Part 1 - Dave Brubeck [1920-2012] - The Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master Interviews

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

As you read the first installment of the multi-part interview with Dave Brubeck, one of the most influential musicians in the pantheon of 20th Century Jazz Greats and one of the kindest and considerate  people to ever inhabit the Jazz World, please keep in mind that he was 87 years old at the time it was undertaken.

The details from such a long and illustrious career may have a tendency to cloud over with the passage of time, hence the occasional promptings and chronological clarifications by Ted Gioia, who is himself a Jazz pianist and a noted author of numerous books on the subject of Jazz, and who excels in his role as a sensitive interviewer. 

Something else to marvel over in Dave’s recollections of the early years of his life is how in the world he ever became a Jazz musician in the first place!

But yet, as his story evolves, we once again see how accessible music was for those who wish to learn it and to play it. Schools, music stores, music teachers, home learning and myriad venues to perform came in all shapes and sizes for those who wish to indulge in music, an art form that Aristotle asserted that could imitate the emotions and character of humans, such as gentleness, happiness, anger, sadness and braveness.

The Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interviews are provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

DAVE BRUBECK NEA Jazz Master (1999) Interviewees: Dave Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) with Russell Gloyd and (August only) Iola Brubeck 

Interviewers: Ted Gioia with recording engineer Ken Kimery 

Date: August 6-7, 2007 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Description: Transcript, 90 pp. 

Track markers were accidentally embedded into the original recording in such a way as to lose a few words at the breaks. Square brackets and five spaces – [ ] – indicate these small gaps in the transcription. 

Brubeck: There’s two cats in this house, and I don’t mean jazz musicians. But I haven’t heard them or seen them, so they probably are hiding. Gioia: They’re checking us out. Brubeck: This is a new house that – Chris had a house on the other side of town and got a pretty good deal and was able to have room for the first time in his life for a studio. He’s been writing so much – always new things. 

Gioia: It’s important to have the right setting. [microphone adjustment] 

Kimery: When you’re ready. 

Gioia: This is Ted Gioia. We are at Chris Brubeck’s house in Wilton, Connecticut, conducting an oral history with Dave Brubeck as part of the Smithsonian’s program of conducting oral histories with NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] Jazz Masters.

Today is August 6, 2007. Our plan is to conduct the oral history over a two-day period, today and tomorrow, August 7. 

Gioia: Dave, I have a number of questions here, taking you through your life history, and would like to start by talking to you about your grandparents. First of all, I’d like to know about your paternal grandparents, Louis Warren Brubeck and Louisa Grass Brubeck. What can you tell me about them? What recollections do you have of them? 

Brubeck: My grandparent Warren Brubeck – like my middle name – when his mother died in Indiana, his father gave the three sons $100, is one story. The other story is a saddle horse to each of them and told them they were on their own. Two came West, and one went down to Kentucky. My grandfather, Louis Warren, came to Reno, Nevada. One story is that he rode his horse. Another is he walked. So you don’t know exactly. He decided to make his living. He would build a hotel at the end of a narrow-gauge railroad which was going to a place called Amadie. That’s a high-desert area just over into California from Nevada, near Pyramid Lake and on Honey Lake. Honey Lake at that time was 120 miles long and today is dried up. It was bigger than Lake Tahoe. It’s hard to imagine a lake that size disappearing, but it attracted farmers and people to that area, and I imagine they would have irrigated their farms out of the lake. Then the narrow-gauge railroad stopped at Amadie, and my grandfather built a hotel there. In the hotel came the [ ] the drivers of the 20-mule teams that would go on to Oregon with produce from the rest of the United States now could cross, but they couldn’t go all the way up into Oregon with the train. So there were two Oregon trails. These drovers – drivers – would stay all night in the hotel on the upper third floor, which was a series of cots and beds. They got three meals a day and could stay. That was 50 cents for the night and the meals. There was a restaurant downstairs and a few waitresses, which caused my grandfather some trouble. One of the waitresses was being approached by one of the cattlemen, or maybe the lumbermen, or drivers. She didn’t want him around. He came to get her out of the restaurant. My grandfather stood by the door. This guy shot at him and just missed him, but there was a trial then. The record of that trial is available. It’s some pretty wild reading. The judge said to one of the cattleman that was giving his idea of what happened that night, being questioned, “Did you see any roughhousing at the hotel?” He said, “No, just a little chair action off the balcony.” This is all in the trial. My grandfather was accused of running – mis-properly running a saloon and hotel and forced to leave there. Then he went down to the Oakland area of California. He bought a ranch right at the foot of Mt. Diablo in Ignacio Valley. My father, Pete Brubeck – Howard Peter – was either 14 or 16 and left to bring the horses and cattle to Concord, California. 

