Search Results for: Dave Brubeck

Back at Rifftides world headquarters, following the semblance of a night’s sleep, I prepared an introduction of the Brubeck Brothers Quartet, which played a rousing concert to a full house last night at The Seasons. Although the BBQ played a few Dave Brubeck pieces, listeners who may have come expecting to hear a tribute band covering Father Brubeck’s greatest hits were treated to originality, vitality and power. I knew Dan Brubeck’s drumming and Chris’s electric bass and trombone work, but pianist Chuck Lamb and guitarist Mike DeMicco were new to me. Each is a first-rate soloist and a talented composer.
Lamb’s “Prime Directive” and DeMicco’s “Lydian Grin” were highlights of the evening, along with Chris Brubeck’s “Bullwinkle’s Revenge,” an amusingly disjunctive blues with a bridge. Chris described his brother as “an animal on the drums.” Yes, but there is more to Danny Brubeck than concentrated energy. He is also one of the most sensitive brush artists at work today. Perhaps by genetic predisposition, this little band is centered in rhythm. It swings as hard as any I’ve heard lately. If the Brubecks and friends come to your neighborhood, I recommend not missing them. Saturday night the BBQ joins forces with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra. It will also be the occasion of the American premier of Chris Brubeck’s Prague Concerto For Bass Trombone and Orchestra.

For the uninitiated: Pee Wee Marquette was a fixture at the old Birdland, known to the club’s audiences for his elecutionary introductions when he left his doorman’s post to be the MC, and to musicians as an extortionist. His nickname derived from his stature; he was under four feet tall. For a Lee Friedlander photograph of him with Count Basie, go here.
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, includes an account of one of Marquette’s free enterprise methods. The quote is from Mort Lewis, the manager of the Dave Brubeck Quartet in the 1950s.

There was a black midget, Pee Wee Marquette, who was the master of ceremonies at Birdland. And every act that played there, the musicians had to give him fifty cents and he would announce their names as he introduced the band. Dave Brubeck gave him fifty cents, Joe Dodge gave him fifty cents, and Norman Bates gave him fifty cents. Paul Desmond refused to pay one cent. And when Pee Wee Marquette would introduce the band, he’d always say, in that real high-pitched voice, “Now the world famous Dave Brubeck Quartet, featuring Joe Dodge on drums, Norman Bates on bass,” and then he’d put his hand over the microphone and turn back to Joe or Norman and say, “What’s that cat’s name?” referring to Paul. Then he would take his hand off the microphone and say, ‘On alto sax, Bud Esmond.’ Paul Loved that.

Rifftides reader Russ Layne writes from Chester, New York.

Wow, Just read the piece on Paul Desmond and the Red Cross. The first live jazz group I ever saw, a bar mitzvah present from my mother at age 13, was The Dave Brubeck Quintet at Fordham University (splitting the bill with Jackie Mason).

Anyway, as founder and executive director of Sugarloaf Music Series, Inc. in ‘downstate’ New York, my wife and I have developed a growing affinity to most Louisiana music, including Cajun. So…when we had the opportunity to help a group of Cajun artists in much need from New Orleans, The Bruce Daigrepont Cajun Band, and booked them into seven schools and venues with ALL proceeds going to the band, I reached out to the Red Cross, requesting that they help underwrite air fare for the band to Newark. After several connections with the NYC and local Goshen, NY offices, I was informed that they had no mechanism to facilitate our request. And now I’m learning that one of my original jazz idols, Paul Desmond and his estate has left nearly $5 million to the Red Cross. That I couldn’t get a penny to help some victims get work makes it even MORE of a
p—-r!

I was finally able to get Tipitina’s Foundation to handle that expense. I encourage all to funnel their contributions to that organization.

