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As you read the second 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!
And the story behind his near miss from serving on the European battlefront in the closing year of World War II is one for the ages and serves as a timely reminder of how close we all came to possibly losing one of the Jazz greats.
And, as his story evolves, we once again see how accessible music was for those who wished 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.
Gioia: One day a man named Johnny Osterbar, who I believe picked up laundry at the ranch, invited you to play at a Saturday night engagement at Clements Dance Hall, which I think was in Lodi? What can you tell me about this event and about you becoming a professional performing musician?
Brubeck: I think I was around 14. Osterbar came from Lodi to pick up the laundry at the ranch and heard me practicing. I wasn’t practicing. I was playing. Knocked on the door that led to our front room and said he liked what he was hearing. Would I like to play with his band. I said yeah. We worked at an outdoor dance floor – it wasn’t a hall – with light bulbs just hanging from wires. It was the only decoration. It was the Mokelumne River, right outside of Clements, where you go to Ione. What I remember mostly about that job was a neighbor named . . .
Gioia: If you can’t remember, just go on, and we’ll fill that in later.
Brubeck: . . . Loren Beimert. If you look him up, you’ll see he was president of the Cattlemen’s Association out of Sacramento, for the state. He had a large – his father had a large sheep ranch that adjoined us outside of Clements, on the way to Ione. Thousands of heads of sheep. He came to the dance and heard us play and asked John Osterbar, “Can I sing with your band?” John said, “I’ve never heard you sing, but give it a try.” So he went out to his car and brought in a microphone and – what you would plug the microphone into. I should know that term.
Gioia: An amplifier of some sort?
Brubeck: Amplifier. He set up his equipment, and he sang quite well. That worked out. He used to then sing later with us, when I went to the Bill Lammi band. But he was a real character. I remember he bought an airplane and didn’t take [ ]. Somebody showed him how it worked, and he was dive bombing his father on the ranch. Then his father got so mad. That’s the kind of character he was. He was alone with his father. A wonderful place in the Sierras. A meadow that’s now a snow – where you can come and rent cabins and ski. A ski resort.
Gioia: The music that you were making then. This was for dances. Would this have been a jazz-type music?
Brubeck: It would be – what most people played in those days were called stock arrangements. I played those with Bill Lammi later in Ione. Later with the bands in Stockton and Modesto. You usually had stock arrangements. Once in a while you’d have something – a special arrangement. Very, very rare.
Gioia: You were – would you be making money? Were you paid for these? Do you remember – do you have any recollections of how much you might make at these gigs – these first gigs?
Brubeck: Yeah. The first gigs could have been as low as a few dollars. When I got to Stockton to go to school as a freshman – I’m then 17 and a stranger to all the musicians. I didn’t know anyone. I was a pre-med major. I used to try and hang out with guys who’d fluff me off. “Where are you from?” Ione. They’d just kind of turn their back and walk away. The head of the Stockton musicians union heard me play at a sorority house, where the – my roommate when I was a freshman was going with a girl at this sorority house, so I’d often go there and play. I got to know those sorority girls. They invited this head of the union, who was a junior or senior in the conservatory. “Come over and hear this kid.” So he came over. He liked what I was doing. He said, “I’m working at a nightclub, but I have a chance to go to a better job. Would you be interested in taking that job?” I thought, wow, that would be great, but I’m not in the union. He said, “I’m the president of the union. I’ll just get you in.” His name was Herman Shapiro, later known as Herman Saunders in Los Angeles. He changed his name. He did the music for a lot of big t.v. serials that ran every week. He recently passed away, but we followed each other for our careers. That’s the way I got into the union, because I wasn’t old enough to get into the union. Then I’m thrown into bands with some of these guys that are fluffing me off, and I scared them to death. “Where did you hear something like that?” So it quickly changed everything, being that [ ]
Gioia: What would you be paid then?
Brubeck: $42 a week. I was making . . .
Gioia: Was that union scale?
Brubeck: Yeah, that was scale. I was making as much a week as my future father-in-law. If you’re playing a one-nighter, like in Modesto at the California Ballroom, you might get $15.
Gioia: Let me just ask a couple more questions before we talk about college. I just want to – you mentioned you went to high school in Ione. What was the name of the school?
Brubeck: Ione High School. But before you go there, know that I got a big break in Stockton. Cleo Brown was there at the hospital in Stockton, because of a condition she had, living a kind of wild life. She was one of the best-known pianists in jazz at that time. Marian McPartland was listening to her in England. That’s in the ’30s. They wanted me to play intermission for her and open for her and bring her to the job . . .
Gioia: This is in Stockton?
Brubeck: Yeah . . . from a little house that the authorities from the hospital had gotten for her, and to bring her home at night. So here I’m thrown in with one of the top jazz pianists in the country.
Gioia: About what age would you have been?
Brubeck: 19.
Gioia: 19. So you’d have just gone to college.
Brubeck: I’m still in college. Because I went at 17. 18, 19 – I would have been a junior.
Gioia: What were your parents' reactions to you going away to college? Was this something they encouraged?
Brubeck: I didn’t want to go. My father had given me four cows when I graduated from grammar school. He kept those cows in his herd, but kept books on how they reproduced and what I owned. I thought I was going to be a cattleman.
Gioia: So by then these four cows had multiplied into quite a herd of your own.
Brubeck: Yeah. My dad had a 1,200-acre ranch separate from the 45,000 acres.
Gioia: 1,200. This is – he owned outright.
