Although it is usually left unstated, the 4th atom after melody, harmony and rhythm in constructing music is texture - the way the music sounds. Using trumpet synthesizers, Oud, voice, guitar synthesizers, Fender Rhodes, Fisarmonic and electric bass along with acoustic trumpet, piano and drums, Paolo Fresu creates a startling different sonority for the songs in the Gershwin-Dubose "Porgy and Bess " opera.
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Monday, August 10, 2026
The Hi-Lo's And All That Jazz [From the Archives]
Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
While developing this piece about what made-up the unique vocal stylings of The Hi-Lo's, I was looking around for something to serve as my customary lead-in quotation when it struck me that on the subject of Jazz singing, the go-to definitive source were the writings of Will Friedwald who is a recognized expert on the subject.
Off I went to check in Will's Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond [1996] and A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers [2010] where I encountered -wait for it - nothing, squat, zip, nada, about the inner workings of The Hi-Lo's.
Well, that's not entirely true, because I did find these disparaging remarks about the group: "The Hi-Lo's preferred obnoxious embellishments to swing, treating shallow vocal acrobatics as if they were ends in themselves."
It gets worse.
Talking about the aftermath of Mel Tormé's split up with the Mel-Tones, he goes on to say the group's concepts "had more positive relevance for Mel Tormé's art as a soloist than they did for any successive vocal group. Eventually, some of his ideas passed into the careless hands of the Hi-Lo's and The Four Freshman, and what had in Tormé's work been a snazzy set of berets and fedoras became a closet of old hats; unappealing voices, obnoxious harmony, and stale ideas."
And in case you missed the point, there's this final reference: "The most popular multivoice units of the fifties had favored an annoyingly overclose kind of harmony, especially the Hi-Los and the Four Freshmen."
Is it just me or is Will being a little harsh here?
As indicated in the introduction, for the purposes of this feature, I wasn’t sure how best to describe The Hi-Lo's, one of my all-time favorite vocal quartets, so I thought perhaps I would turn Gene Puerling, one of the group’s founding members, for the most accurate description.
Except that when I turned to his explanation in the insert notes to The Hi-Lo's And All That Jazz, I got somewhat of a hedge as you will no doubt discern when you read the following:
“Outside of "Howd'ya get together?" the question most often asked of The Hi-Los is "Do you consider yourselves a jazz-vocal group?" The answer that rolls from our tongues (quite automatically by now) is, "We would rather not be categorized." Somewhat of an indirect answer, perhaps, but this is our feeling.
Since we endeavor to delve into all phases of vocal group work, such as our usual four-part harmonic constructions of standards, folk songs, and even barbershop gems in their traditional harmonies; and since our future plans call for the vocal adaptation of instrumental themes by the "classical masters," even work with Bach chorales, we can hardly be categorized as a “Jazz" vocal group. (Besides, has anyone really come up with an acceptable" definition of the word "jazz"?)
Looking at the contents of this program, however, we feel that we have directed our attention, for the most part, to the Jazz idiom. In doing so, we secured the great mind of Marty Paich for the instrumental backgrounds. Here is a man whose fine musical sense never cease. The instrumental scores here are tasteful and complete, fulfilling the job that is most difficult when backing a vocal group: that of complementing the group without overshadowing the basic vocal arrangement.
Marty, in turn, surrounded himself with the usual array of fine West Coast musicians. In the special-credits department, we see the name Clare Fischer. Clare is our accompanist (and our biggest critic). He is responsible for two originals here, including both vocal and instrumental writing. We feel that we have a real "find" in this talent from Michigan State University.
Onward, then! You'll find originals by Marty Paich, Russ Freeman, and Clare Fischer; vocal arrangements by Marty, Clare, and yours truly. And if you listen closely, the unmistakable tones of our friend, Frank DeVol, in 'THE HI-LO'S and all that jazz.”
In 1998 a collection of songs all taken from The Hi-Lo’s earliest recordings for Trend and Starlite were issued on a Varese Vintage CD [VSD 5694] entitled The Best of The Hi-Lo’s for which Elliot Kendall prepared the following insert notes. They represent an excellent historical overview of a singular vocal quartet - The Hi-Lo’s.
