![]() ![]() Brubeck liked to save money, didn’t smoke, and limited himself to one martini before dinner. He grew up on a ranch, and spent most of his youth wanting to be a cowboy (that accounts, Rice thinks, for the way he moves at the piano, “rid the piano stool hell for leather, as if it were a cow pony”). ![]() In June of 1961, Robert Rice profiled Dave Brubeck for The New Yorker, in an article called “ The Cleanup Man.” Brubeck, Rice wrote, was a decidedly uncool cool jazz musician. On the single’s b-side was “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” a song written in 9/8 time, like the music Brubeck had heard in Istanbul. “Take Five,” which is written in 5/4 time, was the breakout hit single. Later, back in the States, the group recorded “Time Out”-an album of songs with unusual time signatures. It was a traditional Turkish folk song, widely known-in Turkey.Īs the tour continued, Brubeck kept listening for interesting rhythms, and he kept asking his quartet to experiment with them. He hummed the tune, and several of the musicians started playing it, adding flourishes and counterpoint, even improvising on it. He told some of them about the rhythm that he’d heard on the streets and asked if anyone knew what it was. When Brubeck arrived, the musicians were taking a break from a rehearsal. Like many broadcasters at the time, the station had its own symphony orchestra. Later that day, Brubeck had an interview scheduled at a local radio station. It was in 9/8 time-nine eighth notes per measure-a very unusual meter for Western music…. Here's a 1966 video of Brubeck and his band performing "Take Five" in Germany.Walking around Istanbul one morning, Brubeck heard a group of street musicians playing an exotic rhythm, fast and syncopated. "But now, Dave can't do a concert without including that piece." It was even used as the theme song for the Today Show in the early 1960s. "Nobody expected it to be successful," Morello, who died last year at age 82, once recalled. According to Hall, the unorthodox 5/4 beat that makes Brubeck's "Take Five" so distinctive, developed because his drummer Joe Morello got bored playing 4/4, and started fooling around with an uneven time signature for kicks.One of his most innovative compositions, 1959's "Blue Rondo a la Turk," with its exotic nine-beat rhythm, was based primarily on a folk song that Brubeck heard while touring the Middle East in 1958, according to jazz writer Kevin Whitehead's Why Jazz? A Concise Guide.Brubeck's virtuosity led to his being appointed bandleader, even though he was a lowly private first class and was outranked by the other members. According to Hall, some of his fellow musicians were soldiers who had been injured in combat and were recruited for the group from their beds in military hospitals. Army in Europe, and while in the service he entertained other soldiers as part of the Wolf Pack, a racially-integrated jazz band - at the time, a rarity, especially in the still-segregated U.S. During World War II, Brubeck served in the U.S.He managed to hide the problem, because his musical ear was so sharp that he could listen to other students play piano exercises and then imitate them. Brubeck, who was born cross-eyed, had vision problems in his youth that actually made it difficult for him to read sheet music when his mother was teaching him. But they weren't just a stylish affectation, according to Hall. Brubeck's heavy, tortoise-rim glasses became his trademark - and probably inspired a lot of would-be hipsters to head to the optician.According to Brubeck biographer Fred Hall, Brubeck's father Pete, a champion rodeo roper, wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, but his mother Bessie - who thought he had a musical future - forbade him from using certain rope techniques that might injure his hands. The son of a cowboy and a piano teacher, he spent much of his youth on a ranch near Stockton, Calif., tending to cattle when he wasn't at the keyboard. Brubeck came from a colorful background, even for a jazz musician.Here are five intriguing facts about one of American culture's great treasures: Brubeck was a musical innovator who incorporated unorthodox rhythms into his work and infused jazz piano with classical influences, playing with what Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich calls "an elegance of tone and phrase that supposedly were the antithesis of the American sound." But he also expanded the boundaries of the jazz idiom, composing and performing choral and orchestral works that challenged people's preconceptions as well. His Dave Brubeck Quartet scored the first-ever million-selling jazz LP, Time Out, in 1959, and his signature song "Take Five" actually crossed over onto the Billboard pop charts in 1961. 4 in Connecticut, was one of the biggest stars in the history of jazz. ![]()
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