The White House did once treat Conover with respect. In 1969 it chose him to organize the musical portion of the 70th birthday party that President Nixon gave for Duke Ellington. Willis recruited the all-star band and produced and narrated the concert. I took a picture of him that afternoon at the rehearsal in the East Room as he listened to Hank Jones, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Clark Terry, Bill Berry, J.J. Johnson, Urbie Green, Jim Hall, Louis Bellson, Milt Hinton, Joe Williams and Mary Mayo. The concert was finally released on a Blue Note CD in 2002. I was honored to write the liner essay. Here’s a bit of it.

Hank Jones, Billy Taylor, and Dave Brubeck played beautifully, but the hands-down winner in the piano category was the 65-year-old Earl Hines, who in two daring minutes of “Perdido” tapped the essence of jazz. Ellington stood up and blew him kisses. Later, Billy Eckstine, who sang with Hines’ band before he had his own, walked up to his old boss and gave him an accolade: “You dirty old man.” The concert lasted an hour and a half, and the room was swinging. I looked around at heads bobbing and shoulders swaying and found Otto Preminger beaming and snapping his fingers Teutonically, one snap at the bottom of each downward stroke of his forearm.

Urged onto the platform, Ellington improvised an instant composition inspired, he said, by “a name, something very gentle and graceful—something like ‘Pat.’” The piece was full of serenity and the wizardry of Ellington’s harmonies. Mrs. Nixon, who looked distracted through much of the evening, paid close attention.

The evening was Ellington’s, gloriously so, but it was Willis’s connections, coordination, organizational skill and stewardship that put the icing on the birthday cake. It was one reason among many larger ones that he deserved, and still deserves, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Stan Levey was two years younger than Kahn, but in 1944, at eighteen, was Dizzy Gillespie’s drummer and provided Kahn with lessons by example. Nearly a decade younger than Levey, Artt Frank was fifteen in 1948 when he frequented 52nd Street, convinced Levey that he was serious about learning to play and, for his sincerity, received instruction. Neither Levey, Kahn nor Frank had the almost supernatural technique of Max Roach, the reigning bop drum master. What they had in common was unerring time, intelligence, hearing keenly attuned to their bandmates and the flexibility to provide the contrasting rhythmic elements of steadiness and punctuation that bebop soloists needed for support and inspiration. Frank is not as well known as many modern drummers, but he is respected and admired by musicians as diverse as Dave Brubeck and Dave Liebman and has worked with a wide range of players. His longest association was with Chet Baker, who has often been quoted as saying that Frank was his favorite drummer.

Frank’s book, Essentials for the Bebop Drummer, is fundamentally an instruction book for drummers, but it has other values. Among them are his anecdotal story of evolving from a poor boy growing up in a little town in Maine into a drummer encouraged by Charlie Parker; explanations of bop rhythms that laymen can understand; and a CD in which he and fellow drummer Pete Swann illustrate the lessons. The CD also has tracks of Frank demonstrating the practical application of the patterns he teaches as he performs with colleagues in the Southwest. He makes his home in Tucson. On a couple of pieces, he also sings, an activity that he evidently intends to pursue further. I find the book entertaining and helpful. I think I’ll get out an old set of brushes that has been languishing in a drawer, sit down with a large piece of cardboard on my lap and see if I can master a couple of Frank’s basic left hand exercises.

In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Jesse Hamlin has an article about Paul Desmond. In it, I am happy to report, he is kind to Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond and mentions that I will be signing copies of the book a week from today at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
Hamlin sought out San Francisco musicians who worked with Desmond in his pre-Dave Brubeck Quartet days of the 1940s, and spices his piece with their recollections. Here are two of them:

Guitarist Eddie Duran hired Desmond whenever he could for his band. “He was so inventive,” Duran said. “He was so aware of harmonies. He could just weave in and out of them. When he improvised, he didn’t trash the melody; he kept the context of the original melody and created new melodies. He had taste. And total mastery.”