“Excitement, energy, emotion, humor and dynamics - these are just a few of the many elements found in the breathtaking vocal performances of The Hi-Lo’s. When they emerged as a musical force in the early 1950’s, the Hi-Lo's broke all the rules for vocal quartets. Traditional musical categories can't even begin to describe them; they lent their unique sound to pop, jazz, barbershop, calypso, folk, bossa nova and musical theater. The Hi-Lo's themselves prefer not to be categorized as their encompassed almost every contemporary musical style.
These recordings represent the formative years of the Hi-Lo's. During this period, the group took great risks and liberties with familiar standards, and added new twists and ad-libs to then-contemporary selections.
Group leader and bass singer Gene Puerling developed his many different musical ideas while growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "I formed several groups during the late '40’s," he recalls today. "I started the Double Daters, the Honeybees and the Four Shades.
The Four Shades included future Hi-Lo's baritone singer Bob Strasen, who was originally from Strasbourg, France. When I first met him, he already had considerable experience in choir work and other vocal groups in and around Milwaukee. Bob was a terrific barbershopper, and he had a wonderfully smooth vocal quality
In 1951, Puerling moved to Los Angeles and, within a week of his arrival, met tenor singer Clark Burroughs. Burroughs was a Los Angeles native, a graduate of Loyola University and a member of Roger Wagner's chorale before he met Puerling. Puerling and Burroughs were soon roommates and singing partners in a quartet called the Youngsters on the "Alan Young T.V variety show." To make ends meet, Puerling did occasional session work (including one with Les Baxter’s orchestra) until he eventually started working at Wallichs Music City record store in Hollywood. He also worked for a brief period as a shipping clerk at London Records.
Meanwhile Burroughs joined the Encores, the vocal group which performed with the Billy May band. The baritone singer in the encores was Bob Morse, a native of Pacoima, California and a skilled graphic artist who was attending Chouinard Art Institute (this skill was later utilized when he designed the group's early album covers and on-stage wardrobe). Burroughs and Morse sang in the Encores for over a year and, when the group split up, Puerling approached them with the idea of forming a vocal quartet. When they agreed, Puerling summoned his former singing partner Bob Strasen from Milwaukee who flew to Los Angeles and The Hi-Lo’s were born. The first vocal workouts immediately convinced all four that they had made the right decision. As Puerling put it, "as soon as we sang a few chords together, we knew it was going to be great.”
For ten weeks or more the Hi-Lo's rehearsed at least three hours a day. Every note, syllable and dynamic was tirelessly planned out before they even entered a recording studio. Writing and arranging most of the vocal charts were Gene Puerling responsibility. "For one thing," Gene notes, "Clark had a phenomenal vocal range, and that opened up all sorts of arranging possibilities. I found myself conceiving very complex vocal ideas, most of which these guys sang with great aplomb. The more difficult I wrote, the more they seemed to love the challenge. “Marvelous talent!" Clark Burroughs adds: "When Gene finished creating and polishing an arrangement, it was comparable to all the intricacies and workings of a finely-crafted Swiss watch. It really became a work of beauty and art."
In April of 1953, the Hi-Lo's were signed to Trend records in a deal made possible by arranger-conductor (and future film composer) Jerry Fielding. "As I recall, we literally began knocking on doors to sing for people, and one of those doors just happen to belong to Jerry Fielding,” Puerling remembers with a laugh.
Burroughs recalls that, "Jerry was very excited about our sound; I can still remember how effusive he was. He was really knocked out, Two of the songs we auditioned for him were They Didn't Believe Me and Georgia. He took us immediately to Albert Marx who owned Trend records, and in no time at all we had a signed contract. From that point on, things really started to happen. We secured a management deal with Paul Cerf and Bob Ginter of Beverly Hills, and several radio stations picked up our first record right after it was released. Soon after that Bill Loeb became our personal manager.
On April 10, 1953, The Hi-Lo’s recorded They Didn’t Believe Me, Georgia, Peg ‘O My Heart and My Baby Just Cares For Me for a Trend extended play LP. All four songs were recorded between 9:30 PM. and 12:30 AM at Radio Recorders Annex on Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood. Among the 15 musicians employed for the session were such jazz greats as William "Buddy" Collette (saxophone), Conrad Gozzo (trumpet), Dick Nash (trombone), Ted Nash (saxophone) and George "Red" Callender (sass). Soon after this session, the group also recorded a single of Love Me or Leave Me with legendary jazz vocalist Herb Jeffries for the Olympic label.
