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The Dave Brubeck Quartet: The Columbia Studio Albums Collection 1955-1967

Dave Brubeck turns 91 tomorrow, December 6, and Columbia Records is releasing a CD box containing all 19 of the Columbia albums that his quartet recorded in the studio. The earliest, Brubeck Time, was released in 1955 but recorded in the fall of 1954, three years after Brubeck and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond formed the quartet. The last, Anything Goes: Brubeck Plays Cole Porter, was released in 1967 a few months before the quartet ended one of the most successful runs of any band in jazz history.

A few of the albums in the box have been widely available since their initial release. They include Brubeck Time; Time Out, which contained the chart-busting “Take Five;” Brandenburg Gate Revisited; and Jazz Impressions of Japan with the enchanting minor blues “Koto Song.” Some of the other albums made brief appearances in the United States, but after the LP era were available on CD only as expensive Japanese imports that were often hard to find. Among the rarities are the Porter collection and two albums released in 1965, Angel Eyes, songs by Matt Dennis; and My Favorite Things, a set of Richard Rodgers compositions, both sublime. Also never before on CD for US release are Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A., Jazz Impressions of Eurasia, Bossa Nova U.S.A., Jazz Impressions of New York, and two thematically related albums, Gone With the Wind and Southern Scene. Why have they been withheld from digital release until now? Perhaps the Sony/Columbia accountants could explain.

The problem for thrifty shoppers who want the previously unavailable CDs, of course, is that they are part of the $149.95 package and not available singly, at least for now. If you have a full shelf of Brubecks except for those gems, is it worth the expense to duplicate the others? Based on the quality of the playing in the Dennis, Rodgers and New York albums, it may be. Not having had the LPs of those albums for years, I am eagerly reabsorbing, among other highlights, the smoky “Sixth Sense” from Jazz Impressions of New York, Desmond’s jaunty solo on Dennis’s “Let’s Get Away From it All,” Brubeck and bassist Gene Wright challenging each other in serious fun on a quick romp through “Darktown Strutters Ball,” Joe Morello adapting himself to Indian finger drumming on “Calcutta Blues.”

The booklet included in the box contains tune listings and discographical information for each album, but no narrative, no essays placing the music in perspective. It has a few informal session photographs from Columbia’s 30th Street studio in Manhattan, including this one showing the quartet and, on the left, producer Teo Macero. Concert audiences rarely saw Desmond having this much fun.

The set traces Brubeck’s productive and often exhilarating years with Columbia before the quartet disbanded. It is not comprehensive. Their first album for the label, Jazz Goes to College (1954), was a concert recording, as were several other albums recorded on tour in Europe and the United States. The last of those concert recordings, from tapes in Brubeck’s collection, has just been released as Their Last Time Out. It was recorded December 26, 1967, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, almost literally on the eve of disbandment.

The two-CD set is primarily of pieces the quartet had played dozens, if not hundreds, of times. It includes a “These Foolish Things” with the quartet weaving abstractions that came naturally to Brubeck and Desmond after decades of further developing the ESP that characterized their collaborations from the beginning. It also has “La Paloma Azul,” which became a Desmond favorite in the years after the quartet broke up and he also recorded with the Modern Jazz Quartet in their 1971 Christmas Eve Town Hall concert. His brief solo here reduces the piece to its harmonic essence. The sensitivity of Brubeck’s solo belies the frequent accusation that he was a keyboard basher. The Pittsburgh “Take The ‘A’ Train,” shorter than some of Brubeck’s many other recorded versions, has Morello particularly vigorous in the exchange of four-bar phrases the two always enjoyed. This “You Go to My Head” may not equal the breathtaking 1952 recording the early quartet made at Boston’s Storyville in 1952, but it has moments of fine lyricism from Desmond and intriguing rhythmic displacements by Brubeck. By this time, Morello had only to set two bars of 5/4 time in introducing “Take Five” to draw applause. Desmond’s solo on his famous composition— alternating altissimo and basso profundo phrases—includes a passage of low tones startlingly reminiscent of Earl Bostic or, perhaps, Desmond’s early inspiration Pete Brown. In all, the Pittsburgh concert is a substantial addition to the Brubeck discography.

