From My Shelves – Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck’s Greatest Hits (1966) Taken from Brubeck’s prime years with Columbia, this record has a solid core of the music that put the man and his quartet in the jazz spotlight.  Unlike a lot of jazz greats, Brubeck had an honest to God popular hit in “Take Five”.  This collection includes that plus many of his other best-known pieces “Blue Rondo a la Turk”, “Unsquare Dance”, “It’s A Raggy Waltz” and “The theme from “Mr. Broadway”.  It features the classic quartet lineup of Brubeck on the piano, Paul Desmond on sax, Gene Wright on double bass and Joe Morello on drums.

In the late 1970’s there was a new influx of jazz music in popular radio.  Most hardcore jazz fans looked down their noses at the music.  It was both, unlike anything I’d heard before and yet faintly familiar to my ear.  I enjoyed George Benson’s guitar and Chuck Mangione’s flugelhorn.  Spyro Gyra and Weather Report were doing things that appealed to me as well.  So I began to look for something else to sample.

This was back in the days of the record store.  You’d wander in and start flipping through albums.  Because I was perpetually on a tight budget my preferred bins were the sales ones.  You could find all kinds of interesting things for next to nothing.  So I was fascinated by this greatest hits compilation by someone who sounded vaguely familiar.  When I brought it home my father instantly recognized the name and nodded his approval.

What I found when I played that vinyl was music like nothing I’d ever heard before.  Yes, it was the cool jazz that was associated with Brubeck’s native California.  But there were these outrageous time signatures, things that my poor musically naive mind had never considered.  If the 5/4 of “Take Five” was something amazing (although I’d already run into it before in “Jesus Christ Superstar”), then the 9/8 or 13/4 were things I couldn’t even begin to understand.  What I understood was the music was compelling and hook-laden.  It was also music that I could listen to again and again, hearing something new each time.

And that quartet!  Wright’s solid, brilliant bass lines.  Morello’s amazing ability to carry those time signatures (which legend says he even couldn’t believe at times.  At the end of “Unsquare Dance” you can just hear him give a little whoop in amazement that they’d made it through), and Paul Desmond on sax.  Paul freaking Desmond.  I’d never really paid the sax much attention until Clarence Clemons and Paul Desmond showed me two very different sounds to be coaxed and wrung from it.  I’ve never taken it for granted since then.

I won’t try to tell you that I’ve become a full-blown jazz fan.  But this album played a very large part in the process of expanding my musical tastes.  And I can still listen in amazement to it.