Brubeck: He owned it. It was near Sutter Creek, near Drytown. I used to go there. There was a cabin and no running water, no stove. Yes, there was a stove, but that’s all. I thought, boy, this is the place I want to live. There was a spring where I could get water near the house and a stream that ran by down beyond about 50 yards where I could wash and wash my dishes.
Gioia: You wanted to be a cowboy.
Brubeck: Absolutely. I did not want to go to college. So my mother saw to it that a guy from San Rafael military academy would come and pick me up and take me to the academy. He did that. I went down there, and I hated it royally in about a half hour. Then he returned me home, and my dad said, “The academy – would you like to go there?” I said, “No.” He said, “Your mother thinks you should go there. The discipline would be good for you, the studying.” I said, “Dad, if you send me, I’m going to break everything on campus until you can’t afford to have me there and you’ll bring me home.” He said, “Dave, I don’t think I’ll send you.” So I got out of that. Then I said – when it was time to go to college, I said I didn’t want to go. I wanted to live on the Blakely Ranch. That was the name of the ranch.
Gioia: That was the ranch your father owned.
Brubeck: Yeah.
Gioia: The Blakely Ranch.
Brubeck: “I want to live there.” He said, “That could work out.” My mother said, “You’re going to college, like your brothers. There’s no way you’re just going to go live on the Blakely Ranch.” My dad said, “If he’s got to go to college, he should study to be a veterinarian and then come back to the ranch.” That was how I got to [the College of the] Pacific, as a pre-med. Then I would have transferred to [the University of California at] Davis, which had a great agriculture and veterinary school.
Gioia: Still does. So your thought is, you wanted to get back to the ranch. You didn’t want to be a city boy. You wanted to live out in the country.
Brubeck: Yeah.
Gioia: So, going to college, you decided you’d study to be a veterinarian, because that would give you a career you could go back to.
Brubeck: My mother said I had to study, I had to go to college. Brother Henry had gone to Pacific.
Gioia: Was he there when you showed up? Was he still a student there?
Brubeck: He was 11 1/2 years older. There’s quite a distance.
Gioia: So he was gone.
Brubeck: He and Dell Courtney were roommates at Risonia. Then Henry decided that the jazz and dance band business had too many pitfalls in it. So he went back to Pacific and graduated when he was 28. I went with him to Stanford University, where he was going to be – I forget the word – scrutinized by a principal that wanted a teacher of music in Lompoc?, California. The three brothers went. When we got there, the principal said, “You have to come back tomorrow. I’m too busy to see you today.” So we slept three of us in one bed. I don’t know how we paid for it. In the morning, when it was time for breakfast, we were penniless, except I had a dime. So we got a stack of hotcakes. The three of us ate a hotcake each. But he did get the job. From Lompoc, where he was quite successful, he went to Santa Barbara, where he became the chairman – I forget the term – of schools. Supervisor?
Gioia: Supervisor – superintendent?
Brubeck: No. Head of public school music. There were various high schools and junior highs. Very successful until he retired. The question that I drifted away from – what was it?
Gioia: I was asking you about [ ]. Henry was still at the College of the Pacific when you were there.
Brubeck: Yeah. He wasn’t. But he had been there.
Gioia: When you went to college, my understanding is that you still came home every weekend?
Brubeck: Whenever I could.
Gioia: How easy of a trip was that? Was that close by?
Brubeck: 38 miles. It was very close. Then I’d play with Bill Lammi’s orchestra.
Gioia: You started playing with Bill when you were in high school?
Brubeck: Yeah.
Gioia: Tell me about that band. Same thing? Was it a dance band playing stock arrangements?
Brubeck: Yeah. We played in Jackson, Sutter Creek, Mokelumne Hill, Angel’s Camp – all those towns.
Gioia: So even after you went to college, you would occasionally come back to play with Bill’s band?
Brubeck: My freshman year, because I didn’t know – I wasn’t in the union yet.
Gioia: How did you get back and forth? You take a bus? You drive a car?
Brubeck: I had a Durant automobile which I bought for $60. It was known on campus as the silver streak. In the summer, I worked for Dr. Saunders, the veterinarian in Stockton. He had a big practice. I would either work in the animal hospital doing jobs that I do not like. The worst, having to put the dogs under that weren’t claimed, because the dog pound was next door. They finally let me off that job, because I’d pet the dogs until they died. All the . . .
Gioia: What a sad job to do.
Brubeck: Oh yeah.
Gioia: Why don’t we stop this right here then, and we’ll continue on . . . [recording interrupted; it resumes in mid-sentence]
Gioia: [recording resumes] Dave, a couple things that Ken’s pointed out to me that we didn’t cover. Could you give me the full names of both your parents?
Brubeck: My father, Howard Peter Brubeck. My mother . . .
Gioia: Did he go by the name Pete?
Brubeck: Yeah. Absolutely.
Gioia: But Peter was his middle name.
Brubeck: Yeah.
Gioia: And your mother.
Brubeck: Elizabeth Ivy Brubeck, and sometimes Elizabeth Johanna Ivy Brubeck.
Gioia: Another question about your mother: when she came back from England, what did she do in music after that? Was it primarily as a teacher?
Brubeck: Teacher, living in her original home in Concord, California. She had a studio built right into the home that was beautiful. You could have recitals there, which she always did. It was a very pleasant room.
Gioia: Did she have much chance to perform when she came back?