“He was always extremely lyrical, his time was good and he had that tone. He was a pure player,” recalled trumpeter Johnny Coppola, who worked with Desmond in the Bay Area band of Billy Shuart in the late ’40s. “He always sounded beautiful,” added Coppola’s wife, Frances Lynne, who sang with Desmond and Brubeck at the Band Box and the Geary Cellar. “Nobody got a sound like he did.”

The headline on Hamlin’s Chronicle story is long and accurate. Click on it and you can read the article: Paul Desmond’s sound was like a dry martini, and his melodies flowed like sweet wine.

Paul Conley of KXJZ in Sacramento turned an interview about Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond into a masterly short program. Conley, who has produced several excellent shows in the NPR Jazz Profiles series, added an announcer introduction, worked in music clips and seasoned the segment with sound bites from Dick Johnson. Johnson was the leader who enticed Desmond away from the Band Box in 1949, leaving Dave Brubeck scuffling…and furious with Paul. (They reconciled. Sorry to spoil the suspense.) To hear the piece, click on this link, then click on “Listen.”

Rifftides and Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond are drawing responses from a cross section of jazz people in the United States and around the world, some from as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Norman Davis sent a message from the eastern Hungarian village of Sirok, famous for its ruined ancient castle. He retired there from England after a career in insurance. Mr. Davis’s story of hearing Paul Desmond for the first time, and the lasting impact that discovery made, is not unlike the experiences of countless others for whom music is an essential part of lives necessarily focused on other pursuits; making a living, for instance. Mr. Davis wrote:

I first encountered Paul Desmond’s playing in the Dave Brubeck Quartet back in 1954 when I was doing my National Service (draft) in the Royal Air Force. My musical interest up to then had been purely classical but I was bowled over by Paul’s inventiveness, his tone and his almost classical restraint. At that time, being new to jazz, I found the style of Charlie Parker and the others of the bop scene too raucous and seemingly undisciplined. I know better now, but it’s fair to say that Desmond’s style formed a bridge into a new world. But he was not just a bridge; he remains for me one of the truly great jazz saxophonists whose playing is as fresh now as it was 50 years ago. I saw him with the quartet in London in the late 50s – a remarkable experience.

My early encounter with Desmond encouraged me to buy and learn the alto saxophone and, with friends, form a small dance band until work in the insurance business demanded all my time. I later took up the clarinet, mainly to play classical music. Toward the end of our time in England I played in the local symphony orchestra, a clarinet quartet and other ensembles when opportunities arose. Over here, I managed to meet a flautist and pianist with whom I play classical trios mostly arranged by myself from other instruments. I am strictly an amateur player of a decent but not professional level. I also play (purely for my own amusement) the tárogató, a wooden Hungarian single-reed instrument inspired by the soprano saxophone. Regrettably, the alto does get much of an airing these days.

Mosaic Records reports that the first release of Paul Desmond–The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings has sold out. The seven-CD set features the former Dave Brueck Quartet alto saxophonist  with his prized Canadian rhythm section of guitarist Ed Bickert, bassist Don Thompson and drummer Jerry Fuller. Mosaic’s Michael Cuscuna says that he expects the next batch of pressings to be available by the end of May.

When after 17 years together the Brubeck Quartet disbanded, Desmond vacationed in the Caribbean, then retired to enjoy New York City, his home since, and long before, the Brubeck group disbanded. A notable exception was when he teamed with Bickert, Thompson and Fuller for a bit of touring that included engagements at Bourbon Street, the Toronto club whose congenial atmosphere was perfect for Desmond’s relaxed approach and the ingenious variations he lavished on standard songs and original compositions including his own “Take Five” and “Wendy.” Bassist Thompson applied his audio engineering skills to recording the group at Bourbon Street. As I mention in the album notes, Desmond accepted the Canterino family’s offer to play at the Half Note in New York  because, as he put it, the club was so near his apartment that he could practically fall out of bed and onto the bandstand. Toronto wasn’t so conveniently nearby, but he loved playing Bourbon Street. From an earlier release of some of the tracks, here are Desmond, Bickert, Thompson and Fuller with “Wendy.”

