The L.A. Network Plays Dave Brubeck

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

What follows is a writing that was commissioned to serve as an annotation for the Dave Brubeck Redux Project by Fidelio Technologies, which produces high-end audio reel-to-reel tapes plus high resolution digital transfers. You can visit their catalogue at www.2xHD.com.

As I listened while I wrote, I was very impressed with the mature conception and masterful execution that these young musicians brought to Dave’s music.

It’s nice to hear the current generation of Jazz artists pay tribute to those that helped establish the Jazz tradition during the first century of its existence. 

Brubeck’s music is complicated and difficult to interpret.

I think he would be pleased with the results which you can also sample via the Soundcloud audio file at the end of this piece.

“Dave Brubeck’s tunes and songs dotted the American musical landscape during the second half century of the 20th century and beyond. Brubeck [1920-2012] is perhaps best known as the leader of a “classic” Jazz quartet that performed in venues all over the world from 1956 -1968 and featured the talents of Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums.

Brubeck developed a unique, powerful style as a pianist with elements of rhythmic displacement and the use of sophisticated harmonies that were adopted by some of his contemporaries such as Bill Evans and Cecil Taylor, but perhaps his most lasting contribution to the genre of Jazz were his compositions.

Over his seventy year career, Brubeck wrote such a wide variety of music that it is impossible to categorize it, but two forms of his compositions have been widely adopted by subsequent generations of Jazz musicians: his ballads [slow, sentimental sounding music] and his tunes based on unusual time signatures [odd meters 5/4, 7/4, 9/8, etc.].

Both forms are reflected on these Brubeck Recordings as performed by pianist Josh Nelson, bassist Alex Frank, and drummer Ryan Shaw which are produced and recorded by George Klabin, live, on 2-track at 15 ips stereo.

Along with Desmond, his long-time associate, Dave’s move to Columbia Records in 1954 was largely responsible for his growing national fame and the ballad In Your Own Sweet Way and the medium tempo The Duke are among his earliest, original compositions recorded by the label. In Your Own Sweet Way has achieved the status of a Jazz Standard with well over seventy versions having been recorded by major artists, among them, Miles Davis.

Aided by promotional campaigns from Columbia, a recording powerhouse at the time, Brubeck’s classic quartet developed into a hot attraction on college campuses and the newly burgeoning Jazz Festivals including those in Newport, RI and Monterey, CA.

Brubeck’s breakthrough LP for Columbia - Time Out - was recorded in 1959 and contained three of the seven tunes heard on these recordings: Take Five, Blue Rondo A La Turk and Strange Meadow Lark.

As Dave wrote in the liner notes to the CD reissue of Time Out: “Creating a ‘hit’ out of Take Five and the other odd-meter experiments on the album was the farthest thing from our minds when Paul, Gene, Joe and I went into the recording studio.”

The remaining two tunes - It’s A Raggy Waltz and Blue Shadows in the Street - are represented on the 1961 sequel Time Further Out.

When these odd metered tunes first appeared on the Jazz scene from 1959-61, they were a sensation because of their “unusualness; they also became a bit of a nuisance as few Jazz musicians could play them.

Sixty years later, a measure of the collective musical skills and abilities of Josh, Alex and Ryan is that not only are they able to play these unusual time signature tunes, but that they play them so effortlessly and so well.

The opening track, It’s a Raggy Waltz, which is neither a “rag” nor a typical “waltz,” gets its name from the jagged rhythmic variations and accents stated in a 12-bar blues form with an added 8 bar bridge. Josh, Alex and Ryan are so comfortable on this challenging tune that they play around with it and add flourishes and touches that make it even more, well, ragged!

The original Take Five became a feature for one of Joe Morello’s trademark extended solos. Drums are also prominent on this version with Josh exhibiting a knuckle-busting solo very reminiscent of Dave’s percussive style which he then incorporates into a series of 4-bar, 2-bar and 1-bar trades with Ryan. The drum solo aspect is retained, but it becomes an interactive one.