Happy 91st birthday.

You never know who’s listening. Skipping around in Jeffrey Lyons’ entertaining new book about his father Leonard, the prolific New York Post columnist, I came across this item in the Sophia Loren section:

In 1961, she was back in Spain filming El Cid, and after finishing the day’s shooting of that medieval epic, Loren would always turn on Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie records. “It’s the best way to snap back into the twentieth century,” she explained.

It’s worth mentioning the book, Stories My Father Told Me: Notes From “The Lyons Den” if only as an excuse to show you the cover shot of Leonard Lyons, his wife Sylvia and Marilyn Monroe.

Dave Brubeck is spending his 90th birthday in the midst of his sizeable family and many close friends. Chances are that they will take time out to watch the documentary about his life. As they reminisce, it’s almost certain that Dave will tell a Blackhawk story or two. The club in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district was his quartet’s headquarters for years before and after they became famous. It was the location of a pilot for a television series that never get off the ground. Mort Sahl, a friend and fan of the band, introduced the show. A wide shot near the beginning gives us a full view of the little club somebody once called “the temple of gloom.” The TV lights that day probably gave it the most illumination it ever saw. It was lit up by Brubeck, Miles Davis, Cal Tjader, Count Basie, Chet Baker, Art Tatum, Carmen McRae and most of the other jazz luminaries of the 1950s.
The Blackhawk is long gone. Brubeck is thriving. Here is a rare look at the classic quartet—Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello—at the Blackhawk:

Happy Birthday, Dave.