Gioia: About what year would this have been when your grandfather moved to California, roughly? 

Brubeck: I’ve got to guess.

Gioia: Yeah, just a guess. 

Brubeck: 1896, around in there. But there is a man that has written up all this who lives in Litchfield, which is a town nearby. Iola would have his name. He just loves to write down the history of this part of California. It’s a pretty wild history. So my dad came to Concord with a couple of carloads of animals, landed at the railroad station, and unloaded the two cars. He needed some cowboys to help him drive the cattle from Concord out to the new ranch. So he went to my other [ ] on my mother’s side, who was Henry Ivy. Owned a livery stable in Concord. He thought that would be a good place to hire some men to help him. So he went there and said to him, “Give me some men.” It all worked out. He got the cattle out, with their help, to the new ranch. If you’ve ever been to Mt. Diablo, that ranch was located right where you turn to go up the hill on the Walnut Creek - Ignacio Valley side. It was right where that turn out of the valley starts up a steep hill. When you get to the top of Mt. Diablo there, you can see clear up – at that time when there was no fog or smog – you could see up the valley to almost Oregon, and you could see to San Francisco, and you could see to Stockton, Sacramento. Diablo was the place you could really see most of Northern California from. My mother was born at the foot of Mt. Diablo. I was born at the foot of Mt. Diablo. When my grandfather on her side went home that night, he said to my mother, “I met a real young man at the livery stable today, and I’d like to invite him sometime to dinner.” My mother was quite popular, quite beautiful, but my father didn’t take to having any other suitors around and quickly dispensed with them. He proposed marriage, and Grandfather Ivy said, “Bessie, if you marry this young man, you’ll never want for a sack of flour.” That was his approval. 

Gioia: Were your grandparents alive when you were a young boy? Did you have many recollections of them? 

Brubeck: Hardly any. I did see Grandpa Louis once. I was not allowed to go to his funeral. I was probably five. I remember my cousin and I just sitting alone in our house. The funeral was next door in the Presbyterian church in Concord. 

Gioia: You were seen as too young to go the funeral, because you were five years old. I can see that. 

Brubeck: Yeah. The Grass family was in Santa Cruz. There are some there still, Grasses. I visit there. I can’t remember. There’s even a real-estate office with my cousin’s son, who’s a Brubeck, married to a Chinese woman that runs the real-estate office. I think it’s Wong. 

Gioia: Let me ask you about your father. He was one of eight children. Did you have much interaction with your uncles and aunts? Were any of them musicians?

Brubeck: I had a lot of action with the cattlemen. Leslie Brubeck lived to be 100 in Sacramento a few years ago. That was the youngest son. His daughter married a quite well-known attorney in Sacramento, called San. Most people know her. Phil Brubeck took a turn in other directions. Became interested in show business and making pictures. He probably was the first person to photograph – make a movie of Indians – native Americans and cowboys. 

Gioia: This is your uncle? 

Brubeck: Phil, in Brown Valley, near Fort? – right up the coast – Fort? 

[voice off mic]: Fort Bragg? 

Brubeck: Fort Bragg. After he filmed the Indians and the cowboys, he wanted to show the picture to the Indians. They told them that they’d come to the barn where he’d set up a movie screen and a projector, he’d show them the film. He said no-one was coming, but pretty quick he saw a cloud of dust, and the whole tribe was on their way. When he turned on the light for the projector, he then discovered that the barn was full of bats diving at the screen. Finally, he turned on the projector. One of the first scenes, the chief was shown in life – large life – on the screen, screaming and hollering and ki-yi-ing and all the native Americans leaving, stampeding out of there, because the chief had died between the time they filmed it and the time he showed it. This just – they didn’t buy this thing. So they didn’t get to see anything. Practically destroyed the place. Then he ran theaters and hired many bands in Stockton, California, and other places. 

