Dave Brubeck, 1920 – 2012

Woke up this morning to reports that jazz icon and legendary pianist, bandleader and composer Dave Brubeck died this morning. He was one day short of his 92nd birthday.

In terms of influence in making challenging jazz accessible to the mainstream, Brubeck’s seminal Time Out  with his Quartet (Brubeck, Paul Desmond on alto sax/clarinet, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums) pushed the bar on what the non-aficionados could and would digest and enjoy. Everyone jumps straight to “Take Five,” but the amount of classic songs Brubeck and his various bands recorded is staggering. “Blue Rondo á la Turk,” “Unsquare Dance” and “Kathy’s Waltz” are brilliant – when Paul McCartney is quoting your melody, you must have something special on your hands.

After this morning, the piano gleams a little less brightly, the world a little less soulful.

Comfortable Constructivism

In the history of West Coast cool, Dave Brubeck’s signature Time Out is considered one of the classics of the subgenre, topping even Stan Getz’s efforts and the goofiness of Chet Baker Sings. Its expressive smoothness and instant accessibility make it one of the simplest albums to pick up and spend an afternoon with. The entire record is an unprecedented musical experiment, and is filled with non-standard time signatures that initially baffled the critics upon its release at the tail end of the 50s. In spite of the reviews, Time Out has become one of the most popular and best-selling jazz albums of all time. The subversiveness of the album’s core idea – of mixing up time signatures and throwing it out in a mostly conventional fashion fades when this convention takes over and the music comes out dull and poignantly mainstream.

“Blue Rondo A La Turk,” the album’s opening track, starts simply enough; Brubeck and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond prance lightly over a near-constant barrage of beat from Eugene Wright and Joe Morello on bass and drums, respectively.  Straightforward shit.  As with the rest of the album, “Blue Rondo” mixes direct and open jazz with time signatures not typically seen in a jazz composition.  In this case, Brubeck and Desmond’s lightness, their levity are owed to a jaunty 9/8 signature, usually a part of Turkish or Greek tunes.  After a few bars, however, Brubeck throws the mood of his right and left hands into stark contrast, battling the now strained buoyancy of the opening melody with a doomsday punching of the lower register.  Desmond steps in to intervene; relegating the dark tones to merely peeking in from the background before he leads the quartet on a classic swing, soloing coolly over a vintage jazz rhythm.  The turn to a traditional 4/4 time for the solo allows the group to really let the solos swing and let the listener return to a much more familiar environment.  This has background, this has precedent that can be related to more simply than the complexity of the opening section.

Brubeck’s piano solo continues in this fashion, alternating bars with the alto before leaking into the crashing, orchestral sounds from before, but constraining them within the framework of an ultra slick swing.  Wright’s bass is everything the ear could ask for, punctuating the tune with an utterly soulful color that sparkles when the keys pepper the swing with light flutters.  “Blue Rondo” is the perfect lead off hitter; light and digestible by a mainstream audience but still giving subtle hints of the complexity and sophistication of the performing and composition to be found later in the album.   “Rondo” even verges on “Rhapsody in Blue”-esque grandiousity and theme, making good on the promises of cerulean color.

The song hits a turning point, and Brubeck’s piano pushes the quartet higher and higher and  crescendos with a mad thumping energy played with equal ferocity by both hands, pestered by Desmond’s sax trying relentlessly to keep up with the thunderous percussion and the keys until…a pause.  It’s the calm before the crash. The strain and drama of holding your breath an instant before hitting the ice-cold water,  the same feeling of absolute quiet a split second before the bomb goes off and the obsolete skyscraper implodes on itself, spewing out dust in rolling waves of brown and grey.  Morello provides the waves in the form of a tom roll, and the song exhales and splashes down to settle.  Breathe out.

“Strange Meadow Lark” clocks in at 7:22 and is the longest track on the album, as well as being perhaps the most passively digestible.  It begins with an extended opening piano solo, moving slowly and languidly through a melody straight out of a streetlight ballad.  Brubeck channeling Bill Evans.  Eventually Desmond’s coy alto breaks in an flowers the tune up a big.  This is the quintessential smooth cocktail music, and “Meadow Lark” lazily accepts itself as such, flowing through the background of an eternal 1959 suburban hip get-together.