Brubeck: People – singers would ask her to accompany them. She did a good job. Then the choir she had every Thursday night rehearsal and Sunday in the church. That was her main way of playing outside of teaching.
Gioia: Let’s go back now and talk about college. How did you go from planning on a career as a veterinarian to deciding you were going to study music and be a musician?
Brubeck: It’s really up to my zoology teacher. Dr. Arnold said to me, “Brubeck, why don’t you go across the lawn to the conservatory, because your mind is not here in the lab.” I took his advice. Went across the lawn to the conservatory the next year.
Gioia: How did your parents react to your decision to become a musician?
Brubeck: My dad really disliked – the first time that we really talked about that is he had wanted me to come back to the ranch for the summer, and I said, “Dad, I have a chance to play in a nightclub this summer, and I’d rather do that.” He said, “I can’t understand how you’d want to be in a smoky place like that when you could be out here in the fresh air and the open country. I can’t understand you wanting to do that.” I said, “I really love to play.” He had told my mother, when I had gone to college – and he told me – “I have three sons. You’re the last one that could follow in my footsteps and be a cattleman. The other two older boys are now both mus [ ] I thought you and I were partners.” I said, “That’s true, but I just love to play, and I think I’d rather do that.” He said, “I think it’s going to be a hard life for you. If you ever get discouraged, remember, I’ve kept track of how many cows and calves you have, and I always want you to come back and be my partner.” He said, “Don’t forget. It can be rough on the road in this business. You’re welcome to come back, and we’ll be partners again.” Many a time – I remember telling the owner of Birdland in New York after I’d played there and I was really getting fed up with what was going on, all the different scenes that were so far from what I thought was right, and even the murder of one of the brothers that owned – ran Birdland, and other things that were making it seem this isn’t such a great thing – I told the owner – or the manager of Birdland. I said, “Maybe I won’t come back. I can always go back to the ranch.” He started laughing. He said, “I’ve heard a lot of things since I’ve been in this business, but I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘I can always go back to the ranch’.” When he’d introduce me or talk about me, he’d say, “And he’s the guy that said, ‘I can always go back to the ranch’.” I was serious. What I had put my wife and the kids through, more than how much I disliked the atmosphere, was what I had to put them through in order to be a musician. We lived in places where – you’d have to call it slums.
Gioia: You had a tough stretch there, especially the late 1940s, where it was difficult times.
Brubeck: Yeah – even – lots of long years where you practically didn’t know where you’re going to live, how you’re going to live, how you’re going to feed your family. That’s the thing – I used to try to - to survive, I’d go to the farmer’s market Saturday at closing time, because they didn’t stay open on Sunday. They threw away what they hadn’t sold Saturday. They got to know me, and they’d give me stuff almost for nothing. I’d fill the back of the trunk of my car. There were a lot of us living on 18th Street [ ] Castro District: Bill Smith and his kids, Dick Collins, and our friends Alice and Basil Johns. We all lived within a block or two of each other. I’d bring them produce. Then I’d go to the dented-can store. They also had canned goods that had been through a fire. I remember buying up a case of baby food that had been in a fire and thinking, boy, this will be great. My kids wouldn’t eat it. When kids turn down something, and just push their hands away from the spoon, you aren’t going to get them to eat. I had to eat all that baby food. It was terrible. But one way or another – Iola cooked a lot of beans. Sometimes we’d feed other musicians that were hungry. My wife’s nickname is Oley. Her name is Iola – Oley. She became famous with the nickname for the food, “Oley’s frijoles.”
Gioia: One of the highlights of your college time was meeting your future wife. Can you tell me how that happened?
Brubeck: Oh yeah, because I’ll never forget it. The first time I met her, she was coming through a double door into the conservatory auditorium. She was going out. I was going in, so I held the door for her. We didn’t speak. Just nodded. Years later, I was giving a lecture before the concert in that same auditorium to students, asking me questions mostly. One question was the one you just asked me: how did you meet your wife? I was on stage, the very stage that we use today. I pointed from the stage to that door. I said, “Coming through that door.”
The next year we came back to play, and the dean of the conservatory, Dean Carl Nosse, came on stage and said, “We have a little surprise for Dave,” and said, “Will you shine a light on that door and then just move it over to that curtain.” Behind the curtain was a plaque that’s there, saying, “Coming through these doors, Dave Brubeck and Iola Whitlock started their musical life together.” Then the light. A student pulled a little string and the curtain was open, and there it was. The next day we were going to the airport in San Francisco from Stockton. I said to Iola, my wife, and to Russell Gloyd . . . [recording interrupted] The next day, when we were going to the airport, I said to Russell and to Iola, I think our archives should go to this university. Where else do we have all these memories, for both of us. That’s how the archives went to the University of Pacific, through the dean. That dean also was the one who wanted us to start the Brubeck Institute. But it was at this College of Pacific, now University of Pacific, that I finally did speak to Iola. It was on Friday afternoon from the radio station on campus that Iola was running the – producing the show that day called “Friday frolic.” It’s Friday afternoon when the school week is out. Then I was asked to have the band there. There’d be people come in and do little skits and plays and talk. Iola came out of the back where she was balancing a show and said, “Will you take everything out of your pockets and quit stamping your feet so hard?” I said, “Why?” She said, “That’s all we can hear in here, is your pounding your foot and the change that – whatever’s in your pocket is rattling.” I said, “I’ve been kicked out of better places than this.” That was our first conversation. I took off my shoes and poured all of my change, keys, and stuff, and quit beating my foot so loud.
