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While the Rifftides staff regroups and copes with family matters, we shall revisit a few posts from the past. This one appeared almost exactly four years ago. It concerns a recording that received far less general attention that it warranted.
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December 30, 2008

The release of a new CD, The Film Music Of Ralph Rainger, is the occasion for my piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. Coupled with an article about the contemporary motion picture composer A.B. Rahman, it is headlined, Another Who Has Been Unjustly Forgotten and begins: 

For years, Jack Benny opened his CBS radio and television broadcasts with “Love in Bloom.” The comedian’s violin butchery of his theme song became a running coast-to-coast Sunday night gag. As a result, the piece became even more famous than Bing Crosby had made it with his hit record in 1934. Generations of listeners and viewers heard Bob Hope close his NBC shows with “Thanks for the Memory,” which he introduced in a movie, “The Big Broadcast of 1938.” The song was inseparable from Hope’s career. 

Ralph Rainger, the man who wrote those songs, was a pianist and recovering lawyer from Newark, N.J., who also composed such standards as “Easy Living,” “If I Should Lose You,” “Here Lies Love,” “Moanin’ Low,” “June in January,” “Please” and “Blue Hawaii,” most often with lyricist Leo Robin. Rainger and Robin turned out dozens of songs for Hollywood movies. They were frequently on the hit parade with Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter and the Gershwins. George Gershwin died at age 38, Rainger at 41. But while Gershwin’s fame increased after his death, Rainger’s name faded. With their beguiling melodies and challenging chord progressions, Rainger’s works are frequent vehicles for improvisation. Yet, in my experience, most musicians who play those songs respond with puzzled looks when asked who wrote them. That might have been the case with bassist Chuck Berghofer, pianist Jan Lundgren, drummer Joe La Barbera and the incomparable vocalist Sue Raney until producer Dick Bank recruited them to record the CD “The Film Music of Ralph Rainger” (Fresh Sound). 

…it is the first all-Rainger album since pianist Jack Fina managed to reduce Rainger’s tunes to dreary cocktail music in a 1950s LP. Mr. Lundgren, a brilliant Swedish pianist, plumbs the songs’ harmonic souls. He illuminates even the prosaic “Blue Hawaii,” which — to Rainger’s horror — became a huge hit in 1937. “It will disgrace us,” he told Robin. “It’s a cheap melody . . . a piece of c—-.” 

Profound thanks to the dozens upon dozens of Rifftides readers who sent messages and comments following the death of my brother Dave. Your words are a great comfort. Please understand my failure to respond to you individually.

In the photograph, Dave is arriving at our house for Christmas a few years ago. His obituary is in the hometown newspaper. If you care to read it, click here. Again, thank you all.

Rifftides is on hold, as explained in the previous post. However, I’m taking a moment for a couple of timely alerts.

Chris Brubeck posted a memoir about life with his father, Dave. Chris’s article is packed with family anecdotes about the patriarch of American music who died on December 5 at age 91. Here’s a sample:

We were really poor in those early days. When we went on the road, we would stay in old hotels that had cavernous closets—most times the closets were the best thing going for them. My older brothers Darius and Mike traveled with sleeping bags for those closets, that was their part of the “suite.” My parents got the bed and when I was a baby apparently I fit nicely in the dresser drawer with some blankets piled underneath me. We thought it was fun—indoor camping! We saved money up as a family because dad had to start his own record company to get his music out there. Perhaps you have heard of it—Fantasy Records! His partners were sons of a man who owned a record pressing plant. Dave supplied the talent, and they manufactured the recordings. Critics noticed, and the vinyl started moving. Then his partners screwed him out of the company. He was thrown off his own label due to some legal shenanigans. But once he was forced out of Fantasy, Columbia Records signed him and with their mammoth distribution the rest is history.

To read all of the piece, go here.

Again this year, in addition to Christmas jazz around the clock Christmas Eve and Christmas day, the internet radio station known as The Jazz Knob will present several instances of the late radio host Chuck Niles’s reading of “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.” Niles (pictured) was a Southern California jazz disc jockey from 1957 until his death in 2004. His presentation of the classic Christmas poem became a tradition in the Los Angeles area. For the schedule of readings and to listen to The Jazz Knob any time, go here.

My brother Dave is a tough guy. He is holding on.

With the following preamble, Rifftides reader and retired Toronto jazz broadcaster Ted O’Reilly called our attention to an innovation in his former profession.

…Hawkins, Basie, Gillespie, Ornette — all those old guys — later. Here’s important JAZZ to learn about.