Wright and Morello, as steady as ever, shuffle by with a barely noticeable swing that keeps the tune always moving forwards.  This is Brubeck and Time Out at its most elegant.  It is difficult to be challenged whatsoever by the track, it so is easy on the ears and mind that you barely notice it being there at all.  Pure atmosphere.  With the polar opposite to its predecessor on the album, “Strange Meadow Lark” comes to a quiet, sleeping close, rolling away as Brubeck’s fingers carry the song off into the distance, unhindered by the rest of the quartet.

The track epitomizes what is so popular and classic about Brubeck and Time Out in particular – namely that the music is infinitely accessible to even the most non-jazz ear, yet it contains many of the complex elements that make up the music of an artist like Ornette Coleman or Charles Mingus.  The extended piano solos that bookend the song lack any sort of time signature, yet they border on sounding like a dreamy pop ballad.  All of the musical snobbery without any of the work required to appreciate a difficult album such as Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch.

“Take Five,” the cornerstone and condensation of the album’s intellectual theory is an interesting idea in itself – an unorthodox song that is built so firmly upon a 5/4 signature and that features an extended, cavernous drum section.  It has become the landmark track of both Time Out and in the paradigm (there that word gets dropped again) of popular jazz.  Mainstream sounds typically appeal to mainstream ears and wallets,  but “Take Five” ditches this logic. There is no fluid, danceable bass-line or traded solos that carry the melody in different directions. The song is rigorously structured without resorting to constriction and suffocation. Constructivism to its most comfortable degree.

Brubeck spends a majority of the track simply comping underneath Wright’s rigid bass figures and Morello’s pulse while Desmond soars with a sax melody that embodies the spirit of California Cool.  It’s no wonder this song is what paid the bills for Brubeck and Co. for the rest of their careers.

Before long, however, Desmond breaks away from the main line and begins setting into place the sounds that his bandmates pick up in the percussion section, which is dynamically original and way left of mainstream. Most jazz drummers fill their 8 or 16 bars with a flurry of stabs, rolls, flicks, shuffles and crashes, but Morello takes the polar opposite route. His solo is gaping and spacious – what flattens your ear is not an avalanche of hits, but the unexpected absence of them. The yawning spaces between Tarzan crashes make Morello’s solo as concussive as any Art Blakey madman fill, while staying considerably more efficient. The drum section is also where the quality of the recording is most noticleble. Each hit comes down like a jazzy meteor, leaving crushed impact craters and exit wounds behind.

The unifying theme of the album is this contrast between complexity and accessibility.  Time Out is an exercise in rhythmic acrobatics; each song features an exotic time signature and typically only retreats to standard 4/4 time for brief stretches containing solos.   The quartet has attempted to  mix a potent combination of unorthodox beats and rhythms with a classic, ear-pleasing mainstream sound and tossed in a concentrated dose of West Coast chill for good measure.  It’s hip without challenge; it’s effortless pretentiousness.

This is why “Take Five” shines so brightly and is with good reason the centerpiece of Time Out also why the public gobbles up gossip about Charlie Sheen’s latest debauched porny bender. They get to peer into danger while staying firmly rooted in their cozy lives. “Take Five” exemplifies this. It is fierce without being violent, and completely confident without getting lazy. Here, the music is subversive and creative, but each of the other six songs on Time Out never dive as deeply into danger or are difficult enough to scare away the typical listener.  As a result, a bit of the veneer wipes away after multiple, intense listens. In most cases, Brubeck and his crew deep it safe. Occasionally, a moment of perversion will leak through (think Morello’s blows on “Blue Rondo”), but for the most part conventional, smooth and orchestral jazz wins out. A little bit of danger mixed with copious amounts of cozy goes a long way, and “Take Five”  is still clocking in at the top of many lists of the greatest jazz albums. Look at that again, and check out some the songs that Brubeck topped, a testament to how well Time Out permeated the unconscious of the mainstream listening public. It’s pure genius in promotion. You get to peer into the abyss without the threat of that spooky abyss peering back.