Dave Brubeck is getting a lot of attention. With his 90th birthday three days away, he is the subject of performance reviews, articles and editorials in dozens of newspapers from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and Britain’s Guardian. His music is being played over the air to a degree unprecedented since the early 1960s, when “Take Five” was a popular hit. On National Public Radio, Terry Gross replays her 1999 Fresh Air interview with Brubeck. Viewers of cable television in the United States and the BBC in Great Britain can celebrate Brubeck’s 90th birthday by watching a new documentary. Dave Brubeck, In His Own Sweet Way traces his life, career, influences, and effect on modern music and culture. The program is running this evening at 9 on BBC4 and in the US on Monday, Brubeck’s birthday, on the TCM channel at 5 pm EST, 2 pm PST.
With Clint Eastwood as executive producer and occasional on-screen guide, the documentary directed by Bruce Ricker combines film, videotape, audio recordings and photographs from a variety of sources and uses them to tell of Brubeck’s transformation from budding cattleman to an artist whose music reached around the world. It includes a previously unreleased conversation between Brubeck and Walter Cronkite, sequences of the classic Brubeck quartet with Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello, and fellow musicians evaluating Brubeck’s importance.
Ricker is impressive in his skill at coalescing and blending disparate elements—especially pieces of unrelated interviews—into a coherent and entertaining story. The consummate filmmaker Eastwood was often in the editing room with him. The rare films include Brubeck’s teacher Darius Milhaud at work composing, Desmond and Brubeck playing in the early days and lots of footage and photos of the large, affectionate and talented family of six children headed by Brubeck and his wife Iola. The program explains Mrs. Brubeck’s crucial role in managing the original quartet’s connection to college campuses, a move that established the band as a force in jazz and started a cultural trend. Desmond is amusing in his graphic description of Brubeck’s tendency to wildness at the keyboard in the early years of their partnership.
Apparently because of their closeness to Eastwood, the documentary brings in pop singer Jamie Cullum and crossover pianist David Benoit to discuss Brubeck’s music, with occasional interjections by Bill Cosby. Eastwood’s friend director George Lucas helps make Eastwood’s case that fellow northern Californians like Brubeck, Jack London and Ansel Adams are a breed apart. Sting and Yo-Yo Ma also make appearances, Ma in a lively cello duet with Brubeck’s youngest son Matthew. The actor Alec Baldwin does the film’s narration, which is spare, low-key and infrequent. The sound and pictures make the point: Dave Brubeck achieved success without varying from quiet, rigorous devotion to his principles. This documentary will charm his fans and advocates. It may make his detractors reconsider.
TCM will precede the Brubeck documentary with a showing at 1:30 pm EST of the 1962 British movie All Night Long, a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Othello, in which Brubeck and Charles Mingus, his friend from early San Francisco days, make cameo appearances and play a duet.
Naturally, Brubeck’s record companies are capitalizing on all of the fuss. Brubeck reissues abound. Concord, the music conglomerate that has acquired upwards of a dozen labels, owns Fantasy, a company Brubeck helped to found in 1949. Its two-CD compilation The Definitive Dave Brubeck reaches back far beyond the Fantasy years to “I Found a New Baby,” a solo he recorded in 1942 as a college student. It continues with the octet he formed after World War Two, trio performances from the late forties and early fifties and a substantial cross section of tracks by the quartet he formed with Paul Desmond in 1951. It includes the original quartet’s breathtaking 1953 performances of “How High the Moon” at Oberlin College and “All the Things You Are” at College of the Pacific. The second disc concentrates on music from Brubeck’s Concord and Telarc albums of the ’70s, ’80s and later.
Brubeck joined Columbia Records in the mid-1950s. It became the label on which he had his biggest hits, beginning in the days when jazz still enjoyed widespread popularity. In his Columbia career the centerpiece, as far as popular success went, was “Take Five,” the first jazz single to sell more than a million copies, in defiance of the inroads rock and roll was making into popular taste. Columbia/Legacy’s Dave Brubeck: Legacy Of A Legend is another two-CD compilation. It fills in the decades between Fantasy and Concord and incorporates tracks from 15 albums, and collaboration with Carmen McRae, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Rushing and Leonard Bernstein. “Take Five,” of course, is part of the package, and so is a previously unissued concert version of “Three to Get Ready,” with the classic quartet full of good humor nearly to the point of giddiness. Brubeck’s son Darius contributes liner notes of substance.
As if that weren’t enough, Sony Masterworks has also reissued two packages containing 10 of Brubeck’s most successful or important Columbia albums in their entirety. The first volume of Dave Brubeck: Original Album Classics has Brubeck Plays Brubeck, Brandenburg Gate Revisited, Gone with the Wind, Jazz Goes to College and Jazz Impressions of New York.
The second 5-volume set has the “time” series, Time Out, Countdown: Time in Outer Space, Time Further Out, Time Changes and Time In. And they’re going at fire-sale prices. Columbia has never been shy about reissuing, re-reissuing and re-re-reissuing music, but this landslide of Brubeck albums, some long unavailable, is unprecedented. And welcome.

Dave Brubeck’s new pacemaker seems to be working. Here’s a headline from this morning’s Worcester (MA) Telegram-Gazette:

To read a review of Friday night’s concert in Worcester, go here.
We have found no explanation of why Chris Smith and Cody Cox were substituting for Michael Moore and Randy Jones, Brubeck’s regular bassist and drummer.

Dave Brubeck’s 90th birthday is on December 6. Observances are beginning. This weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra under music director William Schrickel will play a celebratory concert with three pieces by Brubeck. They include one of his first extended orchestral works, Elementals, and the U.S. premiere of an adaptation for solo violin and strings of “Sleep, Holy Infant” from La Fiesta de la Posada. Three others pieces on the program are by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and Darius Milhaud, composers Brubeck admires. The Milhaud piece is La Création du monde, the French composer’s 1923 venture into jazz, the music he often credited with revitalizing European art in the 1920s. Following World War Two, Brubeck studied with and was encouraged by Milhaud at Mills College in California.
As Schrickel, was planning the concert, Brubeck’s son Chris sent him this photograph of a self-portrait that Milhaud gave the Brubeck family in 1958. The lines of the drawing are themes from La Création du monde.