Gioia: On your father’s side of the family, were there any musicians? I know your mother was a skilled pianist, but on your father’s side, was there much musical talent? 

Brubeck: I think there had to be, because my dad was quite musical, just what he’d be singing and whistling. You had to have a certain ear. He whistled a lot of classical music, because that’s all he got to hear. 

Gioia: Let me ask you about your ancestry, which seems to be a mix of German, Polish, Russian, English, maybe native American as well. Were there any ethnic customs or food or anything like that in your early upbringing? Or did you have a very American childhood? Were there any old-country traditions or customs to your childhood? 

Brubeck: When I lived in Concord, my dad was the head cattle buyer for one of the biggest meat companies, called Moffett Meat Company. Maybe you’ve heard of baby beef. That’s in Manteca, California, where you force-feed the animals on unusual beets. The animals are never out of the corral, and [ ] the usual life. I think we used to ship our range cattle – some of them – to Manteca. My dad bought the cattle up and down the coast of California, sometimes into Nevada or Oregon. Every year he went to the Hearst Ranch in San Simeon. Bought their cattle. Into King City. Bought a lot of - he knew all the big cattle owners in California. Then, during the Depression, my father took a job in Ione, California, on a 45,000 acre ranch, which was large enough to be in three counties: Sacramento, Amador, and San Joaquin. We moved from Concord up to that ranch, much to my mother’s absolute – it was like the end of her life to go away to a cattle ranch, lose all of her friends, and near San Francisco, so she knew a lot of people. She could go – she studied with Cowell at San Francisco State. 

Gioia: Henry Cowell? 

Brubeck: Yeah. She also went to summer sessions at Berkeley. So she – and she’d go to the opera and symphony. All that seemed to be something that would be gone. I remember driving in the car with my father and mother – a small coupe. I was in the middle. She was crying, leaving Concord. We went on the back roads through Clayton. There was a big cattle ranch there, where my dad worked. When my mother was in Europe, he would pick me up and take me there on the weekends. We drove on those back roads – Marsh Creek Road, through Clayton. You come out in Byron. Then you go across the islands, which they call the islands, because they are where all the produce of asparagus and things like that. Then we went through Stockton towards Lockeford and then Clements and then turned to Ione. She’s crying all the way. My father said, “Dammit, Bessie. Look out the window. Why are you crying? You can still see Mt. Diablo.” That was his reason for, don’t think this is such a move. 

Gioia: You were born December 6, 1920 . . . 

Brubeck: Yeah. 

Gioia: . . . in Concord. Were you born at home? At a hospital? 

Brubeck: I was born at home. My mother realized that she was going to have a baby and went as fast as she could to Dr. Neff on [ ] a half a block away, and knocked on the door. I guess it was about four in the morning. Dr. Neff came to the door and said, “Bessie, go home and get in bed, and I’ll be right there.” So she went home, got in bed. She remembers the doctor taking his scalpel and just ripping off her nightgown, and the baby was born. 

Gioia: So he had got there in time, but just at the very last minute. 

Brubeck: Yeah. My dad came home from the slaughterhouse. He had built a slaughterhouse. He had a butcher shop, again with this rancher in Clayton: Keller. My first middle name was Keller. David Keller. I changed it, because my birth certificate showed Warren. Keller was a big rancher that I liked. That’s where I would go when I was a kid, on weekends. My mother was in Europe. He came home, and my mother had time to be praying, “Father don’t desert me now.” He said, “Bessie, I’m right here.” She said, “I don’t mean you.”

Gioia: Your middle names – you’re saying your birth certificate is David Warren Brubeck. 

Brubeck: Then when I got my first social security, it came as – I put down Keller. Then I had to change that back to Warren. 

Gioia: Was that because you thought your middle name was Keller? 

Brubeck: I just decided it was, because . . . 

Gioia: You had such an affinity with . . . 

Brubeck: Harry Keller, the cowboy. 

Gioia: Tell me more about Harry Keller. 

