Saturday, June 04, 2011

Saturday Night Music, Dave Brubeck



This is my all time favorite jazz piece. What's yours?
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22 comments:

le0pard13 said...

This piece certainly is one of them. Grover Washington Jr.'s Mister Magic comes to mind, along with John Klemmer's Touch.

5:40 PM
Ed Gorman said...

I have so many many great memories of Dave Brubeck's music. It was a real part of my youth. I have three of his CDs. He always struck me as a classy very bright decent guy.

5:44 PM
Heath said...

I'd say anything by Count Basie, that always does the trick for me. Ray Charles' album "Genius + Soul= Jazz" is great, also. And the very early be-bop stuff from the early '50's, like Dizzy Gillespie.

5:51 PM
Dana King said...

These guys are cool on so many levels there's not time to express them all. Paul Desmond was one of the funniest men you'd ever come across, hit wit as dry as his sax playing. Brubeck has done as much to help young musicians as anyone. Joe Morello touring all those years practically blind, and Gene Wright staying in the background, solid as a rock so everyone else could play with time and tonality anyway they wanted to. Brilliant, top to bottom.

That doesn't answer your question. TAKE FIVE would certainly be in the top Ten of any list I compiled, though I think my favorite piece of jazz is Buddy Rich's arrangement of LOVE FOR SALE.

5:56 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Waltz For Debbie, Bill Evans.

6:05 PM
Charlieopera said...

You nailed it, Patti ... music in 5 time (Take Five) ... love it ... took months for me to lose the 4 time and learn this on the drums. I could practice another lifetime and never come close to being half as smooth as Mr. Morello ...

7:13 PM
David Cranmer said...

Absolutely love the man's music!

7:24 PM
Mike Wilkerson said...

Love it. Thanks, Patti.

7:37 PM
Scott Parker said...

This is tops for me, especially as an alto sax player. Shoot, the entire album is a gem. Also, these:

Miles Davis - So What

John Coltrane - Blue Train

Charles Mingus - Boogie Stop Shuffle

Stan Getz - The Girl From Ipanema

Miles Davis - Spanish Key

Vince Guaraldi - Cast Your Fate to the Wind

Miles Davis - Maiysha

Pat Metheny - The Roots of Coincidence

Vince Guaraldi - Linus and Lucy (really)

11:55 PM
Margot Kinberg said...

Patti - Brubeck certainly did know how to play! I like Charlie Parker very much, too, and although they're not similar, really, I love Miles Davis as well.

8:35 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I am compiling a nice list here. I need to empty off my MP3 and reload with these. If I can remember how to do it.

8:38 AM
Deb said...

John Coltrane's A LOVE SUPREME and the entire KIND OF BLUE album by Miles Davis. So many others, but these are the first two that jumped into my mind.

8:40 AM
Ron Scheer said...

Definitely KIND OF BLUE. Also Cannonball Adderley's JIVE SAMBA and Lee Morgan's SIDEWINDER.

I saw DBQ play "Time Out" in concert in 1961. Three of them actually left the stage and "took five" during that long drum solo. What a memory...

9:27 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I dated a boy in high school that loved DBQ but I was too immature at the time to go with him to see them. I remember telling him that was music for old people. Always will regret that I missed it.

9:29 AM
Yvette said...

Pretty much mine, too, Patti.

1:42 PM
Todd Mason said...

I have about 80 or so albums by the various Brubeck Quartets and other assemblies, including TRUTH IS FALLEN with chorale (some moving lyrics, some delightfully bad...Iola Brubeck is the lyricist on most of her husband's songs that have been published/performed as songs)...and for the Brubeck Quarter with Wright, Morello and Desmond, there are quite a few compositions I'd put ahead of the fine drum solo that is "Take Five"..."40 Days" and "Bluette" and "Blue Shadows in the Street" and "Countdown" (Morello on tympani!) and "Koto Song" (Desmond, who tried never to play the same solo twice, is always moving on this--the 1975 DUETS album, with just Desmond and Brubeck, is one of many brilliant performances) and "Truth" (as performed by the Mulligan/Dawes/Six quartet with Desmond sitting in).

