“Two of a Mind” - Desmond and Mulligan

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

I’ll always been indebted to Will Thornbury for making possible one of my most favorites Jazz recordings, Erroll Garner’s Concerts By The Sea [Columbia/Sony Entertainment], one of the best selling Jazz albums of all time.

As Will Friedwald explains:

“On Sept. 19, 1955, Garner … performed at Fort Ord, an army base near Carmel, Calif., at the behest of disc jockey and impresario Jimmy Lyons. Martha Glaser, who served as Garner's personal manager for nearly his entire career, happened to be backstage when she noticed a tape recorder running.

As she recalled for the Wall Street Journal last week, it turned out that the show was being taped -- without Garner's knowledge -- by a jazz fan and scholar named Will Thornbury, strictly for the enjoyment of himself and his fellow servicemen. Ms. Glaser told him, "I'll give you copies of every record Erroll ever made, but I can't let you keep that tape." She took it back to New York (carrying it on her lap), where she assembled it into album form, titled it "Concert by the Sea," and then played it for George Avakian, who ran the jazz department at Columbia Records. Garner had actually left Columbia three years earlier, but, as Mr. Avakian recently told the Journal: "I totally flipped over it! I knew that we had to put it out right away."

When Columbia released "Concert by the Sea" a few months later, this early live 12-inch LP was a runaway sensation. It became the No. 1 record of Garner's 30-year career and one of the most popular jazz albums of all time. It's not hard to hear why: From the first notes onward, Garner plays like a man inspired -- on fire, even. He always played with a combination of wit, imagination, amazing technical skill and sheer joy far beyond nearly all of his fellow pianists, but on this particular night he reached a level exceeding his usual Olympian standard.”

Enter Will Thornberry again, this time as the writer of the insert notes to the Paul Desmond – Gerry Mulligan Quartet album Two of A Mind [RCA/Bluebird 0654-2-RB].

Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan made two albums together just as their popularity as Jazz artists was beginning to surge; one in 1957 for Verve [314 519 850-2] simply titled Blues in Time: The Gerry Mulligan-Paul Desmond Quartet and the other being to the Paul Desmond – Gerry Mulligan Quartet album Two of A Mind, which was recorded in 1962.

Will went on to become a successful record producer in his own right as well as an excellent writer on the subject of Jazz.

Nat Hentoff, one of the most esteemed of all Jazz authors, wrote the liner notes for the original Verve LP and Harvey Pekar penned the insert notes for the 1993 reissue as a Verve CD.

Taken in combination, Messer’s Thornbury, Hentoff and Pekar, may very well represent the most comprehensive telling of the story of how these two Jazz originals came to record together.

[Just to keep the record straight, there is a 3^rd recording involving Mulligan and Desmond which they made in 1972 with Dave Brubeck entitled – We’re All Together Again for the First Time. It was issued on the Atlantic label and I have not read its liner notes.]

Since there is some repetitive background information in the notes that Will, Nat and Harvey wrote, I have edited excerpts together that I hope are not too redundant.

Let’s start with the senior statesman of the group, Nat Hentoff, explaining how the original Blues in Time Mulligan-Desmond recording came about.

© -Nat Hentoff, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Blues in Time:  Gerry Mulligan Meets Paul Desmond [Verve MGV-8246]

“The idea for this multi-linear playground has been bottled, like an amiably desperate jinni, in Paul Desmond's mind since 1954 when Gerry Mulligan sat in with the Dave Brubeck quartet at Carnegie Hall, and a Tea for Two resulted that convinced both Desmond and Mulligan that their ways of speaking music had what Gerry terms "a natural affinity."

Nothing and no one happened by to release the jinni until the summer of 1957 and the American Jazz Festival at New­port. During a quiet time at those assizes, Desmond again suggested the idea of a record date to Mulligan. There still seemed to be too many obstacles for liberation day to be in sight. There was, for one thorn, the matter of which record label would preserve the union. Desmond was affianced, so to speak, to one company and Mulligan preferred others. There were other problems too, and the conversation appar­ently headed towards inaction.

Norman Granz, who has a collection of bottles from which he has released jinn of this kind (one of them named Ella Fitzgerald) had been a listening bystander at the Desmond-Mulligan colloquy; and a few hours later, offered to do the date himself. He would make a trade with Desmond's com­pany to indemnify them for the loan of Paul (it is increasingly hard in present-day jazz recording to obtain the loan of a player; it is sometimes easier to borrow Kim Novak); and in general, Granz promised to untangle any other difficulties, present and possible.

In August of 1957, the bottle was opened. Mulligan had flown to California with his quartet to play a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. He had also recorded a jam session album for Granz with Stan Getz, Harry Edison, Louis Bellson, and the Oscar Peterson Trio; and at 2 A.M., after this record date, Mulligan and Desmond met for their first session. ‘About all we came in with that was planned,’ notes Desmond, ‘was a list of typewritten tunes. There were some obvious unison things written, one-chorus lines on two short tunes Gerry wrote, but everything else, including the counterpoint was off-the-cuff.’

Desmond and Mulligan are both dour self-critics, and are especially severe on their recorded work. Both, however, are quite pleased with this session. Desmond's explanation of his enjoyment in working with Mulligan is succinctly clear: "He just does all the right things."