Brubeck: He owned this huge ranch, from Clayton, all along Marsh Creek, but above Marsh Creek, all through the mountains. I’ve heard that it was the largest cattle ranch in Contra Costa County. My dad was Harry’s partner. They worked together. 

Gioia: So Harry was like an uncle to you, although you weren’t . . . 

Brubeck: Yeah. Very close. 

Gioia: So when you filled out your social security form, you put down your middle name as David Keller Brubeck. 

Brubeck: Yeah. 

Gioia: The Warren – was that named after your grandfather? 

Brubeck: Yeah. And also because that’s what my folks had named me. 

Gioia: And David – were you named after any – was there another David in the family? Or was that just a name they liked? 

Brubeck: I don’t know of any. There are now. 

Gioia: There are now, sure. I’m sure there are many now. So as far as you know, you were the first Dave Brubeck in the family. 

Brubeck: Yeah. 

Gioia: What was your home like in Concord? I know when you moved to Ione, you lived on a large ranch.

Brubeck: Yeah. 

Gioia: In Concord were you in a city? Or was that like a ranch too? 

Brubeck: Part of our lot, at the back of the house, faced Main Street, behind the Presbyterian Church, where my mother was choir director for 17 years. Then this house that I was born in was the Ivy House, from her father. She might have been born in the house, I’ve heard. She might have been born on a farm near the statue that’s between Walnut Creek and Pacheco. [ ] a statue. 

Gioia: So there was a house that was in town.

Brubeck: Absolutely.

Gioia: Was that ranch separate? 

Brubeck: The ranch? Oh, that was in a different little town, Clayton. 

Gioia: Okay. 

Brubeck: If you know where the Concord Pavilion is, my dad used to run cattle on that very land. Then on up that hill was another ranch that I went to a lot when I was a kid. 

Gioia: But you didn’t live on the ranch. You lived in a home in town, and the ranch was out in Clayton. 

Brubeck: Yeah. Right by the Pavilion. I often would think of that when I’d go to play a concert. This is the road I learn to drive – or almost learned to drive a car on. I ran through an orchard, my dad hollering, “Step on the other one!” I put my foot on the clutch instead of the brake. Went tearing through there. 

Gioia: Your mother was a pianist. Were there other musicians in her family? 

Brubeck: No. Not that I know of. That family you mentioned being Polish, trying to trace them, we’ve heard that they were in White Russia – her mother. Betsy. Her mother. Then into Poland, and from Poland to Germany, and from Germany she got a way to get to California as a nanny or a servant to the Gangerer – I don’t know how to spell it. Capital G – Iola would know. Then she married Henry Ivy. 

Gioia: When you were in first grade, I believe you were . . . 

Brubeck: There were some organists on that side of the family. 

Gioia: Church organs? 

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: When you, I believe, were in first grade, your mother went to England to study music. 

Brubeck: Yeah. 

Gioia: Can you tell me about that, what impact that had on your home. 

Brubeck: Looking back on it, I would say it wasn’t good. At the time I was quite unhappy, because we were put in a family to keep us – Howard and I. Henry went with my mother to England. My dad at the time was living on the ranch in Clayton, the Keller ranch. 

Gioia: So you were put with a family in the town of Concord that looked after . . . 

Brubeck: Yeah, the Humphrey family was their name. 

Gioia: Your mother had hopes to use this to help her teach piano? Or did she want to perform more? What were her ambitions in music? 

Brubeck: I think that her ambitions were to be a concert pianist. To understand my mother, she was absolutely driven all her life to raise up above her situation. She was in a town, Concord, that didn’t have a high school. So she took one of the wagons and a horse from her father, and went to all the farms and orchards and said, “Would you pledge money to build a high school?” So she’s the one that was driven to have an education, even if she had to go out and create a high school. She graduated from Concord High School. 

Gioia: So she was responsible for establishing Concord High School. 

Brubeck: Absolutely. 

Gioia: And then she graduated from it. 

Brubeck: She graduated in the first class. So when I say she’s driven, you can’t imagine how she wanted to rise from her situation and be educated, and she managed it. 

Gioia: Was her personality different from your father’s? Was she more ambitious and driven than your father? Or were they both . . . ? 

Brubeck: In their own ways, they were both successful. 

Gioia: Self-made people. 