The message in the bottom right corner reads, “To the 7 Brubecks, the Owner of the Square Foot. Souvenir of Creation du Monde, Milhaud 1958.” In a note to Bill Schrickel, Iola Brubeck explained:

The reference to the “square foot” stems from the fact that Milhaud was a Jewish refugee in this country. His apartment in Paris was destroyed by the Nazis when they occupied Paris and the German elite took over his family home in Aix-en-Provence. His parents remained on the estate disguised as gardeners. Amazingly, no one gave away the secret. However, Milhaud never saw his parents again. They died before the war was over and he could safely return to Europe in 1947. When we were building our new home in Oakland, he asked that we reserve one square foot for him, because he said “I want to have someplace I can stand and say “this is my own”. We did just that. We reserved one square foot–unfinished–in the hearth of the living room fireplace. When he visited us in 1958, he saw the square foot, asked for a piece of paper and the next day we received in the mail the sketch of Milhaud and the themes from Creation du Monde. We have the piece of paper in a safe and had the portrait engraved on copper to place in the hearth. When we moved to the East Coast we brought it with us, and that is what Chris photographed for you.

For details about Sunday’s concert and to hear an interview with Bill Schrickel about Brubeck’s effect on his musical life, go here.

Ending this Rifftides mini-series of videos from the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 1964 appearance on Belgian television is—what else?—the number that became a popular hit in a best-selling album and for Desmond, its composer, an annuity that by terms of his will is still funneling large amounts of money to the Red Cross. The quartet included it in all of their concerts around the world, lest there be disappointed audiences. This version has a brief solo from Desmond, an elegiac one from Brubeck, and Morello more subdued and thoughtful than he sometimes was in this show piece. There are cast and crew credits at the end of this beautifully produced television episode.

More or less from the beginning of their association, Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond had an affinity for blues in minor keys. Three that achieved success to the point of indelible identification with them were “Balcony Rock,” first recorded in Jazz Goes To College (1954), the same theme recycled as “Audrey” for Brubeck Time (1956), and “Koto Song” from Jazz Impressions Of Japan (1964). “Koto Song” was a new entry in the quartet’s repertoire when they played it on television in Belgium in ’64. This is the group usually referred to as the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, with Eugene Wright, bass, and Joe Morello, drums.

Next time: the final installment of this series of DBQ pieces from Belgium.

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.

This time, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello play “In Your Own Sweet Way.” Because of the quality of the song, the quartet’s popularity and the Miles Davis seal of approval, by the time of this performance in 1964 it was a jazz standard. Attention, tune detectives: Brubeck’s Matt Dennis quote suggests that he might have been thinking of disbanding, but the quartet’s dissolution was five years away.

For the first part of this mini-series, see the July 10 entry below. There is more to come.

Concert videos from out of the past continue to materialize on the internet. Recent emanations include several pieces from a 1964 appearance in Belgium by the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet. The excellent picture and sound quality and the absence of applause suggest that the performances were in a television broadcast. Over the next few days, we will bring you several of the clips, beginning with “Three to Get Ready.” It has a couple of rough edges, but with a band that had this much fun, who cares? Here is an unexpected bit of living history with Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello. Desmond’s “Auld Lang Syne” gag was still fresh enough to amuse his co-conspirators.

As long as the YouTube benefactor in Holland keeps posting new segments from that 1972 Dave Brubeck concert in Rotterdam, Rifftides will keep bringing them to you. The piece that just popped up, “Someday My Prince Will Come,” was a staple in the classic Brubeck quartet’s repertoire before it disbanded in 1969. Paul Desmond reaches into what he would no doubt refer to as his bag of tricks for a brilliant use of repetition (which amuses Alan Dawson), one of his celebrated duets with himself, blues references, and the all-but-inevitable quote from “Give a Little Whistle.” Brubeck lyrically builds his solo with single-note lines, then generates a head of steam that barely subsides before the tune ends. Along the way, he draws Dawson and Jack Six into a concentrated bit of the metric play that had a good deal to do with making him famous. Watching this band have a good time, it’s hard not to have a good time.

Previous installments of the Brubeck Rotterdam concert are here, here and here.

Two more pieces have emerged from the Dutch YouTube contributor who is posting segments of a remarkable Dave Brubeck concert in Rotterdam in 1972. The core unit was the Brubeck trio with bassist Jack Six and drummer Alan Dawson. Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan were the guest saxophonists on the Newport Jazz Festival tour.
Unlike many YouTube videos, these are of high visual quality and hold up in the full-screen mode. Don’t miss Six and Dawson enjoying the metric play at 5:15 of the second clip. Despite the superimposed titles, these new entries are minus Desmond. They feature Mulligan. Brubeck introduces them.