‘I'm very proud of several things we did on the date,’ adds Mulligan, ‘like sometimes we're blowing passages in thirds, and they come off. It's a little alarming. And there are also places where Paul comes through very strongly, much more aggressively than he usually plays with Dave. He gets to swing pretty hard at times here in some contrast to the more flowing and lyrical work he does with Dave.’”

Here are some excerpts from Harvey Pekar’s notes to the reissue.

© -Harvey Pekar  copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Reissuing the Gerry Mulligan-Paul Desmond Quartet [Verve 314 519 850-2]

When Mulligan established himself in the L.A. area [in the early 1950’s] he formed a very popular piano-less quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker, bass, and drums. He employs the same format here, with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond substituting for Baker.

Desmond, star soloist of the Brubeck quartet for many years, is a difficult musician to evaluate. His was a fragile but considerable talent that might have been more fully realized outside the context of Brubeck's group. His main influences were Lee Konitz, Lester Young, and possibly Stan Getz. He had a small, pretty, vibrato-less tone; an excellent upper register; and at his best an inventive, lyrical, improvisatory instinct. When not in good form, however, his playing could be cloying and insipid. Mulligan seems to inspire Desmond here; in any event some of Paul's best recorded work is on this disk.

Gerry is inspired as well. He too has been influenced by Lester Young, though he is a more extroverted player than Desmond. His work can be predictable rhythmically and his choice of notes is by modern jazz standards conservative; but melodically he's ceaselessly inventive and he resolves his ideas very well, playing the kind of lines you can memorize and sing. In fact, in listening to this album again, I was surprised and delighted to find how much of it I had memorized. …

Mulligan's playing is so buoyant and infectious — you just know he's having a good time, that everything's working for him. On the slower tunes, …,  he plays with a full-bodied warmth that's hard to resist. Desmond swings harder and plays with more continuity than he usually did with Brubeck. When he uses motivic variation he does it creatively rather than by descending to coyness. The improvised counterpoint here works out very well. Each man listens to the other and reacts, seemingly effortlessly, with appropriate responses.

Kudos also go to Dave Bailey and Joe Benjamin. Their quiet but steady and resilient time-keeping gives Mulligan and Desmond just the kind of accompaniment they need, as the high quality of the saxophonists' work demonstrates.

These musicians were made for each other. July, 1993”

When the 1962 recording Two of A Mind: The Paul Desmond-Gerry Mulligan Quartet [RCA/Bluebird 9654-2 RB] was reissued on CD in 1989, Will Thornberry provided these comprehensive insert notes.

© -Will Thornbury, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The Cocoanut Grove is part of the Ambassador Hotel. Freddy Martin used to lead the band there. The hotel grounds are vast; tall palm trees stand like sentries at its edge. Across the street, in 1952, was a bungalow bar called the Haig, where Gerry Mulligan played with his quartet and where Time magazine gave him the most important review of his young career:

...in Los Angeles...a gaunt, hungry-looking young fellow named Gerry Mulligan plays the baritone saxophone....His jazz is rich and even orderly. ..sometimes the polyphony is reminiscent of tailgate blues, sometimes it comes tumbling with bell-over-mouthpiece impromptu.... He has a sleepy face and on the bandstand he keeps

his watery green eyes closed even when listen ing to Trumpeter Chet Baker, opens them only occasionally to glower at customers who are boorish enough to talk against the music....Next Mulligan objective: an enlarged band and a nationwide tour. "I've got to keep moving. I've got to grow."1

Mulligan was hired by the Haig's publicist, Richard Bock, a student attending college on the G. I. Bill.

"I conned the owner...into letting me put in a jam session on the off night," Bock said. "I met Mulligan and hired him as a soloist, then he became the leader of a regular thing. Chet Baker wandered over one night after his gig with Charlie Parker and sat in with Gerry. They hit it off. A few weeks later Red Norvo's trio, the one with Mingus and Tal Farlow, was booked for a month to play five nights a week. Red said 'I don't want the piano on the stand—we don't use piano.' The owner stored the piano in his apartment and we said 'What are you going to do, Mulligan?—you don't have a piano.' And he said 'Well, we can play without one.' He didn't want to lose the gig—at that point he was really scuffling. And so it turned out to be a piano-less quartet."

"After the third week it was magic," Bock continued. "It...gave Chet a freedom that he never would have had... he was able to play almost anything that he thought of and it didn't clash with the piano...he could really go on real flights of imagination.... With Gerry, Chet was forced to be inventive; he was forced to come up with contrapuntal lines—they had that marvelous ability to chase each other and to play what was almost Dixieland or two-part inventions."

"And it went on for months, you know," Bock concluded. "It was the biggest thing that happened on the West Coast at that time. Time magazine covered it and it became a real experience."

"I was overlooked," Paul Desmond was fond of saying, "long before anyone knew who I was." By 1953 Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond were attracting the same kind of attention as Mulligan and Baker. Brubeck had noticed earlier, while on the road, that stuck between the jazz clubs of the country were colleges. He began to contact some of them for concert bookings and developed an itinerary. The move was an important move for the group: it gave Brubeck the means to develop a generation of listeners and it gave Desmond a chance to meet girls.

