy insurance ad at the beginning. I’m even sorrier that the quartet has been edited out.) Finally, go to the Pure Desmond website to read a transcript of the full interview. That’s the best we can do for now. If the full Take 30 segment is allowed back on the web, Rifftides will post it.

        • Dr.Mike Baughan says

          August 1, 2011 at 8:57 am

          In Take 30 video, Mary Lou’s detection of ‘nervousness’ was actually his emphysema & struggle to breathe that you can see Desmond dealing with on that video. Great video, thanks!

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

Subscribe to RiffTides by Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Rob D on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • W. Royal Stokes on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Larry on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Lucille Dolab on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Donna Birchard on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

Doug’s Picks

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

Related

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in