REMEMBERING DAVE BRUBECK AND CLAUDE BOLLING
DAVE BRUBECK
It is just over 100 years since the birth of Dave Brubeck and if we have never heard anything else that he composed or played, we certainly know about “Take Five”, which became the nearest a jazz track can become to a pop hit and established the Brubeck brand forever. It is also one of the few jazz tracks to be adopted as a popular mobile ringtone, not, of course, for Dave’s piano but for the haunting alto saxophone of Paul Desmond. Dave died one day short of his 92nd birthday, in December 2012. His legacy is huge but his career was dogged by carping criticism from jazz purists and commentators who were seemingly appalled by the idea of a white jazz musician becoming so popular.
Part of the criticism came as a result of Dave’s image appearing on the Cover of “Time” magazine in 1954, a full five years before “Take Five”. Many of those who believed that jazz was an essentially black music form were incensed and felt that the cover was robbery. Yet, although the criticism must have been difficult to take, Dave’s music could not be ignored. His innovations with time signature alone created a niche where few dared to go. If the release of the album “Time Out” created enormous excitement in the music world generally, it wasn’t just “Take Five” that took the headlines. There were other innovative hits such as “It’s a Raggy Waltz” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk” that followed.
An element of the criticism of Dave Brubeck’s playing was that he was heavy handed, too often attacking the piano rather than coaxing it. In a way, Dave identified the piano as a true percussion instrument but he grew and developed as a pianist and the beauty and lyricism of his playing can also be found in the many recordings that he has bequeathed. The ten CD set titled “Take Five” traces Dave’s formative years on the college circuit and more in the six years leading up to the release of the iconic hit. It also demonstrates the evolution of the Quartet itself. While Dave and Paul Desmond were constant, the bass and drums chairs changed over the years. The winning formula embraced Eugene Wright on bass, who has just passed away aged 97, who, according to Dave, grounded the group. The irony was that Eugene was black, thus promoting countless problems for the group as they sought gigs in the South of the USA. And then there was Joe Morello, who joined the group in 1956, a subtle and formidable drummer, particularly with brushes, whose drum solo on “Take Five” is etched in many people’s memories. Paul Desmond was not keen on Joe’s flowery style originally and there was friction from the saxophonist who demanded a steady beat. But they ended up firm friends.
Although I fully recommend the album “Time Out”, I would encourage all Dave Brubeck fans to dip into the earlier catalogue and track the development of the Quartet to the time of the release of “Time Out”, including a magnificent live session at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956. Beyond the big hits, Dave continued to play. The famous Quartet played their final concert in Pittsburgh almost 53 years ago to the day but Dave continued to grow as a musician and there are countless examples of his grandeur in solo performances and with various groups from the remainder of his life. He was still active when he died.
CLAUDE BOLLING
Claude Bolling may not have been a headliner but his music infiltrated the French musical landscape and beyond for many years. Born In Cannes in the South of France, just over 90 years ago. Claude Bolling passed away on the 29th December 2020. He was working professionally at the age of 15 after winning an amateur jazz contest in 1944 and was lucky to be around in Paris when a whole host of American jazz musicians came to the city. He was a devoted fan of Duke Ellington, both as a pianist and a composer and had a long friendship with Oscar Peterson.
Claude Bolling was one of those very talented European jazz musicians who could hold their own in the most illustrious of company. Whether playing in a trio setting or with a big band, he was the consummate professional and lent his musicality to many fine recordings. He also composed film and TV scores, well over a hundred in fact, including to the well known 1970 French gangster movie “Borsalino” which starred Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo. In the second half of his life, he composed and recorded a number of semi-classical pieces with famous classical musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma. These pieces had a set score for the classical musicians around which Claude Bolling and his trio would improvise. The most famous of these pieces was the Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano released in 1975 which he recorded with the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. This earned Bolling both gold and platinum discs owing to its immense popularity in the USA where it was in the Billboard Classical Chart for an amazing 530 consecutive weeks.
Claude Bolling will be sadly missed but his recorded legacy is wide and varied. Try the Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano.
THE MUSIC WE LOVE
A woman once asked the late, great Fats Waller, “Mr. Waller, what is swing?” The genial jazzman replied, “Madam, if you gotta ask, you ain’t got it!” We might pose the same question of jazz itself. What is jazz? Is it a fact that if we have to ask, we don’t get it, don’t understand? Those of us that call ourselves jazz lovers know what we like but are there categories of jazz that others like that we have no time for? Are we dismissive of the music we don’t like, preferring not to call it “jazz”?