Paul Emil Breitenfeld — Desmond came later, the name picked from a phone book—was born in San Francisco in 1924. His father was a theater organist and arranger who talked twelve-year-old Paul into returning the violin that he had brought home from music class at San Francisco Polytechnic High School in favor of a clarinet. Desmond played in the Polytechnic band and edited the school paper. He went into the army in 1943, switched from clarinet to alto, and spent the duration of WW II at the Presidio of San Francisco in the 253rd AGF Band. Dave Brubeck passed through town on his way overseas. "We went out to the band room for a quick session," Desmond said to Nat Hentoff, "[and] started to play the blues in B flat, and the first chord he played was a G major. Knowing absolutely nothing at the time about polytonality I thought he was stark raving mad." Not without reason, Desmond added—Brubeck was "wild haired, ferocious looking, with a pile-driver approach to the piano, and an expression of a surly Sioux. It took...several more listenings before I began to understand what he was up to."

After the war Desmond ran into Brubeck and formed a quartet. "We were making about $50 a night," Desmond told Marian McPartland. "I was splitting it with the guys and paying for the gas, too. That's when I decided I really didn't want to be a leader." Brubeck took over the quartet. Brubeck was studying with Darius Milhaud; he formed an octet comprised of other Milhaud students and Desmond, who was majoring in literature at San Francisco State. In the first six months of 1950, Desmond's only jobs were "two concerts with the octet and a Mexican wedding." Desmond joined the Jack Fina band. Fina, a pianist, had once been with Freddy Martin's orchestra; highlights of his career with Martin had been an adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto, called Tonight We Love, and a boogie-woogie rendition of The Flight of the Bumble Bee. Desmond reached New York City with the band, entertaining thoughts of settling there, but found that "all the guys I talked to wanted my job with Fina." Discouraged, Desmond returned to San Francisco. Brubeck's trio had achieved recognition beyond San Francisco and he decided to form a quartet. He hired Desmond and they never looked back. During 1953 the quartet recorded albums at two colleges, Oberlin and College of the Pacific. Record producer George Avakian signed them to a contract at Columbia Records. Their first release for Columbia was another set of campus recordings, Jazz Goes to College. The album was an immediate success. On November 8, 1954, Dave Brubeck appeared on the cover of Time.

A month before Time's cover story ("Desmond's eyes close, his long fingers glide over his alto's mother-of-pearl keys..."),2 Desmond recorded his first solo album. "It is my custom when listening to playbacks," Desmond wrote, "to cough loudly whenever I hear something coming that I played and don't like, and altho things have improved since the early days —  'Whispering Desmond' they used to call me, up at Sound Recorders — most editing sessions leave me a bit hoarse."3 The album had Desmond's most inspired title, Baroque... But Happy, and "a fond tribute to Gerry Mulligan," called Jeruvian.

"You remember that one," I said.

"Sure," replied Mulligan smiling. "We used to hang out together at all the festivals, hangout a lot — which was not wonderful for my liver. In fact that's how we ended up recording together. Norman Granz was always around and he'd overhear us talking about doing something. Paul would say he'd really like to do a thing with my quartet, only have it be an alto instead of a trumpet, and I'd say 'Sure, that's a great idea.' And then we'd go to another festival and say the same thing. Well, after a few years of that Granz finally said 'Would you stop that? You're driving me crazy! If you're serious about this and l set up a date will you do it?' We said 'Sure. 'So he did and we did."

The record was called Blues in Time.

"Pronounced aahn-teem, I suppose."

"Sure," said Mulligan, "we both like to fool around with words."

Desmond was epigrammatic and pun-loving, Mulligan is a master at anagrams, a composer re-arranger: viz., "I worked out something recently for Duke, except it doesn't work with 'Duke’ -I have to use 'Edward,' Duke's real name. What do you think 'E. Ellington' works out to be?"

"I don't know."

"Gentle Lion."

His masterpiece is his anagram for Gil Evans: Svengali.

Gerald Joseph Mulligan was born in April 1927, in Queens Village, Long Island. His father was a management engineer; Mulligan was the youngest of four brothers and the only one not to enter their father's profession. The family traveled extensively during Mulligan's childhood, living in Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. He showed an early aptitude for music, starting clarinet and turning out his first arrangement at age ten, organizing his first combo in high school, then expanding it into a big band and writing arrangements. When he was fourteen the family moved to Philadelphia: Mulligan switched from clarinet to tenor, and put together another high school dance band. He sold his first professional arrangement to the WCAU Radio house band while still in high school; by the beginning of his senior year he had worked professionally with two local bands, had toured with Tommy Tucker's band as an arranger, had joined WCAU as staff arranger for the Elliot Lawrence Band, and had met and befriended Charlie Parker. Mulligan moved to New York in 1946 and was hired as an arranger by Gene Krupa, for whom he wrote Disk Jockey Jump. The following year he joined Claude Thornhill's band, involving himself in the development of ideas with Thornhill's chief arranger, Gil Evans, that would result in the birth of the classic Miles Davis Nonet, for which he arranged George Wallington's Godchild, and the Mulligan compositions Rocker, Jeru, Venus de Milo, and the much-later released Darn That Dream. By 1951, twenty-four-year-old Mulligan had produced memorable, and in several instances historic, compositions and arrangements. He had also abandoned the clarinet, tenor, and alto in favor of the baritone. Work was scarce that summer, money elusive.