From the powerful to the pensive, In Your Own Sweet Way is universally recognized as one of the most beautiful Jazz ballads ever-written. The trio’s sparkling version conjures up visions of Dave looking back at the glittering lights of San Francisco from his home across the bay in the Oakland Hills when he recorded the solo piano version of the tune in 1956 from a piano in his living room one evening using an Ampex portable tape recorder.

More pulsating piano a la Brubeck is on display in Josh’s treatment of The Duke with its rolicking medium tempo which he further rocks with some of Red Garland’s famous block chords before turning things over to 4 bar trades between Alex and Ryan. Dave composed this tune as a happy homage to Duke Ellington, whom he idolized, and the trio’s bouncy version of it will no doubt put a smile on your face.

With its 9/8 time signature grouped into an unusual 2-2-2-3 form, Blues Rondo A La Turk was the most remote of the early, odd meter experiments by Brubeck’s quartet. In stating the theme, Josh puts more bombastic Brubeckian phrasing on display before transitioning into stride piano interludes and then breaking out into a blues-inflected, straight-ahead solo in 4/4 time.

Written in a lyrical ballad style reminiscent of In Your Own Sweet Way, Josh’s pianism gives Strange Meadow Lark a sparkling, fresh interpretation that really brings out the beauty of this simple, intriguing melody.

Blue Shadows in the Street is the least well-known of this grouping of Brubeck’s tunes. Dave once described it as a “... mood piece which disguises its rhythm and blues derivation by the use of odd melodic skips and dissonances and shifting rhythmic accents within a repeated triplet figure.” Josh, Alex and Ryan only heighten the tune’s mysterious qualities with their interpretation of the piece to the point where one wonders what really is lurking in those blue shadows?

All of this music is wrapped in an audio quality that is marked by a purity of sound and a naturalness, instead of one that is artificial or fabricated.

The balance and the separation induces a sense of space and creates the effect of putting-you-in-the-room sound.

It is a quality of sound that is deep, full and reverberating. 

Perhaps, this audio sound mastery is the reason why George Klabin’s label is named - Resonance Records.”

Riverside Records – Orrin Keepnews

“When Orrin Keepnews, the Grammy Award-winning jazz-record producer, writer and reissue master, was growing up in New York in the "30s and "40s, a teenager -- for the cost of a beer or two, when the legal drinking age was 18 (and, says Mr. Keepnews, carding was lax) -- could listen for hours to world-class jazz musicians at one of the clubs along 52nd Street or in Greenwich Village. According to Mr. Keepnews, now 85 and speaking from his home in Northern California, ‘It was advertised as: "Hey, this is a good way to have a cheap date," and I ended up getting interested in the music. That's being a little too cute about it -- but that's really, basically, where it started from.’”

- Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2008

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

In 1953, Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer founded Riverside Records. Despite, the latter’s best efforts to the contrary, Orrin managed to keep Riverside going for ten [10] years as an independently owned and operated record label devoted exclusively to Jazz artists, many of whom were virtual unknowns when he recorded them.

“One of the key elements in the development of Riverside and other independent labels, Mr. Keepnews says, was the "postwar deflationary period": ‘At that point, union-scale pay for a sideman for a three-hour session was $41.25; double that for the leader. Among other things, you could do a trio album for a total musician cost of, in round numbers, $250. That is probably the most important factor in the growth of independent jazz labels -- and why, as it turned out, the "50s was such a golden age for recorded jazz, I think.’”

- Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2008

Yet, this illustrious background notwithstanding, just like that, after I had put out a call for help via an internet chat group to which we both belonged, Orrin waked into a restaurant in San Francisco in 1999 and granted me an interview for an article I was working on about the late pianist and vibraphonist, Victor Feldman.

