{"id":8125,"date":"2017-01-24T21:36:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T05:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=8125"},"modified":"2017-01-24T21:48:32","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T05:48:32","slug":"recent-listening-new-old-brubeck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2017\/01\/recent-listening-new-old-brubeck\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Listening: New Old Brubeck"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Brubeck Quartet<\/strong> With Paul Desmond At The Sunset Center 1955<\/a> (Solar)<\/p>\n

\"\"New music by the Dave Brubeck Quartet has surfaced on the European label Solar. Previously unissued, it finds the group brimming with the harmonic daring, contrapuntal interaction and humor that were beginning to make them famous. A 1954 TIME magazine cover story about the pianist, the success of the band\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jazz Goes To College<\/em> album and lots of radio airplay had them in the public eye and ear in an era when such prominence was possible for a jazz group. Eight of the tracks were taped at the Sunset Center in Carmel, California, in June of 1955 and one at New York\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Basin Street the following summer.<\/p>\n

Comedian Mort Sahl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s introduction of the band is an audio blur, hard to understand. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too bad because whatever he said brought clearly audible chuckles from the quartet. Otherwise, sound quality of the location recording is adequate, perhaps adequate+. The instruments are distinct and in reasonable balance, although there are places where pitch correction in the remastering would have helped. The playlist is made up of familiar items in the quartet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mid-fifties repertoire. Brubeck and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond take approaches that make the content fresh and often surprising. They begin with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gone With the Wind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nearly fifteen minutes long, it incorporates trademark aspects of the principal soloists; Desmond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lyricism and Brubeck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s power, although there are tradeoffs in both areas. Desmond flows through \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll Never Smile Again,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d fully engaging his ability to fit quotes into unlikely harmonic nooks and crannies. In his solo, Brubeck scatters quirky chord bouquets. <\/p>\n

In the arrangement that Brubeck Octet trumpeter Dick Collins fashioned in pre-quartet days, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jeepers Creepers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d follows the routine familiar to listeners who know the Columbia Brubeck Time<\/em> album. Soloing, Desmond applies an astringent tone and note substitutions that on manuscript paper would look \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wrong.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d When he plays them, they are right—and occasionally hilarious. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah, Paul,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Brubeck says more than once. As usual when they played the piece, it gets a spoofy Dixieland tag ending. With some heat, Collins once told me that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand why they \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tacked that on,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but it became a permanent addition. <\/p>\n

The minor harmonies of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Brother, Can You Spare A Dime\u00e2\u20ac\u009d inspire Brubeck to meld a circle of fourths into his solo for a deeper statement than on the Brubeck Time<\/em> version. Desmond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wistfulness in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Little Girl Blue\u00e2\u20ac\u009d takes a funky turn with a ferocious blues lick of his invention and a visit to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153St. James Infirmary\u00e2\u20ac\u009d before he soars into the horn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s altissimo register. Regrettably, he did less of that stratospheric soaring as the years went by. He also goes altissimo in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Train,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but it is his minor-key Orientalism that grabs attention there before Brubeck launches his own series of quotes. Both soloists are full of vigor on the album\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final track, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Two-Part Contention,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d recorded at Basin Street for an NBC Monitor<\/em> radio broadcast that has a nostalgia-inducing signoff by announcer Bob Collins. <\/p>\n

A final note: so much attention went to bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello in the Brubeck Quartet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final decade that the memory of Norman Bates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and Joe Dodge\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s consistency and strength as a rhythm team may tend to fade. Among its other virtues, this album is a reminder of the sympathetic support and responsiveness that Bates and Dodge brought to the quartet during their tenure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Brubeck Quartet With Paul Desmond At The Sunset Center 1955 (Solar) New music by the Dave Brubeck Quartet has surfaced on the European label Solar. Previously unissued, it finds the group brimming with the harmonic daring, contrapuntal interaction and humor that were beginning to make them famous. A 1954 TIME magazine cover story about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}