Gioia: Your wife’s parents, Charles and Myrtle Whitlock, lived in Stockton. What were your impressions of them? What were their impressions of you?
Brubeck: You mentioned the Depression earlier. The only way Iola could have gone to school was on scholarship. She was an “A” student in Reading High School and had the pick of quite a few schools that she knew she couldn’t afford. Pacific would have been the least expensive. Junior college at Pacific was free. Then tuition in your junior and senior year was only $600, but they couldn’t afford that either. Charles Whitlock worked for the forest service, where he thought he could transfer to Stockton, and that way they wouldn’t have to pay for Iola’s room and board. That’s the way they were able to go to Stockton.
Gioia: Where were they before?
Brubeck: Reading. You mentioned, where did I meet Iola? Iola didn’t believe that I remembered her just from coming through that door. I said, “What if I told you what you were wearing?” She said, “That’s impossible. You haven’t got that good a memory.” I described it. She said, “You’re absolutely right.” The reason that she remembered the dress is there was a dressmaker in the apartment downstairs from where they moved that made clothes for the ladies, and that was ordered especially to be made and never picked up. The woman never came to pick up the clothes. They knew it would fit my future wife. She was a student, and they offered it to her. It was separate stripes in the skirt. That’s what I remembered and could describe, and she was convinced that I wasn’t just making up a story.
Gioia: During your college years, you studied music, but when you graduated, as I understand it, you were asked to promise that you would never teach music. Could you tell me how this came about?
Brubeck: It was worse than that. I avoided the conservatory, knowing I couldn’t read, but there were certain requirements that you had to do. You had to play other instruments: brass or windwind or string. Finally, you had to pass basic keyboard. I avoided that by taking clarinet. You were usually just learning the scales and simple pieces. I’d already taken cello from Dr. Brown’s wife. So I was okay on strings, and I was passed on clarinet. Finally, I had to take keyboard. I decided, I’ll take organ, and maybe they’ll be just teaching me basics and they won’t find out I can’t read. The first day, I was supposed to practice at a certain time. It was an electric organ. The next day, I saw the organ teacher, and he was furious at me. He said, “You left the electric organ on all night. I’m flunking you, and I don’t want to see you in this class.” So I said, “Dr. Bacon, that’s all right.” I was relieved then. I wouldn’t have to take organ. Then the last semester, when you’re coming to graduation, I hadn’t taken piano yet, so I was sent to the top piano teacher. After about five minutes, she just dismissed me. She went to the dean and said, “That boy can’t read a note. He can’t read.” So the dean then called me in. That’s when he said, “You’re a disgrace to the conservatory, and I’m not [ ].” I said, “That’s right.” So it spread amongst the students and the teachers that I would not graduate with the class. Dr. Bodley, who taught harmony and some composition, who had studied with Nadia Boulanger, went to the dean and said, “You’re making a mistake with Brubeck. He’s harmonically one of the most talented students I’ve ever had.” Then shortly after, the counterpoint teacher went to the dean and said, “You’re making a mistake. He’s the best counterpoint student I’ve ever had.” Then the dean called me in and said, “I’ve heard some things about you from the teachers saying that you’re a talented person and I should let you graduate. I’ll let you graduate if you promise never to teach and disgrace this university.” I said, “That’s fine with me. I don’t want to teach anyway. All I want to do is play jazz.” He said, “I don’t understand that, but I’ll still let you graduate.” That’s how I got out. It was these other teachers going to my rescue.
Gioia: At that time, while you were in college, what music were you listening to? What music was influencing your – what music did you admire at that time?
Brubeck: I grew up listening to Bach – from my mother – and Beethoven. All the classic literature for piano: Debussy, Ravel, and many other things, but those were the main things that she practiced all the time. So I had a knowledge of the good piano literature just by hearing it from her – hearing her teach it during the day, and then after dinner, she usually went into her studio, and when I was in bed, I’d be hearing her practicing. So I had a lot of influence on great piano music. Then I loved Gershwin and Bartok, Stravinsky especially. Then there are great jazz things. Ellington I loved, and Stan Kenton.
Gioia: When you were in college, did you have a record player? Radio?
Brubeck: Oh yeah. Gioia: So you would . . .
Brubeck: Always keeping up with Ellington. I had a good collection of Ellington in the ’30s, and my friends had good recordings – friends from the conservatory. So I was aware of the modern composers and of Debussy, Ravel.
Gioia: You celebrate your 21st birthday, and the next day, Pearl Harbor is attacked. What do you recall about that? What impact did that have on your life?
Brubeck: For my birthday I went to Concord to visit Howard, who was teaching at Mt. Diablo High School, where my mother had created that high school [ ] from there, and now he’s teaching. He had graduated from San Francisco State Teacher’s College. At this point he may have been taking some graduate classes at Mills. I was quite close to Howard, so I had gone to his house for my birthday – 21st birthday. We were at the service station, putting gas in my car, when the announcement came. The guy from the service station said, “They just bombed Pearl Harbor.” That’s the way I found out about it.
Gioia: After you graduated – you graduated a few months after that, and you were drafted. What would you have done differently if there hadn’t been a war going on? What were your plans at that point of what you were going to do after college?
