Jazz Professional               

DAVE BRUBECK

The diversified world of Dave Brubeck

It's not easy
Jazz is as much European as African
Today
The diversified world of Dave Brubeck
Update

Well, Dave– for a man who was supposed to have retired from touring twelve years ago, you’re doing pretty well.

I retired for a week—I took a week’s vacation. I didn’t plan to give it up; I intended to get a new group—which I did, shortly after the old group broke up. I was on tour again for George Wein immediately, with Gerry Mulligan, Alan Dawson and Jack Six. It wasn’t long at all. I’ll admit I thought I’d be off Longer than that, but just a few weeks and I was right back on the road.

In recent years, you’ve had a family group, working with several of Your sons. Now I see you only have one of them left with you.

Right, at the moment—but you never know what’s going to happen next. I would think, for a year or so, it’ll be this group. And Butch Miles is joining us; Randy Jones was an interim drummer, between my son Dan and Butch.

I’m very, very pleased with Randy; he’s been absolutely fantastic—and a great man, too. Yes, he happens to be British. A very good supportive drummer —today he was tearing it up, playing some great solos, too.

Your son Chris stayed on bass but he also plays a lot of trombone, doesn’t he?

Yeah—but, you know, when the wind is blowing and everything, and there isn’t a chance to warm up, it’s very tough for Chris to switch to the horn, because it gets so cold. So I didn’t call anything for trombone; on a cold day like this, he isn’t anxious to just pick up the horn and blow. But with Jerry Bergonzi also playing bass, as well as tenor, we’re going to try some different things. There’s some songs that I’m going to start doing, where I won’t use any bass I’ll use two horns, drums and piano. That’ll be interesting, Did you hear us do any of that in Nice?

As regards your musical family—when you were bringing your sons up, did you envisage that when they matured they would be playing with you? Were you training them for that?

I didn’t know. With children they’ll usually do the opposite of what the parents want. I was hoping that they would do something else, but enjoy playing, you know.

But it turned out that they enjoyed playing more than doing something else. Even Matthew, my sixth child—I was hoping he wouldn’t be one, but he’s going to be a musician too. No, I just can’t keep ‘em out of it. He’s here, digging all this—having a ball. He plays cello and piano; I think you’re going to be hearing from him, if I can’t talk him into studying something else —and I’d say I’ve lost already.

What are Darius and Dan doing now?

They’re recording with Larry Coryell, and making some records on their own. They’re not touring with Larry, but they’ve just made two albums with him—one on Vanguard, one on direct–to–disc. They’re working with a bass player; so they’ve got bass, drums and piano, and they’re gigging around. This week they’re playing at a place called Martha’s Vineyard.

Yes, I think I caught some of it.

There were a couple of times over there where we switched to that. It’s an interesting approach. You know, there was an English group playing yesterday, where once in a while they had just piano and trumpet going on; the bass and drums dropped out. I think that kind of thing was done with some of the earlier bands, where you didn’t always have a string bass. Like, there wasn’t a bass with the Benny Goodman Trio—it was just Benny, Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa. Then, when they added Lionel Hampton to make up the Quartet, they still had no bassist. So I figure we can do it.

With your sons’ musical outlook being naturally of a different time than yours, how much adaptation has there had to be, in order for you to work together?

 It’s very hard to say, because we’ve all had to give in and adapt to each other. You know, my son Matthew, on this tour, is just completely overwhelmed with a musician like Jimmie Rowles; he hadn’t heard him before, and he thinks he’s fantastic. Just think—he’s heard John Lewis, Jimmie Rowles, Ray Bryant, Hank Jones, Roland Hanna. I mean, that’s the cream; can you imagine what it is for a young jazz pianist to be around these guys day after day? That’s the way you learn—watching the older players.

So you’d say, for making this sort of exposure possible, that jazz festivals are a good thing?

Sure. Like, the organist Wild Bill Davis—he and I were playing together twenty five years ago, and here we are on tour together. There’s a lot of my old friends here, that I haven’t seen in years; it’s been a lot of fun that way.

In the club where I was working in Chicago, Muddy Waters would play Sunday afternoons, and he’d come in for my sets; I hadn’t seen him since then—that was 1951. On a tour like this, a lot of reunions go on. Ernie Royal I hadn’t run into for years; George Duvivier I only see occasionally; my ex–drummer, Alan Dawson, is playing here, of course. The United States is so big, that often you don’t see each other until you come over here.

And it’s obvious you enjoy playing to festival audiences.

Oh yeah—and this is really a large one today. I love to play to a mixed audience. You look out there, and you see people my age, kids in their teens, and everything in between; there’s people older than me out there, too. And the English are very loyal to the groups they like; so it’s fun to play here.