When the seven CDs of the Mosaic Bourbon Street set are again available, they will be found at: http://www.mosaicrecords.com/prodinfo.asp?number=269-MD-CD. It’s good to have them back.

We remember the life of Paul Desmond, who bequeathed us decades of memorable moments in American music. We lost a great musician, and I one of my dearest friends, when Paul died in his early fifties. He was born on November 25, 1924. From his earliest days in San Francisco through decades as Dave Brubeck’s alto saxophonist partner and with an enthusiastic following of his own, Desmond became one of the most celebrated soloists in jazz. Here is one reason, his 13-chorus solo on “Tangerine,” recorded with the Brubeck quartet in Denmark in 1957.

For my biography of Paul Desmond, pianist Bill Mays and his friend Arnie DeKeijzer, transcribed the entire Desmond “Tangerine” solo. Hardback copies of that biography are long gone, but it is available as an e-book with all of its photographs and illustrations intact.

To follow up on the post in the previous exhibit about the Bill Evans documentary, let’s revisit the 1962 Evans trio with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Paul Motian. This clip seems to be from Italian television. Evans’s harmonic chance-taking, rhythmic force and quick reactions to Motian’s accents suggest that—at least for this performance—the pianist had recovered from the shock of losing bassist Scott LaFaro in a car wreck the previous year, and that Israels was fully on board as LaFaro’s successor. The piece is Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way.”

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An international campaign is underway to win national recognition for Willis Conover, the Voice Of America broadcaster who sent American jazz to millions of listeners around the world. A petition drive is aimed at persuading the United States Postal Service to issue a stamp honoring Conover (1920-1996). Efforts to win him a posthumous Presidential Medal Of Freedom have yet to yield results. Admirers established a Conover Facebook page in 2010, but recognition by the US government has been limited to tokens: his name twice being read into the Congressional Record.

Through most of the cold war, Conover was the host of Music USA on the Voice of America. He was never a government employee, always working under a free lance contract to maintain his independence. While our leaders and those of the Soviet bloc stared one another down across the nuclear abyss, in his stately bass-baritone voice Willis introduced listeners around the world to jazz and American popular music. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no trace of politics, he played for nations of captive peoples the music of freedom. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the twentieth century. Countless Eastern European musicians give him credit for bringing them into jazz. Because the Voice is not allowed to broadcast to the United States, Conover was unknown to the citizens of his own country. For millions behind the iron curtain he was an emblem of America, democracy and liberty. The late Gene Lees made the case for recognition, to which I subscribe wholeheartedly.

…Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin wall and bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.

Will this postal stamp petition lead to Conover’s getting a long overdue posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom? Perhaps it will if infuential senators and congressmen get behind the idea and persuade the White House. At the very least, the Postal Service honor could be an effective first step. The organizers’ goal is a thousand names. Let’s deluge them with signatures in multiples of a thousand. To learn more and to sign the petition, go here.

One of the great contributions of Conover’s career was the part he played in organizing the White House tribute to Duke Ellington on Ellington’s 70th birthday in 1969. Willis put together the ten-piece band that serenaded Ellington with his own music, plus guest musicians Earl Hines, Dizzy Gillespie, Willie The Lion Smith, Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor, Joe Williams and Mary Mayo. Drummer Louis Bellson arranged his former boss’s music for the occasion. The piece is “In A Mellotone.” The soloists, in order, are Paul Desmond, Bill Berry, Urbie Green, Jim Hall, Gerry Mulligan, Clark Terry and Hank Jones.

After years of negotiations, Blue Note Records finally released a CD of the Ellington White House tribute concert in 2002.

For a Dave Frishberg sidebar on Conover’s cold shoulder from the VOA itself, see this 2006 Rifftides post.