By late 1954, the Hi-Lo’s had left Trend and signed a new deal with Starlite Records where they were fortunate enough to have their orchestrations arranged and conducted by Frank Comstock. Under Comstock, the Starlite sessions were recorded at Goldstar and Capitol studios in Hollywood. "Those were certainly exciting sessions and they were done very quickly, with no overdubs," Frank Comstock recalls today. "Every minute of studio time was utilized, and we would easily finish an album in three days, perhaps recording four songs a day during that time. I think that's what makes those records sound so fresh and exciting today." Clark Burroughs elaborates, "Gene would write the vocal arrangements, and then Frank would write orchestra parts to complement Gene's arrangements. It was actually very simple."
In 1957 the Hi-Lo's signed with Columbia Records, where they continued their vocal harmony legacy with orchestras led by Frank Comstock, Warren Barker, Frank de Vol and Marty Paich. In 1959, Bob Strasen left the Hi-Lo’s and was replaced by tenor Don Shelton.
The Hi-Lo's were also extremely popular on variety television, and appeared on, among others, the Steve Allen show (6 episodes), the Rosemary Clooney show (39 episodes!), Swing Into Spring with Peggy Lee, The Nat “King” Cole Show, The Garry Moore Show, a Frank Sinatra Special, The Bell Telephone Hour's Main Street U.S.A. and the Pat Boone show.
The early 1960’s found the Hi-Lo’s signed to Frank Sinatra's Reprise Records, where they continued their unique and innovative sound until they disbanded in 1964.
In 1967, Gene Puerling and Don Shelton former The Singers Unlimited with Bonnie Herman and Len Dresslar and began a new era for vocal harmony work with the use of studio overdubbing.
The Hi-Lo’s reunited and performed at the 21st Annual Monterey Jazz Festival in 1978 and recorded a pair of inspired albums for the MPS label in 1979 and 1981.
The following video features The Hi-Lo’s performing Marty Paich’s arrangement of Of Thee I Sing.
Saturday, August 8, 2026
Thinking About Pops Today
"My favorite Louis Armstrong anecdote concerns his audience with Pope Paul VI. The Pope, so the story goes, asked Armstrong if he and his wife had children. ''No, Daddy,'' the trumpeter cheerfully replied, ''but we're still wailing.'' Though the chances Armstrong actually said this, or anything like it, are close to nil, it is the sort of thing one would have wanted him to say, and the two men did in fact meet at the Vatican in 1968 -- which is, of course, the real point of the story. They were photographed together, and an unmistakable glint of pleasure can be seen on the Pope's tired, worn face; as for Armstrong, he looks blissful. Perhaps he was thinking about how far he had come from New Orleans, where he was born in direst poverty in 1901, the bastard child of a 15-year-old girl who had no idea that her son would change the face of Western music and in so doing become the most celebrated American musician of the 20th century." Terry Teachout
Here's more -
Armstrong's celebrity cannot be separated from his artistry; it is central to his place in the history of jazz, which is harder to explain than is commonly understood. He did not invent jazz, nor was he its first important figure, and it is not even quite right to call him the first great jazz soloist (Sidney Bechet preceded him, and Bix Beiderbecke emerged as a major soloist at the same time as Armstrong, almost to the month). Instead, he became the first great influence in jazz -- the player other players copied -- and one reason he cast so long a shadow is that he was as great a personality as he was a musician. He really did perform with everyone from Bessie Smith to Leonard Bernstein; he really did smoke marijuana virtually every day of his adult life; he really did write the finest of all jazz memoirs, unassisted by a ghostwriter; he really did end his concerts (some of them, anyway) by playing 250 or more high C's, capped with a high F; he really was adored (no lesser word is strong enough) by all who knew him. Is it any wonder so many of his contemporaries longed to play the way he played and sing the way he sang?
Such a man among men is a natural subject for biographers, the latest of whom has given us what is, incredibly, the first full-length, fully annotated study of Armstrong to be based on his private papers, now on deposit in Queens College's Louis Armstrong Archives. But Laurence Bergreen is a professional biographer, not a jazz scholar (his previous books were about Al Capone, Irving Berlin and James Agee, an oddly assorted trio), and the very first sentence of ''Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life'' -- ''In the beginning, he was a sound, and only a sound: a strange blend of happy cacophony and tormented caterwauling'' -- points to trouble ahead. No self-respecting jazz writer would have allowed a fruit-filled sentence like that to get into print, and Bergreen, though clearly an assiduous researcher, writes as if jazz were a foreign language he had studied late in life for the sole purpose of writing Armstrong's biography.