About the time Paul Desmond left Jack Fina, Gerry Mulligan hitchhiked to L.A.

"Most of the albums Paul did apart from Dave were piano-less," I said, "but with a different conception than yours."

"Early on, I was amazed to find out that different horn players listen to different guys in the rhythm section," Mulligan said. "Some guys listen to drummers, some to piano players, but not too many listen to bass players. I always, always listened to the bass line. So when I played with a bass player who was shucking it, it really threw me a curve because I didn't hear anything. But, conversely, when I played with good players — guys with good time but also good melodic sense of the bass line — it would inspire me to better things."

Mulligan's liner notes for his first album for Dick Bock weren't exactly a Manifesto, but they contained concepts that would be discussed throughout the decade:

‘I consider the string bass to be the basis of the sound of the group; the foundation on which the soloist builds his line, the main thread around which the two horns weave their contrapuntal interplay. It is possible with two voices to imply the sound of or impart the feeling of any chord or series of chords. When a piano is used in a group it necessarily plays the dominant role; the horns and bass must tune to it as it cannot tune to them, making it the dominant tonality. The piano's accepted function of constantly stating the chords of the progression makes the solo horn a slave to the whims of the piano player. The soloist is forced to adapt his line to the changes and alterations made by the pianist in the chords of the progression. It is obvious that the bass does not possess as wide a range of volume and dynamic possibilities as the drums or horns. It is therefore necessary to keep the overall volume in proportion to that of the bass in order to achieve an integrated group sound.’

The decade of the 1950s in Los Angeles would begin and end with quartets, Mulligan's and Ornette Coleman's, and the path from one to the other was straight and short.

Desmond listened to piano. He spent seventeen years with Dave Brubeck. "When Dave is playing at his best," he told Hentoff in that 1952 interview, "it's completely live, free improvisation in which you can find all the qualities of the music I love....This sort of playing doesn't happen every night and hasn't happened yet on a record session. Maybe it never will, but it's worth waiting for. When I heard it happening the first time, all the other jazz I had heard and played then seemed pale and trivial by comparison." A few years later, responding to those who suggested the contrary, he said "I never would have made it without Dave. He's amazing harmonically, and he can be a fantastic accompanist. You can play the wrongest note possible in a chord and he can make it sound like the only right one." Away from Brubeck he usually worked with Jim Hall, or later Ed Bickert. He liked the guitar—the instrument once described as a piano you hold in your lap.

Mulligan and Desmond made only three records together: Blues in Time (Verve) in 1957; We’re All Together Again for the First Time, with Dave Brubeck (Atlantic) in 1972; and Two of a Mind, recorded in three sessions during the summer of 1962, exactly ten years to the season from Mulligan's original quartet sessions. "The dates," wrote George Avakian, who co-produced the album with Bob Prince, "always seemed to take place as one principal was unpacking a suitcase and the other was about to catch a plane." Much was expected of the album — "a classic-to-be collaboration by two of the greatest saxophonist of modern jazz," read the original back cover — and musically the expectations were realized.

But summer of 1962 was the season of the Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd recordings of Desafinado and One Note Samba. The Bossa Nova Craze had arrived; record companies, distributors, and promoters thought of little else, and Two of a Mind drowned in the Wave from Brazil.5

"We liked the record," Mulligan said. "We put in a lot of thought to the kind of tunes that would lend themselves to Paul and me playing together — things that would lend themselves to counterpoint playing. We came prepared for more than we thought we'd need. In a studio you never know what's going to work and what isn't."

Stardust evokes Brubeck and Desmond at Oberlin the decade before, when Brubeck and Desmond used as their opening the same descending three-note motif used by Paul and Gerry here 6 ("...prom perennial Stardust is popular with Brubeck and Desmond," wrote Time, "because its stately harmonic progressions flow as smoothly as the Mississippi..."). Desmond overdubbed an additional saxophone line on the last two choruses of The Way You Look Tonight; it and All the Things You Are are classic Jerome Kern, and Two of a Mind comes close. The song was titled by George Avakian as he drove through Central Park. Avakian also likes to fool around with words, has a good memory, and probably an umbrella.

"Judy Holliday walked in during a play back of that part where Paul and I are working through the counterpoint," Mulligan said. "She gave us one of those looks, you know, and said That sounds like the "Blight of the Fumble Bee".'" He laughed. "So that's how that got titled."

"Anything more about Paul?" I asked.

"There always is something to say about him," said Mulligan, "but I miss him, almost more than anything. It's really hard not having someone to talk to. He used to say that. Desmond and I were kids together and it gets to be important to have somebody to talk to you don't have to explain anything to. My wife said it the other day — she said that what finally hit her about this life — for all musicians — it's lonely out there, man! It's lonely out there on the road! Your friends start dying off, you're left bereft. You loose your youthful friends...bereft. He's your childhood friend — that's it! You're alone." Mulligan paused for a moment. "Anyway," he said. "My wife's calling me. We're going to go eat lunch."

The Haig has been gone for years. The Ambassador Hotel with its vast lawn and tall palm trees that stand like sentries and its Cocoanut Grove where Freddy Martin conducted while Jack Fina played Tonight We Love and the boogie-woogie rendition of The Flight of the Bumble Bee has been sold. The new owners recently laid off the staff and shut down the hotel. They plan to tear it down.”