This news release from a Canadian jazz radio station is what caught Mr. O’Reilly’s attention:

DECONSTRUCTING SGT. PEPPER WITH SCOTT FREIMAN

JAZZ.FM91 announces a new pop culture initiative, the “JAZZ.FM91 Thinkers Series”, a series of lectures presented for the first time in Toronto. On Thursday, January 31st, the series opens with Scott Freiman and his highly acclaimed lecture “Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper” at TIFF Bell Lightbox at 7:00 p.m. Freiman a composer, engineer and Beatles expert explores and dissects the music of what Rolling Stone calls “the most important rock & roll album ever made.”

Scott Freiman taught a course at Yale about the Beatles. In Toronto, Freiman will tell the story of one of the most important albums of all time, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” using rare audio and video with anecdotes about the recording sessions. He’ll draw on numerous first-hand sources and use detailed analyses of the song writing and production techniques used by the band in recording the album. Rolling Stone covered Freiman in “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Beatles Music” and if you’re a music lover, Freiman’s focus is “strictly” on the music. 

“It has been a dream of mine to create a series that recognizes pivotal moments in pop culture. I’m thrilled that Scott Freiman will join us for our very first installment of the JAZZ.FM91 Thinkers Series. Scott brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and I know music lovers and aficionados will not want to miss this presentation,” said Ross Porter, President and CEO of JAZZ.FM91. 

For more information on Scott Freiman and “Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper” and purchasing tickets, please visit HERE.

Ted O’Reilly invents a postscript and offers a final thought:

(Next lecture: “Michael Jackson: Most Important Musician of the 20th Century!!!”)

And people wonder why I hang my head and whimper some days…

On January 14, the pioneering Latin jazz artist Eddie Palmieri will be among those honored by the National Endowment for the Arts as 2013 NEA Jazz Masters. The others are pianist, singer and songwriter Mose Allison; alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson; Owner Lorraine Gordon of New York’s Village Vanguard; and writer A. B. Spellman. Tonight and tomorrow night, Palmieri is being recognized by Jazz at Lincoln Center in concerts reprising the 76-year-old pianist’s career. From the JALC announcement:

On this evening, “El Rey de las Blancas y Las Negras” retrospects on his spectacular career with both The Eddie Palmieri Orchestra and his Afro-Caribbean Jazz Octet, coalescing his form-stretching salsa innovations with his sui generis brand of “jazz Latino.”

Larry Rohter’s New York Times piece has details about this weekend’s events at Lincoln Center and a survey of Palmieri’s work, which has won nine Grammy awards.

Among the most enduring and engaging of Palmieri’s albums is El Sonido Nuevo, a 1966 collaboration with another major figure in Latin music and jazz, Cal Tjader. Here is Tito Puente’s “Picadillo,” arranged by Palmieri and Claus Ogerman.

El Sonido Nuevo was the first half of a trade agreement between Tjader’s label, Verve, and Palmieri’s, Tico. In 1967, Tjader recorded with Palmieri’s band. The resulting album was Bamboleate. The title track features the leaders, the vocal ensemble and the formidable Latin trombone section of Barry Rogers and Mark Weinstein in the days before Weinstein switched to flute.

Bamboleate is out of print, outrageously priced as a CD or an LP, but reasonable as an MP3 download. The digital revolution has its good points.

On his New England Public Radio blog, Tom Reney’s new post on Charlie Parker includes Lee Konitz material for which he credits Rifftides. I thank Tom, but I thank him more for including a clip of Lee Konitz talking about what it was like to work and travel with Bird in their mutual Stan Kenton days of the 1950s. To hear Konitz on Parker, go here. The clip is at the end of the piece.

Journalist and occasional Rifftides commenter Ken Dryden (pictured) works nationally and lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Among other activities, he conducts a radio program. Mr. Dryden sent an alert to a special edition of his show remembering Dave Brubeck. If you are one of the unfortunate millions who do not live within broadcast earshot of Chattanooga, there’s good news; Ken’s show will be streamed tomorrow evening on the web. Here is his announcement.

Please join me for Dziekuje, Dave: A Remembrance of Dave Brubeck, on Wednesday, Dec. 12th on WUTC-FM. The two hour special will begin approximately at 8:18 to 8:20 pm Eastern Time, following the local news feature “Round & About.” Drawn from my music library and archives, it will include a number of Brubeck’s recordings, interview excerpts and even a few performances that you’ve never before heard. It will be webcast live at www.wutc.org, go to the website then click on “Listen Live” in the top left corner.

The WUTC site has posted an article previewing Dryden’s show.

With Dave Brubeck’s passing, interesting bits of arcana about his life and music are rising to the surface. BBC Radio 4 replayed a portion of an interview from 2000 on the network’s Front Row program with John Wilson. Brubeck tells Wilson about the role of vitamin B-6 in saving his hands and the unusual use of a bungee cord in his exercise routine. He illustrates polytonality by playing a bit of Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” in C and E-flat, simultaneously. To hear the six-minute conversation, go here and move the timer slide at the bottom of the screen to :24:05.