Here, for instance, is what he has to say about the epoch-making introduction to Armstrong's 1928 recording of ''West End Blues'': ''He starts off with what would become the most famous horn solo in jazz, a nine-measure opening cadenza of such dizzying difficulty that for decades aspiring horn players would struggle to imitate. It is a summons to the soul, dignified and daring.'' Well, yes, but it is also a precisely balanced, rhythmically subtle musical statement, one that deserves better than the table-pounding to which Bergreen is quickly reduced whenever he attempts to discuss specific examples of Armstrong's art. (More often, he simply does not bother: ''Weather Bird,'' arguably the greatest of the records Armstrong made with Earl Hines, is disposed of in one perfunctory sentence.) Revealingly, neither ''West End Blues'' nor any other Armstrong solo is reproduced in musical notation. Imagine a biography of Mark Twain that contained no excerpts from his writings!
Numerous other passages suggest, to put it as gently as possible, that Bergreen came late to the party. ''Few jazz enthusiasts would point'' to Armstrong's work ''with the Luis Russell Orchestra or his Decca recordings as highlights of his career,'' he writes, though more than a few jazz enthusiasts have been doing just that for a half-century and more. Indeed, some critics (and many trumpeters) regard Armstrong's recordings of the 1930's and 40's -- particularly his near-operatic big-band remakes of such classic small-group performances from the 20's as ''West End Blues'' and ''Struttin' With Some Barbecue'' -- as the high-water mark of his output, while others cite them as proof that he had succumbed at last to the malign forces of commercialism. As for Bergreen, he skates heedlessly over the whole matter, apparently unaware of the very existence of one of the most viciously contested battles in jazz scholarship, much less its implications for his own work.
The fact that Bergreen has nothing useful to say about Armstrong the musician necessarily throws his book badly out of balance, but this does not mean ''Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life'' is devoid of merit. By far the best thing about it is the large amount of space devoted to excerpts from Armstrong's autobiographical writings -- including various unpublished manuscripts -- and his vast and vivid correspondence. (Gary Giddins drew on much of the same material for his 1988 coffee-table book, ''Satchmo,'' still the best short treatment of Armstrong's life.) As readers of ''Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans'' (1954) know well, Armstrong was a marvelous writer, and while a well-edited Louis Armstrong reader and a volume of selected letters would be hugely important contributions to the literature of jazz, Bergreen's book will serve as a stopgap until some smart publisher, noticing that Armstrong's centenary is around the bend, finally gets the idea and starts to quarry his papers in earnest.
By letting Armstrong speak for himself, Bergreen succeeds in shedding light on a little-understood aspect of his artistic achievement: his moral development. This phrase may sound a bit creaky when applied to a man whose appetite for marijuana was rivaled only by his interest in sex (Armstrong, Bergreen reveals, wrote pornographic short stories in his spare time in addition to cheating enthusiastically on all four of his wives). But when it came to his lifework, Armstrong was positively Victorian. ''Louis's autobiographical writings, shorn of their bawdy jokes and reflections on jazz, can be seen as a series of moral lessons,'' Bergreen observes, and he is exactly right: the American dream has had no more loyal exemplar. Deserted at birth by his natural father, sentenced at the age of 11 to Colored Waif's Home in New Orleans, Armstrong did not repine; instead, he returned love for hatred and sought salvation through work. ''I think I had a beautiful life,'' he told a reporter a year before his death in 1971. ''I didn't wish for anything I couldn't get, and I got pretty near everything I wanted because I worked for it.''