- WILL THORNBURY

Notes and Sources

1. Time, 2/8/53, p. 67.

2. Time, 11/8/53, p. 36.

3. The Paul Desmond Quintet, Fantasy 8082

4.  The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Pacific Jazz PJLP 1

5. Never at a loss for irony, Desmond and Mulligan persevered. Desmond's next album for RCA was Take Ten, with Jim Hall, and featured four bossa(s)? novas, "which by now," Desmond noted, "I should call bossa antiqua." When Mulligan met Antonio Carlos Jobim, composer of Desafinado and One Note Samba, Jobim told him that the Mulligan quartet had been a prime influence on him and other young Brazilian composers.

6. Jazz at Oberlin, Fantasy 3245

The Dave Brubeck Quartet Live from the Northwest, 1959

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

“During this period, these musicians spent more time together on stage, on the road, and in the studio than they did at home. Indeed, the group sometimes sounded like one entity playing four instruments, but of course Dave, Paul, Eugene and Joe were strikingly individual players too. Here, they play together like some mythological 4-headed jazz marvel responding to every musical gesture by each member of the group.”

- Chris Brubeck

For as long as I can remember, I got a new Dave Brubeck recording from a family member of a friend as a Christmas gift.

This year was no exception as a family member gifted me a copy of The Dave Brubeck Quartet Live from the Northwest, 1959.

A gentleman by the name of Doug Anderson brought this to the attention of the Brubeck family who issued it as part of its Brubeck Editions label - BECD-2310001.

It was recorded by the, for the times, on location wizard Wally Heider over two days and in two locations: The Multnomah Hotel on April 4, 1959; Clark College on April 5, 1959. Not surprisingly with Wally at the helm, the sound quality is absolutely brilliant.

This was the fourth year that what is often referred to as The Classic Quartet - Dave on piano, Paul Desmond, alto sax, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums - and their time together shows as the group was in fine form - “tight” in musician parlance.

The Brubeck brothers each took a turn at annotating the disc and you can find their comments below.

The group’s rendition of Dave’s Two Part Contention which premiered on the Dave Brubeck Quartet - Jay and Kai at Newport 1956 Columbia Recording [CL 932] is a particularly fine version which is highlighted by Joe’s driving beat using brushes behind Paul’s solo before switching to sticks to accompany Dave on his improvisation and then back to brushes for the “shout chorus.”

DARIUS BRUBECK

“Paul was frequently praised for his inimitable sound while Dave was just as frequently criticized for not sounding like other pianists. Dave's piano playing actually fills two roles: He constantly develops harmonies and textures that resemble large-ensemble arrangements, hence his famous block-chord-style.

On the other hand (literally, his right hand), linear excursions denote a piano soloist emerging from his imaginary big band to take a chorus or converse with Paul. (Listen carefully and you will hear Dave deep in the creative process, singing his solos and verbally inviting Paul into contrapuntal exchanges.) Dave's leadership, balancing dramatic thrust, freedom and formal discipline, is evident on every track.

An obvious example is "Lonesome Road," a meditation on solitude and the allegory of 'Everyman': birth, growth, socialization, busy activity winding down to a funeral march towards the end. The melodic phrase in the ambiguous polytonal coda is 'before you travel on' in the lyric. Breathe out, when it's finished.

Paul's solos on every number are exquisitely logical and free flowing with daring interval leaps and some witty quotes, swinging all the while over the rhythm section's rock-solid grooves. Paul and Dave knew each other so well that they had an intuitive sense of where the other one was going to go.”

DAN BRUBECK

“I had the pleasure of listening to this recording many times while working on it with Chris in the studio. I have never heard Joe Morello sound better; he is definitely in his absolute prime here and at the top of his game. Joe's creativity and chops on brushes and sticks are amazing. He kicks the quartet on "Basin Street Blues" like a big band drummer and displays dazzling up-tempo brushwork at the end of "Lonesome Road." The way Joe and Gene are locked in affirms why they are one of the most swinging rhythm sections ever. This LP is an absolute must for drummers who, like me, have been long-time admirers of the great Joe Morello.”

MATT BRUBECK

“One of the revelations in this recording  is the exuberant quality of Eugene Wright's playing as in the intricately braided lines of "Two-Part Contention." Even within the short forms such as "Saints" and "Basin Street Blues," he constantly improvises, rarely repeating himself. Live from the Northwest serves as a powerful illustration of how technically nimble Eugene was on the bass.

Overall, these excellent live Quartet recordings are warm and provide impressive sonic detail. It is fortuitous that these DBQ concerts were recorded on location by Wally Heider who subsequently went on to become a pioneer of remote recording and to establish legendary studios in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where he recorded many of the top albums of the 1970s.”

CHRIS BRUBECK

This remarkable live recording features four extraordinary musicians in top form, captured with exceptional sonic clarity by the groundbreaking audio engineer Wally Heider. Recorded on April 4,1959, in the popular Multnomah Hotel in Portland, Oregon and on April 5th in the auditorium at nearby Clark College, the Quartet was playing-in some of the repertoire for the upcoming Gone with the Wind [CL 1347] sessions later that month.