Brubeck: Yeah. Then King’s Conservatory in San Jose is where she went from high school. We ran across a recommendation from the dean that she go on in music. 

Eventually, after having three children and in the ’20s, for some reason she had an insurance policy with Goldman and Sachs. She cashed that in. With that money, which was her money, she was able to go to Europe and study. My father thought it was ridiculous to cash that in. Later on in life, she’d say, “If I hadn’t done that, we’d have lost it all, because Goldman and Sachs took a dive with everybody else. So I was able to do something with that money.” She studied with Dame Meyerhess. Dame Meyerhess saw my mother looking out the window in London at some kids playing. She said, “You’re so interested in them. Do you have children?” She said, “Yes. I have three sons.” She said, “If I were you, I’d go home to my sons. This is a lonely life, to be a concert pianist.” 

Gioia: Was she your first piano teacher? Did you learn piano from your mother? 

Brubeck: Absolutely. She couldn’t teach me, but she could. She taught me basic harmony. She tried to teach me to read music, which no-one could. Then she would write down things I played when I was very young. 

Gioia: Would this have been before she went to England, she started you? 

Brubeck: Yeah. 

Gioia: So a very early age. 

Brubeck: Very early age. 

Gioia: Were there other instruments at the house other than a piano? Were there other instruments that you tried to play, or other instruments at the home? 

Brubeck: At nine I got my first cello – a half-size. I studied with a girl named Lucille Keller, from the same family, who was a good cellist. I guess a brother of hers [ ] in that family, they lived in town, in Concord. 

Gioia: So you had a stint playing cello, but obviously that was not your passion, the cello. 

Brubeck: Well, if I had been good, it would have been. I did study it again when I was in Ione. My mother insisted that I go to Sutter Creek. The judge up there played cello. Then, even when I was in high school, I drove down to the College of Pacific and studied with Mrs. Brown, who was the wife of Horace Brown, a teacher at the conservatory who was great to me and taught me counterpoint. So I should have been a lot better cellist, but I just wasn’t so good. My brother Henry was a jazz drummer and a legit violinist. Howard was a protege on piano and could go from Concord to contests in San Francisco and do very well. 

Gioia: Was there a lot of music-making around the home with you and your siblings? Did you get together and play music together or sing together and things like that?

Brubeck: We had a string trio – cello, violin, piano – which was very uncomfortable for me, because both of them could read anything, and I couldn’t. 

Gioia: Who played piano then on that? 

Brubeck: Howard. 

Gioia: So you played cello on that. 

Brubeck: And Henry, violin. 

Gioia: Would that – what kind . . . 

Brubeck: You couldn’t play a radio, because she wouldn’t allow a radio in the house. 

Gioia: Why not? 

Brubeck: If you want music, make your own. 

Gioia: This string trio: what kind of music did you play? Classical music? Or did you play dance music? 

Brubeck: Classical. 

Gioia: Classical. So you must – you minimize your reading skills, but you had enough reading skills obviously to play some of this. You weren’t doing this by ear, were you? 

Brubeck: Yeah. Looking at the music, faking it, and then my brother hitting me with the violin bow when I hit the wrong note. I’d be playing like this and put up my arm, because I knew that bow was coming. 

Gioia: Your family moved around the time you were 12 years old. That was in the middle of the Great Depression. Was it because of the Depression that this move took place? 

Brubeck: If my dad figured that out, it was a brilliant move, because on the cattle ranch, right through the Depression, he got $250 a month, a house to live in, a car to drive. That’s a slight exaggeration. He eventually bought his own car, but the companies supplied pickups and trucks and all that that you need to run a large cattle ranch. So, food – everything was free. This was through the Depression. 

Gioia: So at a time when a lot of people were struggling, your father had taken a position that gave you quite a bit of economic security. 

Brubeck: You bet.

Gioia: Did the Depression impact your life in any way? Could you see things in the community? Or were you pretty insulated from it where you grew up? 