Armstrong's moral wholeness was caught in the words his mother spoke to him on her deathbed in 1927: ''Son, carry on. You're a good boy. You treat everybody right, and everybody white and colored loves you. You have a good heart. You can't miss.'' Thirty-seven years later, I saw him for the first time, singing ''Hello, Dolly'' on ''The Ed Sullivan Show.'' I didn't know who the old man with the ear-to-ear smile was, but I can remember my mother calling me into the living room and saying: ''This man won't be around forever. Someday you'll be glad you saw him.'' That was in 1964, back when the public schools in my hometown were still segregated, two decades after a black man was dragged from our city jail, hauled through the streets at the end of a rope and set afire. Yet even in a place where such a monstrous evil had once been wrought, white people came to love Louis Armstrong -- and, just as important, to respect him -- not merely for the beauty of the music he made but also for the self-evident goodness of the man who made it. In this not-so-simple fact is to be found the ultimate meaning of Armstrong's epic journey from squalor to immortality: his great and generous art spoke to all men in all conditions, and helped make them whole.
Terry Teachout, the music critic of Commentary, writes the Front Row Center column for Civilization, the magazine of the Library of Congress.
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Paul Horn Jazz Impressions of Cleopatra - Side 1 Vinyl Rip
Impressions of Cleopatra is an album by flutist Paul Horn featuring a jazz interpretation of Alex North's musical score for the 1963 film, Cleopatra which was originally released on the Columbia label.
Personnel: Paul Horn - flute Emil Richards - vibraphone Victor Feldman - piano Chuck Israels - bass Colin Bailey - drums Larry Bunker - percussion
1. Paul Horn - Caesar And Cleopatra Theme (0:00)
2. Paul Horn - Cleopatra's Palace Music (4:03)
3. Paul Horn - Love And Hate (8:59)
4. Paul Horn - Grant Me An Honorable Way To Die (12:27)
Paul Horn Jazz Impressions of Cleopatra - Side 2 Vinyl Rip
Impressions of Cleopatra is an album by flutist Paul Horn featuring a jazz interpretation of Alex North's musical score for the 1963 film, Cleopatra which was originally released on the Columbia label.
Personnel: Paul Horn - flute Emil Richards - vibraphone Victor Feldman - piano Chuck Israels - bass Colin Bailey - drums Larry Bunker - percussion
5. Paul Horn - Antony And Cleopatra Theme (0:00)
6. Paul Horn - Cleopatra Enters Rome (3:54)
7. Paul Horn - My Love Is My Master (7:49)
8. Paul Horn - A Gift For Caesar (10:55)
Our Thanks to Jeffrey Sultanof For This Review On His Substack Blog
Steven Cerra - Creating a Reader Factory, and Perhaps the Most Important One So Far
Aug 05, 2026
Steven Cerra describes himself as a writer, photographer, web producer, film maker/videographer and audio producer. He has a blog, and he is a fellow Substack writer. But he goes the extra distance by assembling and editing ‘readers,’ volumes that compile written materials on a given subject. He is prolific; so far he has self-published readers on Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Stan Kenton, Shelly Manne, West Coast Jazz, Saxophone players, Trumpet players, Pianists, and Drummers. He’s a hard man to keep up with! Happily he issues these as not only printed volumes, but also as kindle books at a VERY reasonable price for volumes that are over 700 pages!! I for one ran out of space for small books let alone giant monsters like these, but having them on kindle makes my life much easier. As an historian, I love having these many articles at my fingertips.
While I look forward to his work in progress on “Porgy and Bess,” I am ecstatic over his reader “A Companion Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Jean Goldkette Orchestra.”
Before the 1960s, the Goldkette Orchestra was mostly known by historians of 1920s big bands, and while there were isolated reissues of the recordings of Goldkette, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Whiteman and others in the LP era, research and important articles only appeared in magazines and books in the late 1950s onward. Interviews with musicians started to appear, and books by Rex Stewart, Richard Sudhalter and others were found in bookstores by the mid-to-late 1960s (I well remember The Nostalgia Book Club, an arm of the publisher Arlington House, where you could get books on Bix Beiderbecke, the Dorsey Bros., Benny Goodman and many other musicians, and I got my early education from them).
We now know that Goldkette’s was one of the most important big bands of any era. It had a powerful swing, excellent musicians, and creative arrangements that were copied by other arrangers, in spite of a poor recording legacy. It certainly pointed to the music of the mid-1930’s when the swing era was in its earliest days.
