Search Results for: Dave Brubeck

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How many times did the Dave Brubeck Quartet perform “Take Five?” Hundreds? Maybe thousands. No one other than Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello would know for certain, and it’s unlikely that any of them kept a scorecard. “Take Five” is the annuity that keeps on giving to the American Red Cross, Desmond’s legatee. Noel Silverman, the executor of Desmond’s estate, informed me this morning that royalties, mostly from “Take Five,” have given the Red Cross upwards of 7 million dollars since Desmond’s death in 1977.

In listening to the quartet in person and on record and in doing research for my Desmond biography, I have heard dozens of their performances of his most enduring composition. Still, I had never heard a Desmond “Take Five” solo as unpredictable as the one he played at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966. Not wanting to be a repeater pencil—to borrow Lester Young’s phrase—Paul varied his “Take Five” solos to prevent boredom, to entertain himself, the band and the audience, or to get a laugh out of Brubeck. For thirty years or so, surprising Brubeck gave Desmond enormous satisfaction. In this audio clip from the MJF website, we can’t see Dave’s reaction, but it’s easy to imagine it.

For an illustrated collection of information about Brubeck’s and the quartet’s long history with the Monterey festival, see the MJF website.

This week on his Night Lights on Indiana Public Media, David Brent Johnson is re-airing “After Brubeck: Paul Desmond 1968-1977.” The one-hour broadcast covers what the alto saxophonist was up to in the years following the dissolution of the Dave Brubeck Quartet until his death in the spring of 1977. I was pleased that David asked me to appear with him to talk a bit about Paul and his music.

The program includes tracks from a variety of Desmond albums, among them his live quartet dates with guitarist Ed Bickert, his concert with the Modern Jazz Quartet and his appearance with the all-star band at Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday party at the White House. To hear the program, go here and click on “Listen Now” at the top of the page. The site also features a David Brent Johnson essay about Desmond.

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This is the 90th birthday of Cal Tjader (1925-1982). Tjader may have been best known for his pioneering Latin jazz, but in the late 1940s and early ‘50s with the Dave Brubeck Trio, he was respected for his mainstream drumming. Pianist Hank Jones told me that when he played on Tjader’s 1953 record session for Savoy, Tjader became one of his favorite drummers. After he formed his own band and concentrated on vibraharp, Tjader’s Latin recordings with sidemen like Mongo Santamaria, Armando Perrazza and Willie Bobo achieved huge popularity. Even so, his groups always balanced straight-ahead music with the Latin. One of Tjader’s most engaging recordings, reissued here, included Eugene Wright, who was his bassist until Wright joined Brubeck later in 1956. The pianist was Gerald Wiggins, the drummer the underrated Bill Douglass, a master of wire brushes.

The first tune, Wiggins’s “A Fifth For Frank,” is illustrated with the cover shot of the original album. For reasons that only YouTube could explain, the final two videos show the cover of an unrelated album. Ignore that. Just close your eyes and enjoy three pieces from a one-time encounter of four superb musicians.

For fellow blogger Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles report on Duncan Reid’s 2013 biography of Tjader, go here.

Since Rifftides began, every year on May 30 I have posted something about Paul Desmond. He died thirty-eight years ago today. For reasons that I cannot clearly identify, this year I struggled with the idea. Until the last moment I put off the remembrance and finally concluded that the best option was to have Paul speak for himself with his playing.

At the 1954 recording session for the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s album Brubeck Time, LIFE magazine photographer Gjon Mili shot the film you will see. Mili had egged Brubeck into an pugnacious frame of mind by saying that he did not consider that what the quartet played was jazz. That got the result he was hoping for, a surge through the harmonies of “Oh, Lady Be Good” that ended up titled “Stompin’ For Mili.” It’s the piece you hear and see last in the film clip. Brubeck later recalled that producer George Avakian then asked for a quiet minor blues. The preamble here is from my 2005 book The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.

“I would like,” said Gjon, closing his eyes and raising his hand expressively, “I would like to see Audrey Hepburn come walking through the woods—“
Gee,” said Paul wistfully, “So would I.”
“One,” I said, noticing the glazed expression about Paul’s eyes, “two, three, four. And we played it.”

Mili may not have known of Desmond’s infatuation with Audrey Hepburn, but he could have said nothing more likely to inspire the playing that followed. Paul never met Audrey Hepburn, though he came close many times that summer of 1954. In the Jean Giraudeaux play Ondine, she was an underwater nymph who fell in love with a knight. She won a Tony award for her work in the title role. Ondine played at the 46th Street Theatre, not far from Basin Street.

“Paul would look at his watch the whole time we were playing at Basin Street,” Brubeck told me. “He knew when she would walk out the stage door and get in her limousine, and he wanted to be standing there. So, when I’d see him watching the time, I knew I’d better take a quick intermission or I was going to have problems with Paul. He’d put his horn down, and out the door he’d go, and he’d run down just to stand and watch her leave.”

“Paul told me that,” I said to Brubeck, “and I asked him, ‘What did you say to her?’ And he looked surprised and said, ‘Nothing. Are you kidding?’