Brubeck: You were very aware of it. There were [ ] Concord. There would be – the slang word for hoboes or bums, come to your home and ask for food. My mother would tell them, “Chop a little wood out there, and I’ll bring you some food.” My father’s rule was, you can do this, but never allow some stranger to come into the house. So you were always aware of that. You were aware of your neighbors losing their jobs. It was a daily thing. Across the street, when the man of the house would come home, his wife would be coming to the front door and saying, “Cedric, did you lose your job yet?” That happened every day, that she’d come out there and say that. That was the opening. It was on everybody’s mind. Where were you going to buy food? Could you charge? My wife’s family was very much more aware of the Depression and knowing the hardships of that. 

Gioia: Dave, my thought is to go another 15 minutes and take a break. If at any point you want to take a break, let me know. Can we go a little bit more? 

Brubeck: Sure. 

Gioia: Okay. Let’s go another 10, 15 minutes. Then we’ll take a break. You once told me that when you were a youngster, you knew Gil Evans. Could you tell me more about that? 

Brubeck: Oh, I wasn’t a youngster. My brother Henry, the drummer, played with Gil. Gil had a band out of Stockton. There were so many good musicians in the conservatory. You weren’t allowed to play jazz, but you worked as a jazz musician. Many of the California towns, and the towns right across the country, had dance bands. Almost every town had one or two or three bands that worked, played dances. Gil had this band in Stockton that used Stockton musicians. He took that band on the road to Los Angeles. He hated to front the band, and he loved writing for the band and composing. Skinnay Ennis bought the band from him, fronted it, and allowed Gil to continue as the leader, rehearser, composer, and arranger. At that point, the reason that I met Gil was that Miles Davis recorded – he wanted Gil to write The Duke – an arrangement, which he did. 

Gioia: For Miles Ahead. 

Brubeck: Yeah. Teo Macero and Miles invited me to the session at Columbia where they’d be editing that day. I was told they’d be working on The Duke. When I came into the control room, I was introduced to Gil. He said, “Brubeck? Did you have a brother?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “He played drums with me. He was a great drummer.” That’s how I met Gil. Then I [ ] after that. After he died, I was invited to his house by his wife, after I was here in Connecticut.

Gioia: The two of you grew up not too far from each other, and your brother played with him. Now I understand. 

Brubeck: Yes. That’s how it happened. 

Gioia: Let’s do one more question before we take a break. I’d like you to tell me about your education early on – the schools you went to up until college. Then we’ll talk about that. 

Brubeck: I started in kindergarten at Willow Grammar School in Concord. I guess it was called Willow Pass Grammar School. I can remember the kindergarten. The teacher there was Miss Burns. She and I were in love. Just great. 

Gioia: How long were you there? Until what grade? 

Brubeck: Until seventh. 

Gioia: What kind of student were you? If I talked to your teachers, what would they have told me? That you were the class clown? Or you were quiet? 

Brubeck: I didn’t get in trouble. 

Gioia: You were a good student. You were well behaved. 

Brubeck: When I think of “student,” it’s all very uncomfortable, because I was put in the slow group, away from my friends, maybe second grade. I always felt that in some ways I’m probably the smartest guy here, but this was a blow to me. I couldn’t understand why I was put back – or put into the slow group. I wasn’t being put back. Looking back on it, I had what might be called learning disability, but nobody knew that term in those days. I had to go through that on my own, partly when my mother was in England. I remember trouble in school. Not trouble. Just – because the music teacher knew that I was musical. I was good at math. My trouble was maybe in spelling. 

Gioia: Maybe a little dyslexic. It might be related to the issues with reading music. 

Brubeck: I think so, because I was born cross-eyed. 

Gioia: So was I. We had talked about this once. I do know I have a tendency to dyslexia as well. So it might be something similar. 

Brubeck: Yeah, but did you know it when you were a kid? 

Gioia: No, I didn’t. 

Brubeck: That’s what is puzzling. Because, like, in the Army, I had to take an IQ test. I wasn’t anxious to do well in it, but I was high enough to become an officer with what they considered a good enough score to go to officer’s training. It must have been that I was high in some areas and low in others. Geography I was very good at. 

Gioia: What about high school? Where did you go to high school? 

Brubeck: I went to high school [ ] I finished eighth grade in Ione. I did well there. The high school for all four grades only totaled 84 students, so you know it was a small high school. 

Gioia: Why don’t we take a break right now? Excellent. This is going well. [recording interrupted]

To be continued in Part 2.