What a pleasure it was to listen to him respond to questions and to recount his stories about the music. For example, on the signing of Thelonious Monk for the Riverside label, Orrin shared:

"When we were told about his possible availability as a recording artist, we set up a meeting with Thelonious, and to my total surprise, he knew exactly what our past relationship had been.  Seven years before, I had interviewed him for what he informed me was the first article about him ever to appear in a national magazine. So that really made it very feasible for us. Prestige wasn't interested in retaining him; he wasn't selling records, and he was difficult to deal with... . So we signed him. And that really was the beginning of me as a jazz producer."

Orrin subsequently went on to establish Milestone Records with pianist Dick Katz in 1966 where he recorded pianist McCoy Tyner and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.

He moved to San Francisco in 1972 to take on the Jazz Arts and Repertoire responsibility at Fantasy Records after it purchased Milestone where he was reunited with pianist Bill Evans and signed and recorded tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins.

Back on his own again in 1985, Orrin brought Landmark Records into existence and where he featured recordings by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, among others.

After selling Landmark in 1993, Orrin remained active in producing CD reissues such as the Duke Ellington 24 CD centennial set for RCA in 1999.

Ultimately, The Concord Record Group bought the catalogue of a number of independent Jazz record labels, including Riverside, and Orrin played a variety of roles in helping with Concord’s CD reissues under the rubric of “Original Jazz Classics.”

Or as Orrin explains:

“You stick in this business long enough," he says, "and the damnedest things happen." The archival materials he's now repackaging are the once-contemporary albums he himself produced half a century ago.

"I'm not complaining," Mr. Keepnews says with a chuckle. "I'm not bragging. But it's there -- and I must say that I find these things hold up rather well."

- Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2008

There’s no individual to whom the Jazz World is more indebted than Orrin Keepnews [March 2, 1923 - March 1, 2015].

In 2011, Keepnews was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts for his “significant contributions” to the field of jazz. He also received a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2004.

Our video tribute to him features a track from one of Orrin’s Riverside albums under the leadership of drummer Philly Joe Jones [Drums Around the World – Riverside LP 1147; Original Jazz Classic OJCCD-1792-2]. During our visit, Orrin happened to mention the fact that Philly played on more Riverside LP’s than any, other drummer.

The tune is Benny Golson’s Jazz classic Stablemates, which he also arranged for the date. On it, Philly and Benny [tenor saxophone] are joined by Lee Morgan and Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Cannon ball Adderley on alto sax and Sahib Shihab on baritone sax, Herbie Mann on flute and piccolo, Wynton Kelly on piano and Sam Jones on bass.

Count Basie and Neal Hefti -" Flight of the Foo Birds"

"The Great Gillespie" - Whitney Balliett

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

This blog has always been as much about Jazz writings as it has been about the music and its makers.

For if it is true that Jazz can’t be taught but that it can be learned, fans of the music can acquire a great deal of knowledge about Jazz from those who write about it in an informed way.

Sometimes the writing is not only instructive and helps us appreciate the music more, but is itself beautiful, elegant and artistic.

This is generally the case with the essays on Jazz written for The New Yorker for many years by the late Whitney Balliett [1926-2007].

Whitney’s New Yorker pieces are as stylish as anything ever written on Jazz.

One of my favorites is The Great Gillespie [Dizzy Gillespie 1917-1993]. It is included in the 41  New Yorker essays published by Whitney as an anthology entitled Dinosaurs in the Morning [1962].

The article centers around his review of three recordings that Dizzy put out in the late 1950’s, but it goes well beyond Whitney’s thoughts about these LP’s and ultimately helps us understand Dizzy’s true significance in the evolution of Bebop [an unfortunate term - at best].

© -Whitney Balliett, copyright protected; all rights reserved. [Paragraphing modified to fit the blog format.]