Brubeck: I was working at this point in my senior year. Many jobs were six nights a week in nightclubs. So I knew I could make – I was always getting union scale then, and you could live on that. So I wasn’t worried. I had a fairly good reputation that I could work. So that’s what I planned to do, was just continue playing in so-called “joints.” Some of them were – some of my favorite places were not where the average citizen of the town would go, but the citizens that went there were the jazz fans, and usually African-Americans. I would be the only one supposedly that wasn’t a Negro. I loved working there. I loved that atmosphere. If that’s all I did the rest of my life, I would have been very happy. In fact, when I finally had to go on the road, if somebody would have told me, “You can always work for scale in a nightclub,” I’d rather have done that than pursue what I had to pursue, which is a life that’s not so great for a married man with children. Just let me work, and if it looks like a joint, I’ll be very happy, because that’s where I’m happy.
Gioia: Is it true that you got married while on a three-day leave from the military?
Brubeck: Yeah.
Gioia: When did that happen? How did that happen?
Brubeck: Iola was able to say, “If you can get away, I’ll come down to the army camp, and we’ll get married.”
Gioia: Where were you stationed then?
Brubeck: Below Riverside, California, so it wouldn’t have been too far, to go over the border. I decided, “If I can get a three-day pass, I’ll go back home and go to Carson City, Nevada, get married and see your parents and see my parents.” Nobody came to our wedding. [ ] To this day, when I think of the rigamarole my grandchildren go through and my kids about getting married – my family didn’t even drive about 60 miles. They were camped at Silver Lake in the Sierras and it wouldn’t have been too far to go.
Gioia: Was this at a city hall or a county office?
Brubeck: No, it was a church . . .
Gioia: Oh, it was a church . . .
Brubeck: . . . where I knew the daughter who used to visit in Ione from Carson City. She also went to College of Pacific. I knew her parents were in Carson City and her father was a minister. So her father married us, and her mother was a witness. Then we jumped in the car and three days we had to get back to bring her to Stockton and me go to Camp Haan below Riverside. We stopped the first night after Carson City at a motel owned by a family that had a daughter at Pacific. We stayed all night in that hotel and then continued to Stockton and then down to Riverside.
Gioia: A very fast honeymoon.
Brubeck: Oh man. It was mostly driving a car.
Gioia: Take a break. [recording interrupted] Dave, Russell has suggested a couple of questions, first about your first meeting with Duke Ellington. Can you tell us about that?
Brubeck: In the ’30s and ’40s the big bands were traveling to the West Coast to the point where you could sometimes hear two name big bands in Stockton on the same night. I think Ellington and maybe Basie just happened to be going through. Kenton would come through, and Woody Herman and Benny Goodman when he was about to break up his band, because the East Coast didn’t value him. He got saved, I think, in Denver.
Gioia: That’s right. That famous story.
Brubeck: Then Balboa Ballroom, maybe, where he really started getting an audience, which is a very strange thing, that he was almost – he was planning to break up, and a turnaround, because that audience in Denver really liked him, and then later on, in California. But there were always bands coming through. It wasn’t an isolated place, by no means. The way I heard, or met, Duke for the first time: he was playing in Stockton, and I went. Jimmy Branford [sic: Blanton] had passed away. He was on the West Coast, and he needed a bass player. He hired Junior Raglin, who was a bass player I knew in [ ]. I surprisingly saw Junior on the stand, and I went backstage and said to Junior, “I’m surprised that you’re working with Ellington.” He explained everything. I said, “That’s wonderful.” I told him how much I thought of Ellington, the records I had from the ’30s, like Warm Valley, Flaming Sword, Jack the Bear, which has that wonderful bass solo on it. He said, “You’re an Ellington fan. Would you like to meet Duke?” I said, “Oh yes.” He said, “He’s right in this dressing room over here. Let me bring you over.” He knocked on the door and went in. I followed him. He introduced me. Duke looked up at me. I couldn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t say a word. I said to myself, this is ridiculous. I’ve got to get out of here. So I left. I didn’t say a word to him. Later on, he came into the club where I worked in San Francisco and said, “You belong – you should play in New York. You should come to New York.” I said, “I don’t have any jobs there.” He said, “Let me see what I can do about it.” So he got me a job at the Hickory House, and my agent got me a job at Birdland on the same week. My agent – you better not cross him – was Joe Glaser – or he’d drop you, or worse. So I took the job at Birdland, but I’ll always remember that Duke had been so outgoing with me, being encouraging. So the first time that I really talked with him – I was in awe of him and stayed my distance. We were on tour together. They put the sidemen in one big room and the leaders, Duke and I, in a separate room. That was the way they always handled the tour. I didn’t know. I don’t think I belong in the same room with Duke, but that’s where I was assigned. So that’s when I finally saw how the Duke lived, the great big trunks like you’d take on board a ship. They were like small closets. All his suits lined up and the neckties and shirts and shoes, and a dresser to dress him.
Gioia: So he didn’t travel out of a suitcase.
Brubeck: No. I never equaled anything close to the way he traveled. It was unbelievable. But I got to see how the Duke lived. It was an experience. We became pretty good friends all through the years. Even to the end of his life, he told Mercer, his son, that he wanted me to be an Ellington fellow at Yale. “Louie Bellson and Dave, I want to be fellows. I don’t want people to think I only had black friends.”
Gioia: Around this time did you also meet Stan Kenton?
Brubeck: Yes.
Gioia: Can you tell me about that?