The rhythmic innovation and unprecedented success of Time Out, recorded only four months later, eclipsed the Quartet's signature mastery of spontaneous counterpoint that had fascinated their audience in the 50's. but here it is gloriously evident. Some jazz writers even speculated that Dave and Paul had a sort of ESP connection, however their shared musical experience was enough. During this period, these musicians spent more time together on stage, on the road, and in the studio than they did at home. Indeed, the group sometimes sounded like one entity playing four instruments, but of course Dave, Paul, Eugene and Joe were strikingly individual players too. Here, they play together like some mythological 4-headed jazz marvel responding to every musical gesture by each member of the group.”

Ted Gioia on Paul Desmond

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

The following is from the Third Edition of Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz [2021] a must volume that any serious Jazz fan should have on their bookshelf. 

For as Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post declares on the book’s back jacket:

"If you are looking for an introduction to jazz, this is it. If you know and love jazz well, this is your vade mecum [a reference book kept constantly at hand]. Me, I expect to be reading around in it for the rest of my life... [It is] the definitive work: encyclopedic, discriminating, provocative, perceptive and eminently readable. With its publication, it can no longer be said that the literature of jazz falls far short of the music itself."

When I was first learning about Jazz, I never realized that there was a group of alto sax players who approached the instrument in a way that was totally different from the legendary Charlie Parker.

That’s because I first experienced Jazz in California where the likes of West Coast Jazz or “Cool School” alto saxophonists was commonplace. 

Bud Shank at the Malibu Inn or Lighthouse Café, Lennie Niehaus with Stan Kenton’s Orchestra, Art Pepper performing with “The Rhythm Section” on Contemporary Records, or Paul Desmond in various club, college and concert venues with Dave Brubeck’s quartet - all were readily accessible to me on a regular basis.

Charlie Parker? Well, he was “just” legendary because he was dead by the time I discovered Jazz and it was only much later that I sought him out via records he made primarily on Norman Granz’s various labels which were all ultimately subsumed under Verve. Of course, once I got into him, Bird was a revelation.

Given my preference for the music of the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, I heard more of alto saxophonist Paul Desmond’s work than the other West Coast alto saxophonists and in time, for all the reasons mentioned in the following excerpt from Ted’s book, Desmond became one of my favorite Jazz musicians.

“For a time in the 1950s, a West Coast alto style was taking form, a more mellifluous alternative to the astringent Parker-inflected lines of the other coast. Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Lennie Niehaus, and Paul Desmond, among others, exemplified this warm, dulcet-toned approach. In time, the styles of these players diverged. 

Of this group, Paul Desmond stayed truest to the ultra-cool aesthetic. He had little interest in adopting a flashier style, jokingly referring to himself as the "world's slowest alto player." On the surface, Desmond’s solos appeared to offer a lush romanticism, but only careful listeners were apt to catch their richer implications. Desmond carefully avoided excesses of sentimentality with a range of devices: witty references to other songs and solos, playful call-and-response motives, oblique references to an odd assortment of substitute chords and modes, even quasi-aleatory [elements of random choice] exercises in translating phone numbers into musical phrases using intervals relating to each digit—a steady stream of melodic surprises linked by Desmond's exceptional skills in thematic improvisation. 

A single solo from the Dave Brubeck Quartet's twenty-fifth anniversary reunion tour finds Desmond celebrating these old acquaintances with a snippet of "Auld Lang Syne"—followed by allusions to "52nd Street Theme," "The Gypsy," "Taps Miller," "Drum Boogie," and "Organ Grinder's Swing"—all in the context of a complex piece that shifts back and forth between 3/4 and 4/4. The next night, in a different town, Desmond no doubt initiated the process all over again, drawing on still other sources in his artfully constructed saxophone stream of consciousness. Yet these clever asides were never forced, and Desmond somehow made the cerebral and the plaintive coexist in the same solo, even in a single phrase. For much of his career, Desmond served as an appropriate foil for Brubeck. Their collaborations were experimental in the best sense of the term: open to new sounds, but never (as with so many progressive works) in a doctrinaire manner. 

After the breakup of the Brubeck Quartet, Desmond's music became even more introspective and delicate. His guest pairings with Chet Baker and Jim Hall, and his final quartet recordings with guitarist Ed Bickert, are neglected gems of the improvisational arts, jazz performances that bespeak a serene mastery as rare as it is affecting.”

Desmond also made a series of recordings under producer Creed Taylor’s supervision for the A&M label and one of my favorites is Summertime from which the following YouTubes are drawn: Theme from Lady in Cement, Samba with Some Barbecue, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Autumn Leaves - all featuring Herbie Hancock on piano when he was still a session player and all arranged by Don Sebesky.

Dave Brubeck Quartet Zurich 1964

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"You can't understand America without understanding jazz, and you can't understand jazz without understanding Dave Brubeck". (1)

"Most Jazz lovers probably remember the first time this music got into our bones. For me, that happened as a child when my father, whom I barely knew, came to visit me for about a month. And in the few weeks I spent with him one of the things he did was to take me to my first jazz concert to see Dave Brubeck in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1971. And I did not realize at the time the impact that it had, but the world that that concert opened up for a ten year-old boy was spectacular. And I was hooked." (2)

President Barack Obama

(1) John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, December 6, 2009. honoring Dave Brubeck for exhibiting excellence in performing arts on his 89th birthday, and broadcasted nationwide on CBS on December 29,2009

(2) White House, Washington, April 30, 2016, International Jazz Day, remembering his very first impressions as a Jazz fan

Continuing on the subject of favorite recordings, the following feature is on my latest to fall into this category and I’ve had it for less than a day, but in this short period of time, I’ve already played in through three times as I worked on this piece.