Then, see and hear an extended 1970 performance of “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,” a blues staple in Brubeck’s repertoire, with Gerry Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Jack Six, bass; Alan Dawson, drums. It runs so long that YouTube had to present it in two installments.

There is no guarantee that a great artist will be an admirable person. Many sublimely gifted musicians, painters, sculptors, writers and actors fail as human beings. Dave Brubeck was on the positive end of the scale. Among the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of obituaries and remembrances of Brubeck that have emerged since his death yesterday morning, a thread becomes clear: those who knew him emphasize that his extraordinary musicianship went hand in hand with kindness, generosity, humor and concern for the human condition.

I became aware of all of those facets of Brubeck’s makeup on our first encounter. His quartet played a concert at the University of Washington in Seattle in the winter of 1955. As recounted elsewhere, that is when I also met Paul Desmond. Their stars were on the rise. The year before, Brubeck was the subject of a TIME magazine cover story. In those days in the US that was the apogee of popular recognition. He was quickly becoming famous. After the concert, there was a party for the quartet at the home of an admirer.

For much of the evening Brubeck, the late pianist Patti Bown (pictured) and I sat and talked about the section of the TIME profile that dealt with Dave’s attitude toward racial matters. Patti was a vital member of Seattle’s mixed and mostly tolerant jazz community. As we mulled over the absurdity and reality of race-based prejudice, the conversation varied between intensity, laughter and stretches of contemplative silence. This was years before the civil rights movement gained momentum. Dave recited a verse he wrote that became one of the most widely quoted parts of the TIME article.

They say I look like God,
Could God be black my God!
If both are made in the image of thee,
Could thou perchance a zebra be?

Seven years later, Louis Armstrong sang that verse in Dave and Iola Brubeck’s musical The Real Ambassadors, an extended paean to tolerance, cultural diplomacy and the power of music to unify people and nations. Brubeck, Armstrong, Carmen McRae and the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross recorded it in an album but performed it publicly only at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival. It is long past time for a full-scale revival.

After Eugene Wright became the group’s bassist in 1956, the DBQ played black-owned clubs and hotel lounges in the South, bookings of a racially mixed group, all but unheard of below the Mason-Dixon line. Brubeck’s stand against discrimination became even stronger as the decade wore on. Here’s a passage from my biography accompanying the Brubeck CD collection Time Signatures.

Wright was not the first black musician in the Brubeck quartet. Wyatt “Bull” Reuther was the bassist in 1951. Drummer Frank Butler also worked briefly with Brubeck in the early days. But Gene’s advent coincided with the upswing in popularity that increased the demand for the band and put it in high visibility. As a result, there were problems that disturbed Brubeck’s sense of fairness and his passionate belief in racial justice and equality.

He cancelled an extensive and lucrative tour of the South when promoters insisted that he replace Wright with a white bassist. He refused an appearance on the Bell Telephone Hour, a Sunday evening television program of immense prestige and huge audience, when the producers insisted on shooting the quartet so that Wright could be heard but not seen. The networks were convinced that the public was incapable of accepting the sight of black and white performers together. Brubeck found the hypocrisy unsupportable.

Four of Dave’s sons—Darius, Chris, Danny and Matthew—became professional jazz artists. He took time and made donations to also help scores of aspiring musicians, not least through his support of The Brubeck Institute based at his alma mater, the University of the Pacific in California. Stories of Brubeck’s generosity abound, not because he told them but because the recipients of his thoughtfulness did. I am one of them. During the two-and-a-half years that I researched and wrote my Paul Desmond biography, Dave and Iola allowed me to spend hours with them at their house on its 20 acres in Connecticut, which Desmond long ago named the Wilton Hilton. Without their input and guidance, the book would have been impossible. When it was time for the book to come out, The Brubecks agreed to co-host the book party at Elaine’s restaurant, Paul’s cherished New York refuge. Without their involvement, publisher Malcolm Harris and I would not have had the turnout of prominent people who attended. What a night that was.

After the TIME magazine cover story and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s elevation from obscurity and near-poverty, the sniping began. They had committed the sins, unpardonable in some quarters, of popular success and solvency. It’s an old story, familiar to Cannonball Adderley, for instance, and to The Modern Jazz Quartet and, more recently, to Diana Krall; if you are in demand and making money, you sold out. Many musicians once sought or invented reasons to dismiss Brubeck’s music: it didn’t swing, it wasn’t hip; he wrote some nice tunes but he wasn’t much of a pianist; he doesn’t deserve a great player like Desmond. On the other hand, “Desmond,” a prominent tenor saxophonist once told me, “sounds like a female alcoholic.” You don’t often hear jibes about Desmond anymore, or cracks about Brubeck’s piano playing. People seem to have started listening to the music and ignoring the societal effluvia. In Brubeck’s last couple of decades the resentments based in sociology, jealousy, clannishness and envy began to fall away. Young musicians of all stripes study his music, play his tunes, revere him as someone to emulate. Dave lived long enough to see the change. It must have been gratifying to him.