OF ALL the uncommunicative, secret-society terms that jazz has surrounded itself with, few are more misleading than "bebop." Originally a casual onomatopoeic word used to describe the continually shifting rhythmic accents in the early work of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, and Thelonious Monk, it soon became a generic term, whose tight, rude sound implied something harsh and unattractive. (Jazz scholars, who are nonpareil at unearthing irrelevancies, have discovered that the two syllables first appeared in jazz as a bit of mumbo-jumbo in a vocal recorded in the late twenties.)

Although many admirers of Parker and Gillespie—and occasionally Parker and Gillespie themselves—helped this misapprehension along in the mid-forties through their playing, bebop was, in the main, a graceful rococo explosion. It replaced the old Republican phrasing with long, teeming melodic lines, melted the four-four beat into more fluid rhythms, and added fresh harmonies, the combination producing an arabesque music that had a wild beauty suggested in jazz up to that time only by certain boogie-woogie pianists (another of jazz's better-known code terms) and by such soloists, often considered freakish, as Pee Wee Russell, Dickie Wells, Jabbo Smith, and Roy Eldridge. Bebop was an upheaval in jazz that matched the arrival of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young, but it was not, as it is frequently taken to be, a total musical revolution. (The most usable elements of the movement have long since been absorbed into jazz, and the term itself has fallen into disuse, but a variation, known as "hard bop/' persists.)

To be sure, it introduced radical techniques, but it stuck close to the blues, which it dressed up in flatted chords and various rhythmic furbelows. The chord structures of popular standards, which provided the rest of its diet, were slightly altered, and were given new titles and often barefacedly copyrighted by their "composers." This renovating process, begun in the mid-thirties by men like Duke Ellington and Count Basic, proliferated in the bebop era. Thus, "Indiana" reappeared as "Donna Lee" and "Ice Freezes Red"; "How High the Moon" became "Bean at the Met," "Ornithology," and "Bird Lore"; and "Just You, Just Me" turned into "Evidence," "Spotlite," and "Mad Bebop." The music made little attempt at fresh ensemble voicings, but relied instead on complex unison figures—in the manner of the John Kirby band—that sounded like fattened-up extensions of the solos they enclosed. On top of that, bebop musicians continued to investigate, though in a sometimes obtuse, hyperthyroid way, the same lyricism pursued by their great predecessors. A final confusing peculiarity of bebop is that although Parker, Gillespie, and Monk, each of whom possessed enormous talent, emerged at about the same time, they never enjoyed the spotlight simultaneously, as did such slightly older men as Hawkins, Eldridge, Art Tatum, and Sidney Cat-lett. Gillespie had become celebrated by the late forties; Parker was at the height of his fame when he died, in 1955; and it is only recently that Monk has slid wholly into view. Meanwhile, Gillespie, who remains one of the handful of supreme jazz soloists, seems—possibly because of the widespread emulation of an uneven ex-student of his, Miles Davis—to have been put to pasture.

When Gillespie appeared on the first bebop recordings, in 1944, he gave the impression—largely because a long recording ban had just ended—of springing up full-blown. He had, however, been slowly developing his style for some seven or eight years. Although Gillespie was for a time an unashamed copy of Eldridge, the records he made in the late thirties with Cab Galloway—in which he tossed off strange, wrong-sounding notes and bony phrases that seemed to begin and end in arbitrary places—prove that his own bent, mixed perhaps with dashes of Lester Young and Charlie Christian, was already in view. By 1944, the transformation was complete, and Gillespie had entered his second phase.

Few trumpeters have been blessed with so much technique. Gillespie never merely started a solo-he erupted into it. A good many bebop solos began with four- or eight-bar breaks, and Gillespie, taking full advantage of this approach (a somewhat similar technique had been used, to great effect, in much New Orleans jazz, but had largely fallen into disuse), would hurl himself into the break, after a split-second pause, with a couple of hundred notes that corkscrewed through several octaves, sometimes in triple time, and that were carried, usually in one breath, past the end of the break and well into the solo itself. The result, in such early Gillespie efforts as "One-Bass Hit" and "Night in Tunisia," were complex, exuberant, and well-designed. (Several of Gillespie's flights were transcribed note for note into ensemble passages for various contemporary big bands, an honor previously granted to the likes of Bix Beiderbecke.)

