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Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Brubeck & Company In Belgium, Part 3

July 13, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

From a DBQ television appearance in Europe, we have the piece that served as the quartet’s concert opener for more than a decade. First, a couple of observations, one from me, one from Eugene Wright:
From me: Whoever decreed that white men can’t play the blues never really listened to Desmond and Brubeck personalize the idiom as they do in their solos here.
Gene’s observation is a quotation in a book about Desmond. The first part of it applies to his relationship with Morello from the beginning of their time together, when Wright joined Brubeck in early 1958.

Right away, Joe and I were as one. It was like Jo Jones and Walter Page with Count Basie. It was right from the beginning. Joe Morello and I locked up immediately. Joe’s out of New York and he had that thing–Ben Webster and all those guys loved him because he had that little extra thing you need. When musicians used to ask me how I could play with that band, I told them they weren’t listening. I told them I was the bottom, the foundation; Joe was the master of time; Dave handled the polytonality and polyrhythms; we all freed Paul to be lyrical. Everybody was listening to everybody. It was beautiful. Those people who couldn’t accept it were looking, not listening.

That was the major blues for this mini-series. Tomorrow, the minor blues.

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Comments

  1. Denis Ouellet says

    July 13, 2010 at 6:29 am

    Thank you Doug for this clip.
    Eugene Wright’s quote is right on.
    The music is beautiful.

  2. mrebks says

    July 13, 2010 at 9:07 am

    With Joe the Pro, Des the Mesmerizer, and the Wright stuff, plus Dave’s real doozy of digits, why would anyone ever choose to lose the true Bru Blues?

  3. David Conte says

    July 13, 2010 at 12:09 pm

    Doug: Thank you for these clips. It’s great that we can all enjoy them!

  4. Lana Kolbrún Eddudóttir says

    July 13, 2010 at 3:24 pm

    This was beautiful, Doug !
    Thanks for sharing.

  5. Bart Roderick says

    July 17, 2010 at 5:57 am

    The thing that gets me about all these clips is how lyrically these guys play. I get tired of hearing myself play my fastest licks during a solo as if there’s going to be a grade at the end for how many notes I played. Desmond just plays a beautiful melody for every solo, and Brubeck sets up a vibe and explores it to it’s full ramification. Listening to these clips is like going to Jazz School.

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...

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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.

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