Here is “Audrey,” note for note as it appeared on the album

This addendum to the “Audrey” story is also from the Desmond biography.

Brubeck Time became a big seller and “Audrey” one of Desmond’s most beloved works. The recording associated his name with Hepburn’s, but he died twenty-three years later never having imagined that she knew who he was or that she had heard the piece. After Hepburn died in 1993, the United Nations honored her for her international work with children. Her husband, Andrea Dotti, asked Brubeck and his Quartet to play “Audrey” at the memorial service at UN headquarters in New York.

“I told him,” Brubeck said, “that I had no idea he’d be aware of ‘Audrey.’ He said, ‘My wife listened to it every night before she went to bed, and if she was walking through the garden, she’d listen to it on earphones.’”

“Paul never knew,” Iola Brubeck said. “And he was so in love with Audrey.”

A year or so earlier, Hepburn herself acknowledged what “Audrey” meant to her. The publicist and author Peter Levinson sent the actress a copy of Brubeck Time when the album was first reissued as a compact disc. She responded with a hand-written note.

19 March ’92

Dear Peter,
Thank you for such a lovely gift—I am thrilled to have the Brubeck C.D. with ‘My Song,’ the ultimate compliment. You letter is so lovely, and I am most grateful for all your kindness.

Warmest Wishes,
Audrey Hepburn

At the United Nations ceremony, Brubeck’s new alto saxophonist, Bobby Militello, played Desmond’s solo note for note, inflection for inflection. He had memorized it when he was a boy.

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Following yesterday’s post about recently deceased musicians, a Rifftides reader who identifies himself only as Derrick sent a message:

I just heard that Ron Crotty, the original bassist of The Dave Brubeck Quartet, died just a few days ago, too, but I have not seen anything written about it. Which leads me to ask, has Ron passed? Or is it another case of the internet burying someone who is still with us?

The sad report that Derrick heard was accurate. Evidently, nothing has been written in the jazz press or in general news outlets about Crotty’s death. Guitarist Tony Corman, his frequent playing companion in recent years, confirmed it for us by email.

Ron was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on his 87th birthday, Apr 2, and passed three weeks later. He’d been treated for cancer two years ago and came through a rather grueling treatment pretty well, and we resumed playing our steady Sunday gig at the Oakland Museum. He was gardening again and had a new love relationship, really was doing fine, and then started feeling lousy, went to the doc, and, well, there you are. We’re looking to do a remembrance at the Oakland Museum on June 28, 3 – 5 PM. I couldn’t find an obit either, nor were we told of a funeral. Ron has one daughter, who lives I think in D.C. She was (and may still be) out to see him at the end and, I presume, take care of his affairs.

Six years before his death—nearly to the day—Rifftides posted a piece about Crotty. It contained video of Crotty, guitarist Corman and bass trombonist Frank Phipps playing at the Oakland Museum. With the elimination of a bit of introductory rambling, here it is.

Ron Crotty was the bassist in the Dave Brubeck Trio of the late 1940s and early ’50s and the quartet that Brubeck and Paul Desmond formed in 195l. On the cover of Brubeck’s celebrated Jazz at Oberlin from 1953, he is lounging in the lower right of the photograph. Crotty’s influences were Jimmy Blanton and Ray Brown. At the age of 80, that’s how he plays today, with solid time, a big tone, the best notes in any given chord, no acrobatics high on the finger board, no triple stops and no blinding double-time passages. With Crotty on the new CD are men he plays with in his gigs in the café of the Oakland Museum, the clubs called Anna’s and Sadie’s and other spots around the Bay Area. They are bass trumpeter Frank Phipps and guitarist Tony Corman. How many important bass trumpeters can you name? I can think of two in addition to Dizzy Gillespie, who dallied briefly with the instrument. They are Cy Touff and Johnny Mandel. Mandel played bass trumpet briefly with Count Basie, then went on to other work. Add Phipps to the list. Cat can play. So can Corman. Phipps has a lovely way of alluding to extracurricular tunes without quoting them outright. Why is he shown on the cover playing a trombone? I don’t know.

The CD, cleverly titled Crotty Corman And Phipps, is on the Auraline label, as new to me as are Phipps and

Corman. All of the tunes are standards, except Corman’s samba “Rosa Rugosa” and Phipps’s “Ron’s Muse.” I was absorbed by Crotty’s straightforward bass line on “I Got Rhythm” changes in “Ron’s Muse.” “Rhythm” changes can be abused and they can be boring, but in the right hands they are never outdated. Other highlights: the languor of Corman’s out-of-tempo introduction to “Rosa Rugosa;” Phipps’s muted sound of a friendly walrus on “How Deep is the Ocean;” the way the three use the changes to create a new melody from the beginning of “Ghost of a Chance,” never disclosing the tune until the bridge of the final chorus; the unperturbed spunk of “My Little Suede Shoes;” the rolling swing of “Tangerine.”

In this clip from YouTube, they play “Witchcraft.” The sound is on the verge of distortion, but the video gives you a look at the group. Corman goes beyond allusion in his quote from John Lewis’s “The Golden Striker,” but he makes it fit so nicely that he can be forgiven.