Goldkette was a concert pianist, who started to play in jazz ensembles. He eventually became a ballroom owner and a booker of bands. His 1924-1926 orchestra was a real crowd pleaser; musicians included Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer, Steve Brown, ‘Doc’ Ryker, Bill Rank, Don Murray, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Russ Morgan and arranger Bill Challis. The band was so good that it shocked Fletcher Henderson’s musicians when they played opposite each other at Roseland Ballroom in New York City. Unfortunately, their records did not properly show off what they could do. Goldkette lost money on the ensemble, and Paul Whiteman offered the musicians places in his band. Beiderbecke, Trumbauer, Venuti, Lang and others joined; the resulting ensemble was one of the best that Whiteman led.
The original book of arrangements for the Goldkette ensemble mysteriously disappeared, but thankfully Whiteman asked Challis to recreate it for his band, and those versions are safely stored at Williams College with the rest of the Whiteman Collection. Challis has been cited by no less than Benny Carter as one of the best arrangers of that era.
Many years later, Challis re-created the Goldkette sound, adapting new arrangements from his Whiteman re-do’s. Ironically, Vince Giordano, who produced this album, told me that Challis destroyed them after the session (the liner notes for the album are included in the reader of course).
Cerra gathers many fabulous articles, liner notes and book excerpts printed over the years detailing the Goldkette band’s importance and coverage of his many legendary sidemen, and as with most of his readers, several of these are obscure and hard to get. Such writers as Gene Lees, John Chilton, Albert McCarthy, Brian Rust, Dan Morgenstern, and Sudhalter may be found here, as well as Rex Stewart’s reminiscences of his ‘meeting’ with the band as Roseland. Of course there is duplication of information which is inevitable, but Cerra wisely does not edit the articles.
Since they were also part of the Goldkette story, he has wisely included material about other bands that Goldkette managed - the equally legendary McKinney’s Cotton Pickers directed by Don Redman, and The Orange Blossoms, which later became another pioneering dance orchestra, the Casa Loma Orchestra. Most thankfully, he has included big chunks from Sudhalter’s, Philip R. Evans, and William Dean Myatt’s book on Beiderbecke, which for several reasons has not been available for many years (the reasons are too detailed to chronicle here; as my readers know, Dick Sudhalter was my friend for many years, and was very sad about this. Recently, there has been some discussion about this book on Facebook).
This is a treasure trove of material about a very important chapter of American music. Thank you, Steven.
Here is a link for this publication:
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
Dave Brubeck - Jazz Impressions of the USA by Jacob Slattery
One of my earliest “impressions” of Jazz was this album by Dave Brubeck’s Quartet. I think it came into my life via the vaunted Columbia Record Club.
Chris Brubeck published its liner notes on this month’s Brubeck Newsletter which he edits and I thought I’d share it with you as a reminder of all the great music Dave left us over the years.
It was the first of a number of “Impressions” albums which he created during the early years of the classic quartet featuring Paul Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello.
What Does America Sound Like? The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A.
Jul 30
By Jacob Slattery, July 2026
What does America sound like? For Dave Brubeck, the answer was found not in fireworks, hot dogs, or patriotic marches, but in the lived American experience. Touring across the United States in the 1950s, Brubeck and his Quartet encountered America in the rhythm of a Greyhound bus, the vast openness of the Great Plains, the clanging of the commuter rail, the joyful spirit of New Orleans jazz, the anticipation of a Broadway curtain rising, the memory of summers away from the city, and the quiet peace of returning home.
As the bandmates traveled from one engagement to the next, the sights and sounds of the road sparked musical ideas. Brubeck observed that “a music notebook is as important to the traveling musician, as a sketch pad is to the artist,” recalling themes emerging from "the drone of the plane, the rumble of the bus, the clack of the rails, the hiss of the radiator in a strange hotel room." These “scribblings”, as Brubeck put it, became Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. (Columbia Records, 1957), the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s jazz travel diary of a nation, captured through eight distinct portraits of American life.
Recorded in New York, Hollywood, and Oakland, the album itself was a product of movement. The cover depicts the electrified Quartet members sprawled across a map of the continental United States, with a piano keyboard running all the way down the Eastern seaboard, surrounded by illustrations reminiscent of Plains Native American ledger art tradition. The original artwork was drawn by celebrated cartoonist and illustrator Arnold Roth, whose visual collaboration with Brubeck began with Jazz at the College of the Pacific (1953).