George Russell Smalltet, including Bill Evans: "Concerto for Billy the Kid" (meaning Evans)...the modal improvisation album, JAZZ WORKSHOP, where Evans learned modal improvising so he could teach it to the Davis group so they could use it on KIND OF BLUE

George Russell: LIVING TIME (the suite that was released on CBS as a Bill Evans album...he was the featured soloist)

The Modern Jazz Quartet: hard to choose among the sixty or so albums I have from them, but "Softly as a Morning Sunrise" and other tracks off THE LAST CONCERT are hard for me to overrate. Also, the recent Apple Records rerelease of UNDER THE JAZZMIN TREE and the only slightly less stellar SPACE was Way overdue. "Exposure" and the Jimmy Giuffre Trio collaborations on THIRD STREAM MUSIC. Yow. (They did a fine album with Desmond, shortly before his death, too.)

Charles Mingus Band: "Hora Decubitus" on MINGUS MINGUS MINGUS MINGUS MINGUS. The rest of the album, too, but even that isn't quite up to HD.

Duke Ellington, Max Roach, Charles Mingus: MONEY JUNGLE the album. Very difficult to pull a single track.

Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra: "Manteca" and "Cubano Be Cubano Bop" (George Russell as a new pro composer/arranger) and the entire suite THE NEW CONTINENT (Lalo Schrifin).

Duke Ellington Orchestra: so much. The 1943 Carnegie Hall reading of "Black, Brown and Beige"..."Harlem Airshaft" in nearly any reading.

Count Basie Orchestra: KANSAS CITY SUITE is a sentimental favorite, all Benny Carter...but so much else, as well.

Toshiko Akiyoshi Orchestra: The INSIGHTS album, particularly "Sumie"..."Long Yellow Road"..."Road Time"..."March of the Tadpoles"

Gah. I must get back to work. There's a whole lot for all of us left to explore...Cecil Taylor...Gerry Mulligan and his various bands, particularly with Art Farmer (and later with Brubeck)...the Farmer/Golson Jazztets...

You've heard, I hope, the entirety of the DIALOGUES FOR JAZZ COMBO AND ORCHRESTRA, composed by Howard Brubeck and performed by the NY Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein and the Brubeck/Desmond/Morello/Wright quartet?

Brubeck and Morello, when I met them, were great gentlemen, and not jaded nor tired of fan inquiries at all. Brubeck was startled that anyone might ask him about his ballet, THE MAIDEN IN THE TOWER, most of what got to semi-final form can be heard on the COUNTDOWN: TIME IN OUTER SPACE album.

Old people's music. Wow.

8:28 PM
Todd Mason said...

"Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise"...Abbey Lincoln's recording of that one on ABBEY IS BLUE is sweet, too.

8:31 PM
Todd Mason said...

Monk. The CBS albums are criminally underrated, or used to be, particularly CRISS CROSS. But the TS ORCHESTRA AT TOWN HALL is fine, too...

8:33 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

At sixteen, I was...sixteen. I was content with THE BEATLES.

9:11 PM
Todd Mason said...

I never had a problem enjoying the Beatles and the DBQ...and the Weavers and Johnny Cash and Cleveland Orchestra...only the 101 Strings and such were more on my nerves than not (well, them and Journey and Alabama and wallpaper jazz and such...bad stuff in every mode).

9:24 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I was remarkably narrow-minded.
I will have a movie on Tuesday. BIRDY.

9:45 PM
Todd Mason said...

And, of course, it's a cheap irony that the biggest hit Dave Brubeck had was officially a Paul Desmond composition that is meant to be a Joe Morello showcase.

All four men contributed compositions, particularly to the TIME series of albums.

12:54 AM

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