Digging Dave Brubeck and Time Out! - Alan Goldsher

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The reaction [to my music] has gone on ever since I was a kid: "What the hell is he doing?" And it's a common experience for me.”

- Dave Brubeck

“The Oberlin outing produced an album for Fantasy, Jazz at Oberlin that Brubeck considers among his finest. In typical Brubeck fashion, however, the sometimes curmudgeonly pianist found something to kvetch about, telling Sutton, "I was probably a little disappointed in that they wouldn't give me a good piano. [They] had an old grand, but it was in terrible shape. And I remember that they said, you know, 'The jazz musician can't play the good piano.'”

- Dave Brubeck

“Keith "Guru" Elam, the late frontman of the cult jazz-tinged hip-hop group Gang Starr, who dropped a polemic in his 1990 tune "Jazz Thing" [in which]

later in the verse, Elam made it clear that he believed white musicians appropriated the music, and, "we know who can really blow." 

These are points that have been made by countless black musicians and listeners since jazz became a thing: jazz was birthed by African-Americans, thus it's an African-American music, thus Caucasian dudes should set down their saxophones and step aside, thank you very much, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

'This is a roundabout way of saying that Dave Brubeck is a divisive jazz artist because he had the temerity to be white, sedate, nerdy, verbose, and — gasp — popular.”

- Alan Goldsher, Digging Dave Brubeck and Time Out! [2020] 

“Propelled by the unlikely hit "Take Five," the pianist's 1959 classic Time Out! was the first jazz album to earn platinum status, making it one of only eight platinum records in jazz history. Born as an experiment in time signatures and eclectic musical styles the artist encountered while traveling abroad. Time Out! moved the genre forward and became one of the most influential albums of all time.

What was it about this subtle, artsy session that captured the ears of both hardcore jazz fans and casual listeners alike? Why did Brubeck, a bespectacled intellectual who seemingly wasn't as hip as Davis and Coltrane, become a legitimate mainstream star in a genre not known for stardom?

Author and bassist Alan Goldsher delves into Brubeck's classic record, examining why the album and the pianist caught the Zeitgeist, and measuring its continuing impact on music of all styles. Engaging and informative. Digging Dave Brubeck and Time Out! pays homage to one of the most vital, most enduring recordings in jazz history”

Over the course of a performance career that spanned almost three quarters of a century, Dave Brubeck’s music was criticized more than it was complimented. This negative criticism was especially virulent during the early years of what became known as the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet [1956-1967] and even extended to his innovative leaps in combining his penchant for polytonality with polyrhythms which reached its apogee in his 1959 Columbia LP - Time Out!

To wit, the following “brutal takedown” of this recording by Ira Gitler which appeared in Downbeat:

"Dave Brubeck is a semi-jazz player [and he] has been palmed off as a serious jazzman for too long. 'Take Five...turns out to be like Chinese water torture. If this is what we have to endure with experimentation in time, take me back to good old 4/4.... [Drummer Joe] Morello's solo, over the omnipresent vamp, sounds like the accompaniment for a troupe of trampoline artists."

Of course, in the face of such withering debasement, Dave was to find the ultimate curative in the form of creative and commercial success [Dave’s kind and gentle soul would probably not admit to the use of the cliché phrase - “laughing all the way to the bank” - but that was the reality of his career in Jazz.].

Over the years, since Time Out the adulation and respect was slow in coming, not from his adoring friends, but too often from his fellow musicians who, for whatever reasons, were reluctant to acknowledge their debt to him both stylistically and especially as an improviser who found his own unique way to express himself in an idiom in which uniqueness of expression is a mark of distinction. 

Some of Dave’s reverential fans even went so far as to write and publish a book testifying to Dave’s greatness.

Enter Alan Goldsher’s Digging Dave Brubeck and Time Out! [2020] which to its credit makes an effort to be objective about the praise for Dave’s work that issues forth from it.

Here’s his response to the Gitler “brutal takedown” of Time Out!:

“That brutal takedown of pianist/composer Dave Brubeck's 1959 album Time Out! came from the pen of Ira Gitler, a renowned critic who, in 2017, was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, joining such luminaries as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, and Ornette Coleman.

Wait, what? That thing was written by an NEA Jazz Master? Well, he must be right. If an NEA Jazz Master believes that this Brubeck guy is a semi-jazz player, the dude is probably horrible, unlistenable, and an embarrassment to all of music-kind.

“Or maybe Gitler wasn't anywhere near the neighborhood of right. Maybe Gitler didn't want to champion Brubeck because the bespectacled pianist/composer wasn't as cool— or as black—as, say, Miles Davis or Charlie Parker. Maybe Gitler was concerned he'd lose street cred if he gave even grudging credit to a musician who didn't have the chops of a Bud Powell, or the sense of funk of a Horace Silver, or the hipster weirdness of a Thelonious Monk.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But maybe, no, probably, there's a chance that Gitler wouldn't have minded erasing that review from his canon before he passed away in 2019. He might have even busted out "Take Five'' and thought, "Hmm, that sounds pretty good."

You know who did think "Take Five" sounded pretty good? The National Endowment for the Arts, that's who, so much so that in 1999, they named Dave Brubeck a Jazz Master, too [Gitler received the accord in 2017].

After enduring so many harsh and negative reviews of his playing and his music, it’s nice to see a more recent book in which Dave receives the acclaim, adulation and affection he deserved both as a creative artist and as a decent and caring human being - the personification of a “good guy.” 

For as Alan Goldsher comments at the end of his Introduction:

“The fact that Time Out! was, according to Spotify, the first jazz album to go Platinum can't be dismissed. The fact that Brubeck's recording and touring career spanned more than six decades can't be dismissed. The fact that for a hot minute in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he entranced an entire segment of an entire generation can't be dismissed. The fact that he could fill an auditorium well into his eighties can't be dismissed.

Point being, regardless of how many Gitlers shook their fists at him, Dave Brubeck matters.

Brubeck was a gateway musician, a player who, with a handful of transcendent compositions, a welcoming onstage demeanor, an ability to meld genres and styles in an all-encompassing manner, and a dogged desire to make music until they pried the keyboard from his cold, dead hands, enticed thousands upon thousands of jazz newbies to embrace an oftentimes unembraceable genre.

In the oftentimes insular world of jazz, that is a rare, precious quality.”

Divided into three parts [1] encompassing the years 1924-1959, [2] Part 2 1959-1961 and [3] 1961 - 2012 [Dave Died on December 5th of 2012], Alan’s book is a quick read [134 pages], but if you are a fan of Dave Brubeck's music, you’ll find this “love letter” to be a reaffirmation of all the reasons why you found it to be so engaging and enjoyable.