“Locked in” might be considered an understatement for a group that played together on a regular basis for 12 years from 1956-1968, but there are few better examples of the David Brubeck Quartet’s cohesive insistency than the music they recorded in performance at Kongresshaus, Zurich, Switzerland on the evening of September 28, 1964.

And what makes this music even more compelling is the outstanding audio quality of this recording.

Brubeck chromatic escapades and rhythmic displacements; Desmond’s dry martini sound and improvised flights of fancy; Morello’s crackling snare drum and exploding bass drum; Gene Wright’s stentorian tone and metronomic bass lines - all have never been so vividly captured on record, even in the studio!

The recording itself is an experience and then there is the music on it. The program for the evening is a combination of originals from the various “impressions of” and “time out” Columbia LPs, exquisite takes on Pennies from Heaven and You Go to My Head and the inevitably climatic Morellian drum solo on Shimawa, all of which come together to form a Jazz concert masterpiece.

Yvan Ischer further documents this special evening in the following liner notes to Dave Brubeck Quartet Zurich 1964 [TCB 0422 Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series No. 42 . You can locate order information about the CD at www.tcbrecords.com

DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET-ZURICH 1964

The Air and the Earth

Two chords with a touch of Debussy-like impressionism, a brief but very delicate and engaging introduction by Dave Brubeck and the concert immediately brings you to a world of magic conjured up by one of the most beautiful sounds in the history of music: Paul Desmond's alto saxophone, which transcends his own song "Audrey" from the very first notes. But before embarking into the music, we may need a little flashback.

At the time of this recording in 1964 in Zurich, the collaborations between Dave and Paul were not new and had known many nights and early mornings wrapped in the haze of Pall Malls and the vapors of Dewar's. the saxophonist's two key trademarks...  The pair had first crossed paths in 1944 in a military musical context where they jammed for quite some time, starting off with "Rosetta". Desmond was taken with the fact that this strange piano player appeared to plav only extremely bizarre but very intriguing chords. And when he went up to Brubeck at the end of the evening saying "Man! You grooved me with those nutty changes!", Dave, whom Paul would later refer to as "the Indian", funnily replied: "White man speaks with forked tongue."

They later met again and interacted around 1949-1950. Then, Paul, who in turn had hired Dave, cut his pay in half one evening in order to gamble in nearby Reno... which naturally somewhat froze Brubeck's feelings towards Desmond. Not long after the disagreement, Paul left California and joined pianist Jack Fina's group for a stint in New York. However, when he heard a radio broadcast featuring the trio of his buddy Brubeck, a premonition appeared like a warning light in his head and he made the decision to contact Dave about forming a quartet. Dave, who had chosen to live a quiet life as a model father, started by forbidding his wife lola to let Paul step foot in the house if he should stop by unannounced... But the day Paul did decide to show up at the front door, Dave was in the middle of hanging out the children's diapers in the backyard, lola let Paul in, Dave expressed annoyance at the intrusion but, bit by bit, he allowed himself to be convinced; this was especially because Paul promised the young parents to babysit whenever they needed a bit of time to themselves... with the result that, until he was 12, young Michael Brubeck, to whom Paul left his saxophone after his death, believed that Paul was his uncle!

And thus one of the most stunning musical collaborations came to be in 1951 with the creation of the Dave Brubeck Quartet! The convergence of two totally opposite personalities and two utterly incompatible lifestyles... and yet... they understood, (almost) at once, just like the song says, that they "could make such beautiful music together". And so Brubeck the professor and Desmond the poet opportunistically decided to set out a deal to reunite their musical paths. It was thus contractually decided that the agreement forbade Brubeck from ever firing Desmond, it ensured Brubeck's status as group leader, and gave Desmond twenty percent of all profits generated from the quartet! The greatest part in all this being that even though the contract had been drafted, Brubeck was the sole signatory, since Desmond never cared to sign it back! Which never prevented Brubeck from being true to his word.

Indeed, the quartet lived an exceptional musical story from 1951 until 1967, enjoying tremendous success. Even after the group officially broke up as the result of different plans by the two men, Bru and Paul met up again for new tours and occasional glorious reunions. That said, a quartet is formed of four individuals and it is important not to belittle the essential contribution of the rhythm section, Gene Wright-Joe Morello. This version of the group certainly had the best balance, the strongest swing and the best interaction of any of the Brubeck quartets! For the Zurich concert, moreover, the sound quality of the recording is so good that the drums and the double bass have rarely before been so present and strikingly transcribed. This lets us discover the nuances and variations in volume in the playing of Joe Morello, the utterly captivating drummer. By the way, when his future leader hoped to hire him, as he was "on vacation" from Marian McPartland's trio, Joe replied quite frankly to Brubeck's proposal: "I heard a few of the pieces you did recently and a metronome could do that... so you know, Dave, I would go with you, but only if you feature me." And Dave, who felt that this new drummer could change the course of his musical career, did more than just keep his promise, since at the beginning of their collaboration, Desmond himself was upset by the fact that Morello was getting so much exposure. And it took a bit of diplomacy and a number of months of Brubeck trying, until the drummer and the alto player finally became not only comrades on the stage but also lifelong friends, according to Dave. As for Gene Wright, he was suggested by Morello, who personally felt that he could build up an ideal partnership with this "senatorial" companion. And it was indeed the drummer who invented the nickname "The Senator (from Bulgaria)" during a brief verbal sparring match as a joke on an airplane trip, when he made up the place from which his companion hailed. This nickname was the source of several colorful anecdotes for Gene, who would become the organizer and technical manager for the quartet when on tour, so that often he was welcomed in picturesque little countries as a real "Senator", together with all the honors and fuss due to his rank!

