The Dave Brubeck Quartet thread

[JHC]

An all time favourite of mine.

With the success of his Dave Brubeck Quartet in the 50's and 60's and the incredible public response to their style of playing, pianist Dave Brubeck was at once embraced by the public but spurned by jazz critics. His importance in jazz history is unmistakable:



The Quartet, headlined by Brubeck and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, helped to reawaken public interest in jazz after World War II, was an integral part of the new but erroneously named "West Coast Cool Jazz" style which was to characterize American jazz in the 50's and 60's, and their tour de force, the innovative Time Out, released in 1959, spawned not only the first million-selling jazz record in modern jazz history with the singles "Take Five and "Blue Rondo a la Turk" but also a slew of albums by other artists also experimenting in non-traditional time signatures.

In 1954, just three years after the founding of the Quartet with himself, Desmond, drummer Joe Dodge, and bassist Bob Bates, Brubeck became the first jazz musician to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, which heralded Brubeck as the leader of "the birth of a new kind of jazz age in the U.S.". Between the years of 1959 and 1965, the Quartet won Down Beat magazine's reader's poll five times; it garnered the top spot in the Billboard reader's poll in '65 and '66; for twelve consecutive years, '57 through '68, Brubeck and company took the top spot in the Playboy reader's poll. In the Quartet's tenth year, after being bolstered by the replacement of Dodge with Joe Morello and Bates with Eugene Wright, the New Yorker could rightfully proclaim that the Quartet was "the world's best-paid, most widely travelled, most highly publicized, and most popular small group now playing improvised syncopated music."



Dave Brubeck Quartet at Congress Hall Frankfurt/Main (1967). From left to right: Joe Morello, Eugene Wright, Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond


Cloyed perhaps by the overwhelming popular acclaim, Brubeck left the Quartet in 1967 to develop his composing skills, already apparent in his jazz compositions, in the realms of ballets, operas, and scores. He persists as a grand old man of jazz, however, by both participating in periodic reunions or forays into popular jazz and by suffusing his compositions with jazz influences.
Article taken from web site [Dave Brubeck: A Biography] link to site which includes discograraphy. http://www.duke.edu/~smt3/brubeck.htm

Samples of their music.

Take Five as the name implies this is in 5/4 time and composed by Paul Desmond,
http://www.************/audio/BjzSVilg/01_Take_Five.html

Hi Ho this is the theme music of our own SW
http://www.************/audio/plT-4TFy/03_Heigh-Ho.html

Unsquare dance another tune in not so ordinary meter 7/8
http://www.************/audio/g2r336n...are_Dance.html

[marval]

Hi Colin

That was very interesting, thank you. I have always thought Dave Brubeck had a unique style.


Margaret

[hardbop grandpop]

hi colin, i am so impressed by the dave brubeck and mjq threads, they are really very interesting, some of the best stuff i have ever seenon a jazz forum anywhere. the articles and photos are excellent, and the presentation is first class. i look foreword to many more from you. gord

[teddy]

A great new thread Colin. Take Five takes me - right back to my youth, You heard it everywhere, and if a TV programme wanted to be labeled cool, they used it as an introduction. Keep up the good work. You are earning the title "threadmeister."

teddy

[JHC]

Yeh, at least they kept to the same meter all through a piece not like to-days clever devils who change every few bars.