Your popularity was originally attained with the group that included the late, great Paul Desmond. Have you encountered any reaction to the subsequent changes in the Brubeck sound?

Well, everyone wishes Paul were here, but that’s life—he’s gone. So you’ve got to go on. It took a while for us all to adjust to that. Right now, people realise that Jerry Bergonzi’s a tremendous saxophonist.

And it’s good to have a saxophone back, too, for a while; I think people like that. They’ve accepted any group I’ve brought here, you know. I hope they continue to do so.

The tenor gives it a harder blowing style, doesn’t it?

 It does. Paul was the most lyrical player in the world. So that would make me play hard; Paul liked to play soft and lyrical so much, that I would try to be the balance. In this group, to counterbalance the tenor, I should play more lyrically. But outdoors, when there’s two stages, you can’t do that. In Nice, if you played something soft, you could hear B. B. King, Muddy Waters or Lionel Hampton coming from another stage. It’s fun, though; you just learn not to play anything too soft at these festival where there’s more than one stage being used.

What about the writing side? I gather you’re continuing, but there doesn’t seem to be anything on record lately, in the way of your large–scale choral works. I keep looking out for something.

Well, you look this Christmas. My “Christmas Cantata” will be CBS’s first digital recording. It’s all done; so I can talk in the affirmative about it. It has the title “La Fiesta de la Posada ”, and it’s for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with Dennis RussellDavies conducting. Richard Davis on bass, Mel Lewis on drums, and myself—we make up a jazz trio that’s on the record. Then the Three Wise Men are soloists from the Metropolitan in New York. There’s also a great soprano soloist called Phyllis Brunjolson, plus a children’s choir and an adult choir. And the orchestra sounds like a mariachi orchestra—intentionally, “La Fiesta de la Posada” means “The Festival of the Inn”; it’s the Christmas story done from the Mexican culture. It’s the same story that’s worldwide, about Mary and Joseph looking for an inn and finding nothing. They have this tenday celebration every year all over Mexico, and where was raised in the Southern part of California, and Texas, Arizona, New Mexico. And we just took the idea, and put it into a Christmas Cantata, without taking any of the music except one “La Posada” theme.

The whole thing is something you remember from your childhood, is it?

When I was a child, I never saw this exact Posada; they change all over the world, but I was influenced by Mexican music. I was raised on a cattle ranch, among lots of American Indians and Mexicans; the original founders of the town were Spanish. My dad managed this forty–five–thousand–acre Mexican cattle ranch. So it’s home ground for me.

It’s a wonder there haven’t been more Latin touches in your music than there have.

Well, there’s been a lot, you know—like the “Bravo Brubeck” and “Compadres” albums.

It sounds marvellous.

Yeah—wait till you hear this record. It took me four years to get it recorded. Eventually, everything does get recorded, but it’s a struggle, because the record companies have to take a risk when they do something this big—it’s so expensive. Not being what you’d call a pop record, it’s not easy to get something like this recorded. But you’ll certainly be hearing something quite different. I’m very glad that it’ll be out for this Christmas.

Didn’t you compose a ballet recently?

Recently, yeah—a ballet called “Glances”. I’ve done another one called “Points On Jazz”. Then today I played part of a new piece, that I think is going to be used by a ballet company, called “Tritonis”. I didn’t announce it, but the audience really loved it. I like to take new material tell the audience nothing about it, and see how it works.

And any place I’ve played it, this has got the most reception—more than anything else we do on the programme.

So I know I’ve got a strong theme there. It’s one theme from an eleven–minute modern ballet.

I suppose, in order to get these things done, you divide your time. You must allocate certain parts of your time to sitting down and getting something written, as opposed to playing.

What I try to do is to cut off every year at about a hundred concerts—which are a lot of one– nighters—and devote the rest of the time to writing. I’m writing a mass for the Catholic church; as soon as I get home I’m putting the finishing touches on that. And I’ve written an Easter Cantata for the Lutheran church. Those aren’t recorded yet. So right there you’ve got three albums, if somebody wants to do ‘em.

Having been sold on your choral approach when I heard your “Truth Is Fallen”, I’ve since acquired “The Gates Of Justice”, but I’m still looking for your initial venture into this field, “A Light In The Wilderness”. It would seem to be out of print.

That was the first one, yeah. I hope you can get it—unless Decca isn’t printing it any more.

Obviously, then, you’ve no thought of retirement; you will be continuing your multiple musical activities.

I’ll never finish what I’ve already I got started, probably. Unfortunately—there’s so much to do.

 

Copyright © 1979, Les Tomkins. All Rights Reserved.