Brubeck: I had written an arrangement for the jazz band at Camp Holland?. The musicians – only a few of them thought it was any good. The rest didn’t like it. It was called Prayer of the Conquered. One of those that liked it very much was my old friend Ernie Farmer. He had copied it for me. He goes back to College of Pacific with me. Ernie said, “This is pretty advanced. Why don’t you take to Stan Kenton? See if he’d like it.” So I went to Kenton’s house. When I came into the house, into the front room, there was no furniture, no rugs, nothing in the room but a grand piano. I said to myself, “Boy, this is the way to live.” Pretty quick, Kenton came down from upstairs. He’d slept in a little late. He looked at the score, and he said, “Play this for me.” So I started. I think I played something else, just to warm up. He said, “Where did you ever hear voicing’s like this?” I said, “That’s what I play.” He said, “That’s some very advanced voicing.” Then he looked at the score, and he said, “I’ll try this with my band. I’m playing the ‘Bob Hope Show,’ and we’re rehearsing for it.” I think it was the next day. “I’ll meet you at the stage door,” and he gave me a time “where I’ll be on a break.” He was there, right on the time we appointed. I took the parts into the band, and he ran it down. It sounded great to me. Then, after the rehearsal, he said, “Bring it back in ten years.” I don’t know what that means to this day.
Gioia: Perhaps you were ahead of your time. What year would that have been, roughly?
Brubeck: Let’s see. I was in the Army, ’42 to ’46: ’43.
Gioia: While you were in the Army, you were part of a group known as the Wolf Pack. This was a racially integrated jazz band.
Brubeck: Yeah. I integrated it.
Gioia: Had you worked with integrated bands before that?
Brubeck: Yeah. From the – even the octet in ’46 had a saxophonist from San Francisco. I’m ashamed to say at the moment I can’t remember his name. Iola would.
Gioia: We can fill that in. We’re going to get the transcript, and we can add – we’re going to be able to edit the transcript of these things.
Brubeck: Then I played with mixed groups [ ] ’39.
Gioia: Where would that have been?
Brubeck: In the Wagon Wheel in Modesto. It was just two guitar players. They asked me to play with them.
Gioia: So there were three musicians playing.
Brubeck: Yeah.
Gioia: Were both of them black? Brubeck: Yeah.
Gloyd: [partially audible] Ted, before you get to Europe and this [ ] through, just the opposite, which is if Dave could tell the story about sitting in with a black band – Army band - on his way to Europe.
Brubeck: Oh yeah. I’ll tell that story. After the band broke up at Camp Haan – there were three full-size 28-piece bands. We were told there would be one band left. That means two bands got to go. Some of us went in to the infantry. Some guys went to another camp as a band, but broken up from Camp Haan. Unfortunately, I went into the infantry. From the infantry, I had – I was in a group of – Oklahoma National Guard ran it and broke in the guys. They kept me on KP and latrine duty, so I didn’t get basic training. But I was still shipped with the next bunch of guys that would be shipped out. We went across the country in a train, typical troop train. At different camps you’d stop overnight on the way to – the rumor is, we’re going to Europe. We’re not going to the Pacific, because we’re headed towards the East Coast. You’re never told where you’re going, but you’d stop. I think it was a camp in Maryland.
Gloyd: Fort Mead.
Brubeck: Yeah. Fort Mead. A black Army band met the train and played as you got off and marched where you were going. When we stopped and you fell out of line, I said to the guys in the band, “That was great to hear a good band playing.” They said, “We’re playing tonight at the rec hall. Why don’t you come and hear us.” So I went. I was invited to sit in. They said, “Wow. This is pretty out there. Why don’t you join our band?” I said, “Oh great. Wouldn’t that be wonderful.” So the next day I went there, and they said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t have any white members. It’s against the rules.” So as bad as I wanted to get in there, bad as they wanted me – the next day we were in Washington, D.C., and we had a pass to go into Washington that night. [recording interrupted] I’m walking down the street, looking for some jazz someplace on my night on the town. I heard a saxophonist from about a block away. I said, “That’s Bud Harr. I’m sure that’s Bud” from my old jazz band at College of Pacific. I followed the sound. It was coming from a dance hall up a flight of stairs. I go up there, and it is my old saxophonist, Bud Harr, from – he didn’t even say hello. He said, “Sit in, Dave.” So I sat in with that band.
He seemed like the leader. The guys were saying, “Why don’t you join our band?” I said, “Great.” Bud said, “Yeah. That would be wonderful if you could get in the band.” So I tried that, and they said, “Aren’t you in the Army?” I said, “Yeah,” and they said, “We’re in the Navy. We’re sorry, but we can’t swing that.”
So I’m back on the troop train, moving towards what I knew was the next step. It was outside of Boston, north of Boston, to get on a troop ship. I got on the largest troop ship that was going at that time, called the George Washington. We were to join a convoy of, I’m guessing, maybe 50 ships on the way to Europe. After a few days of this, the captain of the ship said, “I’m breaking out of the convoy. I don’t like moving in a convoy. Too slow.” So we broke out of that. He would zigzag, because the German submarines had to have so many seconds to send a torpedo, knowing where your next zig or zag – they don’t know where it’s going to be. We didn’t get hit, although it was dangerous to be out of the convoy. We went on to England and never touched English soil. We landed in Liverpool, and we just got on a train that came out on the dock, so we were on from the boat to the train to get ready to go across the Channel, onto an English troop ship and then climb on down to a landing barge, where the front end drops open.