The one constant factor in jazz music across the decades is “improvisation” and it doesn’t matter what category of jazz we listen to, if improvisation is not present then it may not be jazz we are listening to. And yet the early jazz pioneers in New Orleans and Chicago relied heavily on ensemble playing and it took a Louis Armstrong or a Coleman Hawkins to take jazz to solo improvisational heights. What did the old-timers think of these young upstarts? Did they say, “This isn’t jazz!” There was a time when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were dismissed as fakes. Bop was heresy. The French jazz lexicographer Hughes Pannasie would put against some entries in his Jazz Dictionary, “Deviated to bop”, meaning this musician was now lost to jazz and could not be saved! In the UK in the late 1940s and well into 1960s, the battle lines were drawn – you either supported authentic jazz and followed the likes of Ken Colyer and Humphrey Lyttelton or you deviated to John Dankworth and Ronnie Scott. There was certainly no middle ground.
That doyen of jazz impresarios, the late Leonard Feather, refers us to Gene Lees, lyricist, author and editor of the Jazz Newsletter. Mr. Lees rhetorically asked, “Where is jazz going? Nowhere – it’s there!! Jazz has the capacity, not seen in classical music to nearly the same extent, to renew itself from its own past.” In other words, we shouldn’t need to ask. When we hear it we should know it’s jazz even if we don’t like it. And that’s the point really. Our preferences do not mean that jazz is only what we like, what we like to listen to – that’s why there are so many categories of our favourite music. We can listen to trad, dixieland, swing, bop, post-bop, funk, jazz-rock, free jazz and so much more and still know that we are listening to jazz. Leonard Feather loved the innovations in jazz. He wrote:
The train has been running for a long time. The ride, though not without its occasional violent bumps, has been smooth and satisfying most of the way. I have seen far too many passengers dismount at too many stops en route, many of them gifted men and women who had evolved from names on a record label into friends, whose departure left me irreversibly poorer……….The consolation, of course, has to be found in the innovative artists who came aboard later and who have shown new directions to be taken………Getting there, the cliche tells us, is half the fun. But simply being along for the ride is pleasure enough for a lifetime.
Leonard Feather, The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era. Picador, London, 1986, pp 300-301
Don’t be shy. Try it all. You can still keep your preferences but always be aware of the broad sweep that is jazz. And it is constantly growing, ever organic and renewing itself. There is a band called Mostly Other People Do the Killing that hails from New York. It’s a quartet – trumpet, tenor sax, bass and drums. This clip is from a performance they gave at the Vortex in London in 2011. You may not like it, you may dismiss it, but if your ear is really attuned, you will know it is jazz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brTaGBondjc
OPENING
Let it be said that if music be the food of love, play on. The music of my passion, the music of my life and my being is jazz and it can play on as long as I have breath enough to exist. I am no expert but for the past 60 years jazz has been my soundtrack and the pleasure I have accumulated over the years has been central to my existence. Whatever else I have done in my life, my sanctuary has all too readily been jazz, in all its manifestations and styles. My jazz journey has taken me from New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta to Chicago and on to New York and the West Coast of the USA. Thence to London and to European capitals and across the globe to my current abode in Western Australia. The passion is still there and my exploration never stops.
My hope is that this blog will be a showcase for jazz – the musicians, the recordings, the history, the memories, the pictures and all manner of jazz-related themes and reminiscences that will, perhaps, bring joy to those who may or may not know the music. For this showcase is not just for the in-crowd. It is also for those coming fresh to the music, those who do not yet know whether jazz is for them or even what jazz means. For the aficionados, there will be much here that you know already and I hope that you will feel able to share your knowledge and your memories, correct any falsities that may emerge and enhance my own jazz canvas and that of our readers.
Central to the blog is the place where I live, the port city of Fremantle in Western Australia where I receive my live jazz diet on a weekly basis. The survival of jazz depends on ensuring that there are spaces for jazz musicians to be heard. JazzFremantle is my local jazz club, a not-for-profit membership organisation that provides weekly concerts showcasing jazz musicians from Western Australia and well beyond. A major purpose of the blog is to draw attention to JazzFremantle, to highlight its weekly programme, to introduce you to the musicians that play and the 25-year history that has brought us to this day. Check out the web site at jazzfremantle.com.au .
This is the start. There is much more to come and I have much more to learn to make this blog entertaining, informative and a true reflection of the magnificent sweep that was jazz yesterday, is jazz today and will be jazz tomorrow.