Gillespie's style at the time gave the impression—with its sharp, slightly acid tone, its cleavered phrase endings, its efflorescence of notes, and its brandishings about in the upper register—of being constantly on the verge of flying apart. However, his playing was held together by his extraordinary rhythmic sense, which he shared with  the  other  founders  of  bebop.  When   one pinned down the melodic lines of his solos, they revealed a flow of notes that was not so much a melody, in the conventional sense, as a series of glancing but articulate sounds arranged in sensible rhythmic blocks that alternated from on-the-beat playing to offbeat punctuation, from double-and-triple-time to half time. One felt that Gillespie first spelled out his rhythmic patterns in his head and then filled in their spaces with appropriate notes. A hard, brilliant, flag-waving style, in which emotion was frequently hidden in floridity, it persisted until four or five years ago, when Gillespie popped, again seemingly full-blown, into his third, and present, period.

A   mild-mannered,   roundish   man,   who   wears thick-rimmed spectacles and a small goatee, and has a new-moon smile and a muffled, potatoey way of

speaking, Gillespie is apt, when playing, to puff out his cheeks and neck into an enormous balloon, as if he were preparing himself for an ascent into the ionosphere. He has a habit, while his associates play, of performing jigs or slow, swaying shufflings, accented by occasional shouts of encouragement— bits of foolishness that he discards, like a mask, when he takes up his own horn, an odd-shaped instrument whose specially designed bell points in the direction of the upper bleachers. Gillespie, at forty-two, an age at which a good many jazz musicians begin falling back on a card file of phrases— their own and others' — built up through the years, is playing with more subtlety and invention than at any time in his past.

He has learned one of the oldest and best tricks in art — how to give the effect of great power by implying generous amounts of untapped energy. This method is opposed to the dump-everything approach, which swamps, rather than whets, the listener's appetite.

His tone has taken on a middle-age spread; his baroque flow of notes has been judiciously edited; his phrase endings seem less abrupt; and he now cunningly employs a sense of dynamics that mixes blasts with whispers, upper-register shrieks with plaintive asides. However, his intensity, together with his rhythmic governor, which still sets the basic course of his solos, remains unchanged. Provided a solo does not open with a break, which he will attack with the same old ferocity, Gillespie may now begin with a simple phrase, executed in an unobtrusive double time and repeated in rifflike fashion. Then he will lean back into half time and deliver a bellowing upper-register figure, which may be topped with a triple-time descending arpeggio composed of innumerable notes that dodge and dodge and then lunge ahead again. These continue without pause for several measures, terminating in a series of sidling half-valved notes, which have a bland complacency, like successful businessmen exchanging compliments. In the next chorus, he may reverse the procedure by opening with a couple of shouts, and then subside into a blinding run, seemingly made up of hundred-and-twenty-eighth notes, that will end in high scalar exercises. And so it goes. Gillespie rarely repeats himself in the course of a solo. In fact, he is able to construct half a dozen or more choruses in which the element of surprise never falters.

Gillespie is in good form on three fairly recent records—"Crosscurrents" (American Recording Society), "Sonny Side Up," and "Have Trumpet Will Excite!" (Verve). …

There isn't an unforgettable moment on the[se] records, but there aren't many passages that could be surpassed by Gillespie's contemporaries, most of whom would be in other lines of work if it weren't for him.”

Christian Jacob: A Jazz Pianist, Composer and Arranger of Distinction

BUTTERFLY - Herbie Hancock and The Metropole Orchestra

Elegant People - "Triste" - Arranged by Mike Abene, Metropole Orchestra

Junior Cook - "Sweet Cakes"