In the long run, it’s his music that matters. It will have a long run.

The Dave Brubeck website has a message from his surviving children (Michael died in 2009). It also has extensive information about his career, photographs spanning decades, and Dave playing Christmas music, beginning with a bluesy “Jingle Bells.”

Since Rifftides hit the web in early 2005, it has posted more than 200 items about Brubeck or touching on him and his music. If you care to browse them, carve out some time and click here.

The Columbia University radio station WKCR is playing Brubeck recordings around the clock and will until 9:00 EST tonight. To hear the station, click here, then on one of the connecting links in the WKCR site’s upper right corner.

It is impossible to individually thank the Rifftides readers who have sent comments about Dave Brubeck’s passing; there are too many of you. As the comments come in, we post them with thanks to all.

More later on Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck died this morning. He would have celebrated his 92nd birthday tomorrow. Russell Gloyd, Brubeck’s manager and conductor of the pianist and composer’s extended orchestral works, said that Brubeck suffered cardiac arrest. In fragile health for several years, he was being driven from his home in Wilton Connecticut to an appointment with his heart doctor in nearby Norwalk.

For a comprehensive obituary tracing the career that made Brubeck one of the few jazz artists to achieve mass popular acceptance, go to Ben Ratliff’s article in The New York Times.

Later, I will post thoughts about Dave during the 57 years of our acquaintance.

If you are yearning for Christmas music, it isn’t hard to find. Walk into a supermarket, park at a service station pump or step into an elevator. Whether the stuff piped into commercial establishments suits your taste is beside the point; they give you no choice. This weekend, Jim Wilke won’t give you a choice, either, but considering the proclivities of Rifftides readers, his selections are more likely to meet your criteria than those of the lowest-common-denominator marketers who program satellites and dentists’ offices. Here is Mr. Wilke’s illustrated announcement about his next Jazz Northwest. You may wish to mark your calendar.

SOME OF OUR FAVORITE THINGS ON JAZZ NORTHWEST, DECEMBER 9, 2012

Jim Wilke shares some of his favorite CDs for the holidays by Northwest jazz musicians who’ve appeared often on the program…. Don Lanphere, The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, Ernestine Anderson, Dave Peck, Greta Matassa, Barney McClure and others. Listen to this December celebration featuring some our favorite musicians playing holiday music and support Jazz Northwest, Sunday afternoons at 2 Pacific Time on 88.5, KPLU and kplu.org.

The cover on the original issue of Lanphere’s 1989 Christmas album showed him playing his horn (above left). The new one suits the season. The album is one of the late saxophonist’s finest.

The vacation is over. I’m getting back into some kind of routine, if not yet what could be called a groove. Before that happens, I’m hitting the road again to spend a bit of time with my brother, who is less than well. In the meantime, here’s a followup to a post that attracted considerable comment.

The item about Paul Desmond’s 88th birthday included a link to a track called “Pilgrim’s Progress” from a 1956 Dave Brubeck Quartet concert recording. The piece is a close relative of “Audrey,” “Balcony Rock” and several other DBQ blues performances. Rifftides reader and frequent commenter Terence Smith pointed us to a fairly recent Brubeck solo with the same harmonic approach and mood. It’s from a 2003 Clint Eastwood film called Piano Blues in which Eastwood presents several pianists including Ray Charles, Jay McShann, Otis Spann, Pete Jolly and Dr. John, as well as film of Nat Cole, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington and others. In the course of the program, Eastwood sits at the piano to chat with his guests and listens to them play. Here is part of the Brubeck segment.

Brubeck will be 92 on December 6.

Word from Canada is that the CBC program honoring Ed Bickert is online and available for listening. Bickert celebrates his 80th birthday today. The venerable guitarist is a veteran of decades with Rob McConnell, Moe Kauffman, Phil Nimmons, Paul Desmond and hundreds of studio hours. For details about his career—and videos, see this Rifftides post.

Here’s a paragraph from the page that contains the link to the broadcast:

Bickert could “combine in his solos the logic of a mathematician and the grace of an angel,” as Jack Batten said in the Globe and Mail in 1976. And according to bassist Steve Wallace, who frequently played with Bickert, he served as the “aesthetic compass and edit button on the Canadian jazz scene, a kind of jazz bullshit antidote.”

Bickert retired a few years ago and no longer plays. Many of his admiring fellow musicians assembled to pay tribute to him.To hear the concert, go here and click on “Listen to Ed Bickert At 80: A Jazz Celebration.” Thanks again to Ted O’Reilly for keeping us up to date on this important occasion.