Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time

Product Information

If you think back to what had been happening in the swing era, especially in the big bands-Duke Ellington, Basie, Benny Goodman-counterpoint was never really important. PH IL IP CL AR K is a music journalist who has written for many leading publications including The Wire , Gramophone , MOJO , Jazzwise , and The Spectator .

The bandleader’s early years and his rise from obscurity are closely examined, but the main focus of the story is inevitably the 10-year lifespan of Brubeck’s classic quartet, in which he and the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, his long-term musical partner (and the composer of “Take Five”), were joined by the bassist Eugene Wright and the drummer Joe Morello. It was an album that could melt into the background or send people to the dance floor but which also revealed, and continues to reveal, further harmonic, timbral, and melodic subtleties with each careful listen. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Brubeck opened up as never before, disclosing his unique approach to jazz; the heady days of his 'classic' quartet in the 1950s-60s; hanging out with Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis; and the many controversies that had dogged his 66-year-long career.There are little vignettes - the role of the US State Department in sending jazz groups out as cultural ambassadors, the way the mob ran jazz clubs and wrecked musicians' lives, the Brubeck influence on prog rock - but the core of the book is Brubeck's own music, described in loving, fascinating detail. Without it, "Ode to a Cowboy" would have been a pleasant enough riding-bareback-through-the-prairies theme; with it came depth and variety.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. An honor bestowed by President Obama with the words: “You can’t understand America without understanding jazz, and you can’t understand jazz without understanding Dave Brubeck. You think of Beethoven, or Stravinsky, he'd say, they are always leading you somewhere new, and for that to happen you need to move between keys. This was a perfectly balanced mechanism with an immediately identifiable sound, thanks largely to the ethereal purity of Desmond’s tone in the group’s foreground.By keeping the music at the centre, and interweaving the background of cultural, political and social change to illuminate the development of the music, Clark gives us a complete picture of the artist's life and work. To my mind, the adventurousness he displayed in his fifties is astonishing - check out his work with Lee Konitz and Anthony Braxton, or his ensemble with his sons, Two Generations of Brubeck.

But because counterpoint was so important to the way he thought, we all latched on to that and it became important to us. Alongside beloved figures like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, Brubeck's music has achieved name recognition beyond jazz. We start on a tour bus early this century and that's more or less where we finish but in between Clark takes us back and forth across Brubeck's life and his music.Each chapter reviews a different aspect of Dave Brubeck's career and does so in a very well argued and well presented manner. Brubeck opened up as never before, disclosing his unique approach to jazz; the heady days of his "classic" quartet in the 1950s-60s; hanging out with Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis; and the many controversies that had dogged his 66-year-long career. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Dave Brubeck at the piano with (from left) Paul Desmond, Joe Morello and Eugene Wright, in 1959. But finding a convincing fit for Brubeck’s legacy, one that reconciles his mass popularity with his advanced musical technique, has proved largely elusive.