We were segregated after we got up on to the land and up the cliff and into what looked like cattle cars and across – we thought we were going to Paris, but all we did was see the lights of Paris. We kept going, to Verdun. We were in the mud hole at Verdun. [ ] Germans were in a mountain overlooking the area where we were. That’s where the Red Cross sent two girls that were on a truck that later I found out a lieutenant with us had rigged that truck so that one side of the back of the truck would drop down and make a stage. There was a piano in there. We were sitting in the mud, on our helmets, and one of the girls said, “Can anybody play the piano?” My hand went up immediately. So I went up and played. The next morning we were the replacements to go in. We’d go up that mountain, where a company had been wiped out the day before. We were supposed to go out there. While lined up to go, three of us were called out. There were two guys that had come across the country from Camp Haan, musicians. The guy – corporal in charge of entertainment, said that he had a piano player that had heard me and said I was better than him, and he wanted to go back and join his unit. I had the chance to hear him play, and he was great. I kept in touch with him, but he said, “I don’t like it here. I miss my buddies. I’m in the Signal Corps. I’ll be all right. You take this job. The colonel has said that you – that’s in change of this replacement depot – that you should never go to the front.” “I don’t want that boy to go to the front '' was circulated amongst the officers. I formed a band, which he wanted, out of guys that had been wounded. One of them happened to be black: Jonathan Richard Flowers. How many years ago did we see him, Russell?
Gloyd: In Boston, right?
Brubeck: Yeah.
Gloyd: Maybe – I don’t know. It’s hard to say.
Brubeck: Can’t tell me.
Gloyd: All those Boston – it all kind of runs together. But there’s a follow through of the story of that pianist, which we heard three years ago in Daytona Beach.
Brubeck: That’s his son.
Gloyd: Right.
Brubeck: The son of that pianist. I’ve got his name written down, because I always forget. His father’s name was a hard name for me to remember. He tuned my piano before a concert, the son, and he said . . .
Gloyd: We didn’t know who he was. He was just the tuner that Paul [inaudible] used to tune the pianos.
Gioia: Small world.
Brubeck: Did he write to me or talk to me?
Gloyd: He talked to you. He came up to you.
Brubeck: He said, “I understand you knew my father. Do you remember much about him? Can you tell me how he played?” I said, “Oh, he was better than me,” and the guy started crying.
Gioia: Leroy Pearlman has mentioned that the Wolf Pack once played on a show with Marlene Dietrich.
Brubeck: That’s the guy that built the truck, Pearlman.
Gioia: He also said the band worked on the same bill as other well-known performers. Do you have any . . .?
Brubeck: Pearlman changed his name to Waxman. If you want to check up on him, Studs Terkel’s book The Good War has an interview with him, and Waxman starts talking about me.
Gioia: I remember that.
Brubeck: You remember it?
Gioia: Yeah, I’ve seen the book. Yes. It’s about the Battle of the Bulge.
Brubeck: And the Bulge has a good story with – that’s how it was – who did we do that recording with, Dave Remembers? Walter Cronkite.
Gloyd: Private Brubeck.
Brubeck: Private Brubeck Remembers. Cronkite is talking about the Bulge, his memory of it, with me. You can get that from George Moore at my house, because they only allowed 10,000 copies with that CD to be released. They’re all gone, but George has made a tape of it.
Gioia: After the war, you decide to go to Mills College. What determined that decision? Why did you decide to go to Mills?
Brubeck: My brother was studying with [Darius] Milhaud. He and Pete Rugolo went from San Francisco State [College] to Mills to get their masters degrees. They would be some of the first males to attend Mills. They allowed it on masters degree programs. It was through Howard that I heard about Milhaud. While I was still a student at Pacific, I hitch-hiked down to Mills to meet with Milhaud. He said – I knew I was going into the Army. It’s often said I was drafted. I wasn’t drafted. I enlisted by telling the draft office that I would go as soon as I graduated, because it was only one more semester. They said that’s okay, as long as you go as soon as you graduate.
Gioia: So you actually enlisted rather than . . .
Brubeck: Yeah. Gioia: You didn’t get a draft notice.
Brubeck: Yeah. So Milhaud said, “After the war, you come study with me.” That was great. I had something to always look forward to.
Gioia: How familiar were you with his music? Had you heard his music at that point?
Brubeck: The Creation of the World, I’d heard.
Gioia: When you began studying with him, how did he react to your music and to jazz?
Brubeck: [ ] class, the octet was born, when he said, “How many of you in this class play jazz?” Five of us raised our hands. We thought that was going to be the end of – like any other conservatory. He said, “I’d like you to write your counterpoint and your compositions for jazz instrumentation, if you want to.” That’s how the octet came in. Paul Desmond and Cal Tjader came over from San Francisco State any way their [?]. Have you ever heard the octet? I know you’ve heard it. So you know the members of it.
Gioia: Sure. Absolutely. Great recordings. Let me ask you about other modern classical composers of that time. I want to start with Schoenberg, because you had an encounter with Schoenberg that I think was quite interesting. Can you relay that?
Brubeck: I’d heard so much about him. I was at Camp Haan in Riverside and made an appointment to be interviewed, or to meet him, at his home near UCLA, I think it was, and went to his house and talked with him. He told me to come back, I think, in a week and write something. So I wrote something, came back in a week, played it for him. He stopped me and said, “Why did you write that note?” I said, “Because it sounds good.” He said, “That’s no reason to write a note, ‘because it sounds good.’ There must be a reason. Do you have a reason?” I said, “No. That’s it.” I tried to defend, if it sounded good, should be the reason. He said, “Come with me.” He went in to a different room, took out some keys from his pocket, opened a glass door. There were cabinets all around. He said, “I know every note of music on any page in all these scores. That’s the reason. I can tell you, there must be a reason. And I know more about music than any man alive.” That was our last meeting. I thought it was so different from Darius Milhaud.
Gioia: What was your opinion then, and your opinion now, of Schoenberg’s music and 12-tone row?
Brubeck: I had heard maybe Pierrot Lunaire. Nothing much more than that. It was his reputation. So many people I admired thought he was really the master of this age. After the war, you either chose to follow Schoenberg or Schillinger or somebody like Stravinsky or Milhaud. For sure I didn’t want to follow Schoenberg. Today I use the 12-tone row to write a melody. All the time I’m doing that. But never in the harmony. Just the melody. But The Duke, which I wrote in the early ’50s [ ] or ’52, I didn’t realize had a 12-tone row in the bass, until a music professor told me, “That’s interesting, the way you use a 12-tone row in the bass line.” If you analyze it, I got through every key in eight bars. So I’m influenced, but didn’t want to be. But lately, when I’m trying to do something, I’ll start a melody and think, oh, that’s my goal, into a 12-tone melody. I just wrote a new one called So Lonely. It’s on the current album, The Indian Summer. The opening theme is 11 tones. Then when I repeat it, I added some way to make it 12-tone, just wanting it to be 12-tone. It’s terrible that I would dislike – I still don’t usually like when it’s strict 12-tone.
Gioia: Serialism.
Brubeck: Yeah. I don’t like it too much.
Gioia: Let me ask you about another composer. Doug Ramsey has suggested that one of the influences on the octet was Stravinsky’s Octet that he composed in 1923. Was that a work that influenced you?
Brubeck: Not me. It could have been Bill Smith. Bill probably knew it.
Gioia: A few years after you began mixing jazz and classical music, a term came about called “Third Stream.” People would talk about Third Stream, sort of a blending between jazz and classical. Did you feel like you were part of that movement? Or did you feel that was something very similar to what you were doing? Or that came after you? What was your reaction to the Third Stream?
Brubeck: Gunther [Schuller]’s such a brilliant musician that I respect him. If he uses the term “Third Stream,” it’s probably correct for what he wants to express. But I think that Jelly Roll Morton was listening to the music from the French opera house quite often, and that they’re just discovering things of Jelly Roll that were never published or no-one else was too familiar with until recently. I’d like to hear what Jelly was doing. I would say that there’s certain influences in jazz. Why wouldn’t you call Art Tatum’s Elegy or Humoresque . . .
Gioia: Or Black, Brown, and Beige.
Brubeck: . . . Third Stream?
Gioia: So your sense is, jazz has always borrowed something from classical music, and that that’s actually part of the tradition of the music, going back to Jelly Roll.
Brubeck: Yeah.
To be continued in Part 3.
I first heard Jaki Byard in the summer of 1940 at a storefront saloon called Dominic's Cafe in Worcester, Mass. I was a high school freshman studying classical piano, but getting distracted by that other, earthier sound. The word was out among professional and aspiring swing musicians around town: Drop by Dominic's; there's an 18-yearold kid on piano who does it all.
More than just a concert recording, Beirach's performance at Maybeck is a snapshot of the artist in a moment of creation. Not yet an elder statesman, but no longer a newcomer to the world of jazz, Beirach stands now at a plateau, from which he can look back on the traditions that defined his early development - the textural genius of Miles Davis, the technical rigors of European classical repertoire, the probing harmonic imagination of Bill Evans - while also mapping the horizons of his own distinctive style.
McNeely singles out Getz as a primary influence: "He showed all the people who worked with him, by example, how to develop and shape a solo, how to give it a sense of content." The pianist credits Mel Lewis as his "time" guru. "I learned a lot about time and the pulse from Mel," McNeely says. "Just being around him helped; he was very giving."
It's all there in the first track. Within a few choruses, Jessica Williams shows her hand, or hands: the harmonies in seconds (hit way off to the side of the piano), the punchy attack, the dust-devils in the upper octaves, the nutty quotes. it's familiar Jessica, but she's got plenty up her sleeve for the rest of this remarkable entry in the Maybeck menagerie.
Ellis Larkins has long been a venerable member of that exalted breed that Basie dubbed "the Poets of the Piano," a special class that includes Roger Kellaway, Alan Broadbent, Jessica Williams, Walter Norris ,Adam Makowicz, Jaki Byard, Jim McNeely, and others recorded by Concord’s Maybeck Series These pianist-composers are distinguished by their ability to sustain a solo program without the support of bass and drums, by a keyboard prowess as thorough as that of any classical pianists, and by an eclecticism that embraces the standard ballads, bebop, and the legacy of Earl Hines, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk.
When Count Basie died in 1984 he took with him the rarest of piano skills - that is, the ability to play and sustain a blues groove, regardless of tempo, using as many or as few notes as the moment inspired. Basie understood implicitly the minimalist underpinnings of great art, that addition by subtraction is key to the process of crafting powerful statements.
In the course of a distinguished career, Cedar Walton has been heard mainly in a variety of instrumental settings - most notably with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the 1960s, with the Eastern Rebellion group in the '70s, and with the Timeless All Stars in the '80s. He has toured the USA, Europe and Japan leading his own trio. All these activities may have obscured the fact that Cedar's piano talent is totally self-sufficient, as this Maybeck Hall session makes vividly clear.