The counterpoint that Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond generated in the early-to-mid 1950s leads many serious listeners to consider the period the creative height of their partnership. For all the success of their later work, including “Take Five,” after the late fifties counterpoint was a less frequent, less concentrated part of their work. There were exceptions, even after the Brubeck quartet disbanded in 1969. One came during a brief stage when the temporarily reconstituted quartet featured Gerry Mulligan as the saxophonist. Desmond sometimes appeared with them. Thanks to Rifftides reader John Bolger for calling our attention to a video that recently popped up on the web. The year of recording is in dispute, but the latest information indicates that it was made in Holland during a 1972 Newport Jazz Festival tour. The tune is “All The Things You Are,” a favorite in the repertoires of all three men. They frequently played it when Jack Six and Alan Dawson were the bassist and drummer with Brubeck, as they were that night.
During the course of Desmond’s solo, the intensity of swing increases chorus by chorus and continues during Mulligan’s and Brubeck’s solos. Then, there’s a chorus of counterpoint between Desmond and Brubeck, another between Mulligan and Brubeck and, finally, two choruses of the three constructing what comes very close to meeting the formal requirements of a fugue—exposition, subject, countersubject—the whole magilla. Six and Dawson beautifully support the operation. I should add that this is a prime demonstration by Brubeck of why Desmond prized him as an accompanist.
Extra added attraction: a clear look at The Suit, Desmond’s favorite apparel during his final years. This video is a find.

The YouTube contributor who posted the video attached a note promising that there would be more from the concert upon request. Let’s hope that he or she gets plenty of requests.

The 2010 Brubeck Festival opens today at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Occasional Rifftides contributor Paul Conley of Capitol Public Radio in Sacramento spoke with Dave and Iola Brubeck about the history of the institute. Among the stories is Brubeck’s recollection of the early connection between one of his brothers and an emerging young band leader and arranger named Gil Evans. To hear Paul’s report, go here and click on “Listen.”

On his excellent blog, Jazz Profiles, Steve Cerra’s new subject is Dave Brubeck. He is taking for his text the extensive booklet notes I wrote for the four-CD Brubeck box called Time Signatures: A Career Retrospective. When it popped up today, I read the essay for the first time in years. To adapt what Paul Desmond used to say about recording, I didn’t have to cough too often during the playback. To read the first of three parts and see the photographs Mr. Cerra integrated into the text, go here. Parts two and three will follow this week.
Thanks to Steve for the rerun.
New videos have materialized from a concert Brubeck’s quartet played in Baden-Baden, Germany, in 2004, when he was a mere 83 years old. Bobby Militello was the flutist, Michael Moore the bassist, Randy Jones the drummer. The first piece is “Pennies From Heaven.” Dave introduces the second one.

Have a good weekend.

On the heels of the announcement that he is a 2009 Kennedy Center honoree, Dave Brubeck wrapped up a rare extended club engagement, part of his latest western tour. Sunday, at the helm of the “new” edition of the quartet he has headed since 1951, the 88-year-old pianist and composer played to a packed house for the final set of a four-night engagement at Seattle’s Jazz Alley.

Brubeck has come a long way in his recovery from a viral infection that put him out of action last spring. In conversation earlier in the day, he mentioned lingering tiredness and discomfort in his hands. Neither was apparent that night. Weariness dropped away after he made his greeting announcement and settled onto the bench for “C-Jam Blues,” initiating a Duke Ellington medley. To some listeners who live in the past, the Brubeck Quartet will always be the one with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello. That group disbanded in 1967. Desmond has been dead since 1977. The new quartet is not new. Drummer Randy Jones has been with Brubeck for 30 years, saxophonist Bobby Militello 28, bassist Michael Moore a mere nine.

