I bought the album on which Time Out, where you’ll find Take Five. There’s an interesting story behind the album. In the late 1950s, the US State Department wanted to demonstrate some of the US’s “soft power,” cultural power as opposed to ”hard power” [military, political, economic, etc]. The idea was to tour countries inside the Iron Curtain and countries that surrounded them to showcase a truly American art form – jazz. Let’s call this what it is – an exercise in American propaganda, but as a British officer once said in the movie Dunkirk [1958], “our propaganda is true.” I’m not sure how effective Brubeck and his fellow jazzers Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Armstrong were in their mission, but Brubeck took away the music of the many places he visited. He heard songs in 9/8 time in Turkey. When he asked Turkish musicians about 9/8 time, they told him it was as common to them as 4/4 time was to the Western world.
Upon his return to the States, Brubeck told his record company [Columbia] of his intention to record an album with different time signatures. At the time, most jazz was in either 4/4 or 3/4 time. Columbia hedged, so before Brubeck and his quartet would record this album, they asked him to do a more “standard” jazz album, the result of which is Gone With the Wind [1959]. These were songs from the “Great America Songbook,” specifically from the South. Columbia wanted to be sure to make some money should the Time Out experiment fall flat on its face. They needn’t have worried. Time Out became the first jazz album to sell over one million copies. Take Five equaled that feat. There are four more albums in Brubeck’s Time series – Time Further Out [1961], Countdown—Time in Outer Space [1962] (most of which was recorded during the sessions for Time Further Out), Time Changes [1964], and Time In [1966]. Yeah, I bought them, obsessive that I am.
Jazz columnist Ralph Gleason hosted a program called Jazz Casual on San Franciso’s KQED. In 1961, coinciding with the release of the Quartet’s Time Further Out album, Gleason had the Quartet on the program, during which they played five tunes – Take Five, It’s a Raggy Waltz, Castillian Blues, Waltz Limp, and Blue Rondo à la Turk. There is an interview segment between the first two tunes, during which Gleason asked Dave Brubeck about the intent behind his recent work:
Dave Brubeck: Jazz was much too tame. The way I wanted to set up the group was that the drummer would be playing one rhythm, the bass player another rhythm, and Paul and I could play in either of those rhythms or a new rhythm. Now, we’ve done this, and we’re doing it better now than we did ten years ago, and the album Time Out was the first album where we took a whole series of time signatures, different than we’re used to playing in, and the next album, the current album, is called Time Further Out.
Ralph Gleason: Now, how did you use this in Take Five, for instance, which you just finished playing?
DB: We recorded that about two years ago, and it’s a tune written by Paul Desmond. That was where we were going to take different time signatures than the usual jazz. Now, the idea was that jazz used to challenge the public and make them think in terms more advanced rhythmically than they were used to thinking in. In the Twenties, it was hard to get a group of people to clap on 2 and 4. This was difficult. But we haven’t gone much further. The public is ready for something new because everybody that listens to jazz can clap on 2 and 4, At this period, thirty years is long enough to be stuck there, so it’s time that the jazz musicians take up their original role of leading the public into more adventurous rhythms.
RG: And you think now this is what is now going to take place?
DB: Well, Take Five is proof of it. After all, the kids are tired of rock and roll, too. And yet they can dance in 5/4 time.
RG: How are you doing this in any other way with any other numbers that you’ve written and that you’re recording and playing?
DB: Yes, we’re the only group that I know of where we can play an entire concert and not play in 4/4 or even in 3/4…
RG: And most jazz is played in 4/4 time…
DB: Most jazz is. And more and more they’re getting to be more jazz waltzes, but we have four things in 5/4 time, and things like the Blue Rodo à la Turk using 9/8, a thing called Unsquare Dance that’s in 7/4 time, and there’s another thing in 7/4 that’s very difficult to play in. Three to Get Ready and Four To Go was the idea of using two bars of 3/4 followed by two bars of 4/4. Now, many groups do these things, and they play the first chorus that way, and then they cop out and then they go into 4/4, and our group, if we set up this pattern, we’re gonna stay in the difficult time signature throughout and improvise.
Before the recording of Time Out, there was Jazz Impressions of Eurasia [1958]. The same State Department tour that inspired Time Out also inspired this collection of tunes. The tour took the Quartet to fourteen countries, during which they played eighty concerts. Brubeck wrote six tunes, impressions that tried to capture the melodies and arrangements of music he heard in. Afghanistan, Germany, Turkey, Poland, England, and India. These weren’t exercises in different time signatures as Time Out. As Brubeck wrote in the liner notes:
These sketches of Eurasia have been developed from random musical phrases I jotted down in my notebook as we chugged across the fields of Europe, or skimmed across the deserts of Asia, or walked in the winding alleyways of an ancient bazaar. I tried to create impressions of a particular locale by using some of the elements of their folk music within the jazz idiom.
Similar impressions of Japan [1964] and New York [1964] followed. They were interspersed with the Time album series that started with Time Out. For good measure, they even participated in the bossa nova craze of the early 1960s (Bossa Nova U.S.A. [1963]). I bought all of those, too.
Of the Quartet’s live albums recorded for Columbia, there’ s Newport Live 1958 [1958], At Carnegie Hall [1963], Bravo! Brubeck [1967] (recorded in Mexico), and Buried Treasures [released in 1998, recorded on the same tour as Bravo! Brubeck]. You guessed it – I bought those as well. There is a wild card in the live catalog - Dave Brubeck Trio: Live from Vienna 1967. The reason it’s credited to the Dave Brubeck Trio is because saxophonist Paul Desmond wasn’t there. As the story goes, the Quartet played the previous night in Hamburg. After the show, Desmond partied a little too hard and missed the trip to Vienna. Without Desmond, the trio was a bit loose in a good way. They played with abandon as if to make up for Desmond’s absence. What struck me is that drummer Joe Morello was a madman. As if his playing on the studio albums wasn’t great enough, his playing in a live setting was stellar. This man could do no wrong. Buddy Rich counted himself as a big fan of Joe Morello. High praise indeed.
The Quartet broke up at the end of 1967. Between all the recording and the live work they did, they were exhausted and needed a rest. Brubeck wanted to write sacred music, Morello did drum clinics, Desmond didn’t want to do much of anything [which he accomplished for several years]. Bassist Gene Wright went on to lead his own group that toured HBCUs, joined Monty Alexander’s trio for three years, and later became the head of the jazz department at the University of Cincinnati [go Bearcats!].
The Dave Brubeck Quartet made a lot of music that was
safe for those of us who aren’t fans of jazz. Most people call it ”cool jazz” or “West Coast
jazz” [Brubeck and Desmond are from California]. I like to call it “jazz that's safe
for white people.” I highly recommend all the albums I mentioned in this blog.