The album’s compositions highlight the individual contributions of each member of the Quartet—Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Norman Bates on bass, Joe Morello on drums, and Brubeck on the piano—at a pivotal moment in the group’s sonic evolution. Their distinct personalities combine into a united sound, reflecting a balance of individual expression and honest collaboration that is profoundly emblematic of America: a place defined not by one person alone, but by many voices and perspectives coming together in pursuit of something shared.
“Much of the folk music of America has become integrated into jazz and conversely, jazz has affected folk music itself, so that today we find endless cross-influences.” –Dave Brubeck
The journey begins in the American West. “Ode to a Cowboy” draws upon the imagery and folklore of the frontier, recast through an imaginative jazz lens. Although the subject matter is evocative of his own upbrining, Brubeck describes the composition as a collective effort: Paul Desmond’s alto saxophone, “the plaintive voice of a singing cowboy”; Norman Bates’s bass, the cowboy’s “guitar accompaniment”; and Joe Morello’s drums, the cowboy’s “sole companion”.
From the open range, Brubeck turns inward with “Summer Song.” The melody, he explained, recalled “peaceful golden summers away from the city.” The song paints a timeless American scene: children swimming, fishing with willow poles, boats drifting around a bend. Yet beneath its warmth is a gentle awareness of passing time, expressed in the lyrics Brubeck wrote with his wife, Iola: “Why must summer ever end?”
“Yonder for Two” looks further back, paying tribute to the early New Orleans jazz musicians who helped forge the foundation of the music that inspired Brubeck. The composition preserves some of the two-beat feeling of that tradition, celebrating the joy, energy, and spontaneity at the heart of early jazz. Throughout Brubeck’s career, history remained an ongoing conversation, with each new generation adding its own voice to the music that came before.
Despite its playful title—coined by Desmond with an homage to Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat—“History of a Boy Scout” carries a deeper sense of reverence. Brubeck described it as a mixture of humor and respect, containing both “the skyrocketing spirit of a Fourth of July parade” and an awareness of sacrifice and remembrance. Its military echoes and contrapuntal writing reflect on the service of individuals who shaped the country’s collective memory, from Valley Forge and Gettysburg to the battlefields of the 20th century.
Perhaps no track captures the physical world more vividly than “Plain Song.” Brubeck wrote it while traveling by bus between Yankton, South Dakota, and Iowa City. The steady pulse of the bass and drums suggests “the monotonous revolution of wheels upon a journey which has no end,” while the spacious piano writing evokes the vastness of the Great Plains. Desmond’s alto saxophone becomes the voice of solitude across the immense landscape.
With “Curtain Time,” Brubeck moves from the open countryside to the excitement of Broadway. The music captures the anticipation of a theater before the performance begins: the lights, the energy, and the promise of something about to begin.
“Sounds of the Loop” brings listeners into the heart of Chicago. Here, Joe Morello takes center stage, turning his drums into a one-man soundscape of the urban life. Brubeck imagined the piece as capturing “the clanging of the el train, the roar of the traffic, the hubbub of Chicago at rush hour.” Having joined the Quartet the year before, in 1956, Morello’s distinctive rhythmic personality emerges on this track, offering an early glimpse of the inimitable contribution he would make to the group’s evolving identity.
The journey concludes with “Home at Last,” recorded in Brubeck’s own house after the completion of a national tour. Following the movement and discovery of the previous tracks, it offers a moment of reflection that Brubeck personally described as “the calm of the Bay, the quiet of the hills, the warmth of the fireside, the love of the family—all felt with increased poignancy after my long absence.” In his liner notes, he so elegantly offered this fitting conclusion: “After traveling across the country, the wanderer has returned.”
As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026, Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. remains a compelling reflection of the nation’s character. “Much of the folk music of America has become integrated into jazz,” Brubeck wrote, “and conversely, jazz has affected folk music itself, so that today we find endless cross-influences.” Brubeck’s vision lies at the heart of both jazz and the American experience.
So, what does America sound like? Through Brubeck’s ears, it sounds like movement and memory: wheels turning on an open road, children laughing on a summer afternoon, trains passing through a crowded city, a theater waiting for the curtain to rise, and a wanderer finally returning home. His album offers a reminder that the American story is one of endless variety, where different traditions meet, influence one another, and leave behind their own impression.
Sources: Liner notes by Dave Brubeck, 1957, Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. (Columbia Records, 1957).
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