Renowned for pieces he has written, Brubeck didn’t get around to playing any of them until he and the band entertained one another and the audience with the Ellington medley and a couple of great American song book items. He slid from his spare solo on the blues into “Mood Indigo” and segued from there to “Take the ‘A’ Train,” a central part of the quartet’s repertoire since his Jazz Goes To College days of the 1950s. At Jazz Alley, the vigor of Militello’s attack and uses of key modulations distinguished a solo that set Moore up for the first of three solos in which he used the bow to virtuosic effect that seemed to rivet Brubeck, Militello and Jones. Throughout the evening, the band listened intently to one another, exchanging smiles and glances at meaningful moments. It is an endearing characteristic of this group; without wearing their regard on their sleeves, they don’t mind letting it be obvious that they dig each other. The attentiveness and fellow feeling rub off on the audience.

“‘A’ Train” cooked along on Militello’s energetic solo, gained steam with the riff figures Brubeck set up and came to an abrupt conclusion with a Jones drum tag that could not have been more definite. Then came a staple from Brubeck’s fund of cherished standards, “These Foolish Things. ” He opened it with an unaccompanied chorus into which he managed to fit the “She may get weary, women do get weary” phrase from “Try a Little Tenderness.” That unlikely interpolation clearly surprised and amused Moore. Brubeck began “Stormy Weather” alone, melding into a steady 4/4 left-hand swing that set up Militello for a couple of choruses that disclosed the blues core Harold Arlen put into the song.

The only Brubeck composition of the evening came halfway through the set. It was “Dziekuje (Thank You),” which he wrote in gratitude to Poland for giving the world Chopin. His playing was soft almost to the edge of silence, and he built intensity in his solo not through volume but through development of the piece’s exquisite chords. Militello elevated the concentration of feeling, then the quartet brought the piece back to earth. Next, were they really going to play “Melancholy Baby?” No. That was just Brubeck’s eccentric choice of a few bars to introduce another song that’s almost as old. “Margie” (1920), as modern jazz players as various as Jimmy Rowles and Miles Davis knew, has great chords to blow on, and that’s what the quartet did, with Moore delivering a stunning pizzicato solo.

Brubeck must have heard thousands of drum solos on Desmond’s “Take Five” since the first one by Morello in 1959. But after he and Militello worked out on the tune and Jones began developing chorus after chorus in his solo, Brubeck leaned forward on the piano and paid attention to Jones’s permutations, now smiling, now nodding agreement at some variation. It was a fine solo. Brubeck absorbed it. His concentration on the music, his enjoyment of that moment, spoke volumes about what keeps him going in the fullness of his ninth decade.

Following a huge response to “Take Five,” Brubeck told the crowd, “I’m tired and I want to go to bed,” and so the quartet’s encore was “Show Me The Way To Go Home.” They made the most of the song’s earthy chord structure and got another standing ovation. Brubeck waved good night, stepped out the 6th Avenue door of Jazz Alley into a waiting car and went off to bed. In the morning, he and the band were driving across the state, headed toward the next one-nighter

YouTube has posted a few excerpts from programs the Dave Brubeck Quartet did for BBC television in 1964. The musical and the black and white video quality are superb. In the first one, I am struck by Brubeck’s delicacy at the keyboard and by the fullness of Paul Desmond’s alto saxophone sound. The critic Steve Race was the program host.

Race interviews Brubeck leading into a feature for bassist Eugene Wright. In the discussion, Brubeck earnestness and shyness are as noteworthy as Wright’s playing. One other point: Desmond used to speak with enthusiasm about Brubeck’s skill and sensitivity as an accompanist. In “The Wright Groove,” Brubeck’s comping behind Wright’s solo is evidence of what Paul was talking about.

The news from Connecticut is that Dave Brubeck’s two-week hospitalization for a viral infection is at an end. The setback made him miss the premiere in California last week of a new orchestral work inspired by Ansel Adams. He and his son Chris had been working on it for a year. Brubeck is back home and back at work, but his doctors felt that a transcontinental trip was not a good idea for a recuperating 88-year-old. In advance of the premiere, Paul Conley spoke with the Brubecks, father and son, and did a report for National Public Radio. To hear it and see one of Adams’ most famous photos, follow this link and click on “Listen.”