Moreover, the presence of Gene Wright in the Brubeck quartet was not socially innocent at a time when racial mixes were not always seen in a positive light, despite the efforts initiated by Benny Goodman as early as 1935, when he welcomed Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson to complete his quartet with Gene Krupa. The year 1959 was also special in this regard: four records or historical musical albums in different Jazz styles each included a unique racial "oddity" who truly displeased the four groups' fans. If the "Senator" was the only black member of Brubeck's group, Jimmy Knepper was the only white man with Mingus, as was Bill Evans with Miles Davis and Charlie Haden with Ornette Coleman. Each of these groups put out a stunning album for this milestone 1959 vintage: "Mingus Ah Hum" from the great Charles, "Kind of Blue" from Miles, "The Shape of Jazz to Come" from Ornette and, of course, the legendary album "Time Out" from the Brubeck quartet. If mentioning this racial "exception" is necessary, it helps recalling that Brubeck always had a firm and remarkable attitude when faced with attacks where he was the victim in the field. Years later, he remembered very well that kind of sad experiences during an interview with a host at BBC4: "We were playing a university and they said, "You can't go on stage with an African-American." I said, "Then we're not going on stage." The students were stamping on the floor up above the dressing room,and the louder and wilder it got, the more concerned the president of the college was getting. So he told me, "You can go, but you have to put your bass player way in the back, where he won't be too noticeable." When we walked on stage, the audience just went wild. They were so happy. And for the second tune. I told Eugene, "Your microphone is broken. Come out here and play your solo and use my microphone, in front of the band." Eugene didn't know I was plotting all this, but he came out front and we tore that place up. It was so wonderful."

For the Zurich concert we are talking about, there was no need for this type of plotting and right on from the very first notes, the ambiance was perfect and the bond between the four musicians was enlightening. Throughout the concert, there was even an exemplary quality to the perfect balance achieved among the four artists. Desmond's solos, always airy and dreamy, are marked with a natural sense of invention. Brubeck, after some nice accompanying dialogue with Desmond's alto, regularly threw himself into long sequences in heavy block chords, pushed to the edge by both the Senator and Morello in top-notch form. And when the pianist started developing up ideas, he always controlled his improvisation and mastered his solos with percussive and impressive precision. In addition, throughout the concert you could witness an impressive number of murmurs or groans of approval among the members of the trio, which expressed how these four gentlemen were in the midst of experiencing a grand evening together. Without wanting to itemize every detail that took place, because your ears will perfectly do the work for themselves, it is still important to point out the excellent balance and superb rhythmic variety among the pieces chosen that night, reproduced here in their entirety, except for of an initial rendition of "Take the 'A' Train" that was meant a bit like the warm-up piece. On the set list were two standards, "You Go to My Head" and "Pennies from Heaven", the latter allowing the two main soloists to show what tradition meant to them; "Shimwa" is by Joe Morello, who had been a violin virtuoso as a child before devoting himself to an instrument that struck him as a revelation. Largely so also because of serious vision problems that Joe would have to face throughout his life; three songs are by Brubeck, the intriguing "Cable Car", the dynamic "Thank You" and the remarkable "Koto Song", which literally enthused the audience; and finally, the inevitable "Take Five" by Paul Desmond himself and the sublime "Audrey", co-written by Paul and Dave and which reflected Desmond's true veneration for Audrey Hepburn, whom he considered the ultimate woman. So much so that when the actress was playing in a nearby theater in New York, Brubeck, half-amused and half-annoyed, but nevertheless resigned, would adjust the timing of the sets so that Paul could slip out of the club during a break, run two blocks to the theater exit and secretly admire Audrey as she was swallowed up into her limousine... Years later, long after Paul and Audrey's passing, Brubeck was told by the comedian's husband that she would listen to this piece ad infinitum and that she loved walking through her garden at sundown humming her "Audrey"... But Paul never got the chance to know it...

To tell the truth, the "Audrey" version from this Zurich concert may well be one of the most beautiful ever performed by the four band members Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck, Gene Wright and Joe Morello. And after you have listened to it for a few times, since this song leaves you with a haunting taste for more, it would no longer come as a surprise if you were to find yourself humming this gentle tune somewhere in your garden or in any other poetic - or desmondish - place….”

Yvan lscher

Journalist - Producer / RTS - Radio Television Suisse

Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series Consultant

July 2016

The following youtube will provide you with a complete listening of the CD.