Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time

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JJM .Clearly, Columbia was concerned about it. There didn’t appear to be a lot of support in their offices other than the now legendary A&R man George Avakian and the label’s president Goddard Lieberson… Dave told me about being on a coach with Parker, talking with him about what Darius Milhaud had taught him, and the whole concept of polytonality, and he shared thoughts with him about Stravinsky, Bartok, Ravel, Satie and Debussy. He would have an in-depth conversation like that with Parker on one night, but on the next Bird would be so out of it and unapproachable, presumably desperate for a fix. One time Parker was being sought after by the mob, seeking cash for drugs, and Dave remembered advising him not to get involved with these people. So, there was a close bond between them while they were on the road, but their friendship, for whatever reason, isn’t well documented. Philip Clark is a music journalist who has written for many leading publications including The Wire, Gramophone, MOJO, Jazzwise , and The Spectator . He also writes for the Guardian, Financial Times, London Review of Books , and the Times Literary Supplement . He trained as a composer but these days prefers to produce his own sounds playing piano as part of a weekly free improvisation workshop. Clark lives in Oxford with his wife, two children, two cats, and more recorded music than he can ever listen to. While the earlier version had been “much more driving and faster” with a lopsided Latin rhythm, this had a sexy 5/4 Take Five beat which “sits in the groove”, said Clark. Truth” begins with a propulsive vamp followed by an atonal explosion within the composition. Dave’s solo reflects that by starting with lines played in an incredibly nimble, fast jazz time, and after a chorus or two the left hand and right hand start moving away from each other as he moves into these extraordinary clusters, and any sense of regular meter or groove dissipates – it becomes a dialogue, really, between Dave and Alan Dawson. There are numerous points in the solo when you think that Dave is playing so many clusters so densely that he can’t possibly go any further ; but he keeps on pushing and pushing and pushing, moving further and further out. The energy momentarily dips, then he spins the rhythm around, and rotates the energy in another direction.

Around that same time a magazine called Jazz Review started, edited by Richard Cook, whose death from cancer in 2007 was a big loss to British journalism. At one time he wrote for Classic CD, which is when we met, and I told him I would like to write for Jazz Review, so he gave me some stories. After that it just snowballed. I started writing for The Wire, then Gramophone and newspapers. There wasn’t any great plan, it just sort of fell into my lap. Hopefully these quotes give an idea of the intense, well informed discussion that Philip Clark presents. Also, if you have lingering doubts abouts Dave's Jazziness, listen to the fabulous gem (imho of course!) of "Ode to a Cowboy" which is described by Philip as:During my research for the book I got in touch with Sony to see if they could locate tapes of subsequent recordings, but after several months of waiting, they responded by saying that the tapes were never returned, so we don’t know what happened between their first attempts at recording “Take Five” and to how it eventually became the version we know. We can’t know what conversations went on in between the two sessions and how or why Morello decided to drop that first rhythm and to get into the groove we know, but it was absolutely the right thing to do. One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.” For all the quartet had become famous for carefully executed compositions, they could also play entirely free. In a May 26, 2020 interview, Clark discusses his book with Jerry Jazz Musician editor/publisher Joe Maita. It’s a completely different rhythmic feel,” he said. “They all really struggle with it and it never really works. [Joe] Morello, who was a miraculous drummer, can hardly play it. He keeps tripping over it and he can’t quite get it to fit into the groove.

Layering one raw tonality against a different tonality has a complex psychoacoustic effect. Chords retain their basic identities while spawning a spectrum of notes, now forced into unlikely alliances, that blend and clash unpredictably. The brain, hopefully, grasps increasingly complex interrelationships between unrelated chords as our ears acquire a taste for a tarter and more aromatic harmonic palette.

PC . The idea of modernism was an exotic strand of American culture at the time, and Columbia Records honed in on that as a marketing tool. Lots of people were afraid of modernism, of course, but a lot of people were attracted the idea of modernist painting, literature, architecture… JJM .When Columbia issued their 50th anniversary edition of Time Out, they didn’t include any of the outtakes, but you’ve heard things other people haven’t. What did you discover in those studio outtakes that you’d like to share with us?

PC . Yes, all these years the discussion has been about the cover of Time Out, and it was always sort of there from the start.

down into his fingers, he gained ownership of them in a way unlikely had notation acted as an intermediary. PC . It was used for a piece in Jazz Review, but he gave me much more material than I ever could have used in a piece like that, and I would say that I hadn’t heard at least 80 percent of the material since 2003. The incidental discussion about time signatures, other muso's of the time, and the music label (and executive) influence on recordings produced is fascinating. Hopefully the following quotes give an idea of the style: