This Day in Music History (Birth of Dave Brubeck, ‘West Coast Jazz’ Pioneer)

Dec. 6, 1920—Dave Brubeck, a pianist, bandleader and composer who over a six-decade career epitomized the cool sounds of “West Coast Jazz,” was born in Concord, Calif.

Brubeck became the center of this Northern California-centered musical movement through his attempts to create a modern jazz sound that incorporated the advanced compositional techniques of French composer Darius Milhaud. His friendships with and advocacy for Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, and Cal Tjader placed him at the epicenter of West Coast Jazz.

Brubeck may be most recognized in his own right for a song written by the alto saxophonist of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Paul Desmond. Since its 1959 release, “Take Five” has become the biggest-selling jazz single ever, with the album on which it appears, Time Out, earning the distinction of being the first jazz record to go gold. Their interplay--Desmond, with a sound he likened to a dry martini, and Brubeck with his propulsive large chords--is especially remarkable on this recording.

Though Brubeck took piano lessons with his mother at age four and his two older brothers were also professional musicians, his future livelihood, let alone his fame and long life, was by no means assured. He gave up the piano at age 11 to concentrate on rodeo roping, and the following year, when the Brubecks moved to the foothills of the Sierras, he began to work with his father on the family’s 45,000-acre cattle ranch.

Even when the lure of the piano lured him away from his intention of majoring in veterinary medicine, a hitch developed in his new plans. His inability to read music was discovered by the dean of the music conservatory, who only relented on his threat not to graduate him when younger teachers protested that he could write great counterpoint and when Brubeck promised “never to teach and embarrass the conservatory,” the future jazz great said in a 1999 interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross.

In a 1973 humorous essay for the British magazine Punch, “How Jazz Came to the Orange County State Fair,” Desmond observed that one consequence of Brubeck’s ranch upbringing was a concern for “which way the hole slopes.” That same sense of the physical environment was paralleled by awareness of the musical landscape.

For example, Brubeck traced his inspiration for polyrhythm (i.e., playing more than one rhythm in the same piece) back to working on his father’s ranch, when he imagined the sounds most compatible with the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. And the exotic time signatures he heard in Turkish street music and multi-rhythmic African traditions while on tour led to his quartet’s commercial zenith, Take Five—a musical direction his record company accepted only reluctantly.

These journeys abroad would take on moral as well as musical dimensions. As early as World War II, while he was serving in General George Patton’s army, Brubeck led an integrated band. In 1960, at the height of his popularity, he took an even more public stand against racism, as he canceled a 25-date tour of colleges and universities across the American South that had banned the quartet’s bassist, Eugene Wright. (The background for this controversy is examined in a spring 2019 essay by Kelsey A. K. Klotz in Daedalus.)

Over time, spirituality became an increasing concern for Brubeck. Much of this was manifested in the 1960s and 1970s, when he found in Biblical texts the inspiration for works that addressed racial justice (e.g., the toccata Truth Is Fallen in 1971). But a decisive moment came in 1979, as a result of a commission from Our Sunday Visitor Magazine to compose a Mass. The powerful feeling of creativity he experienced not only resulted in To Hope! A Celebration, but in his conversion to Roman Catholic. (For an account of Brubeck’s musical evolution, see Michael Sherwin's 2003 essay "Jazz Goes Back to Church" in the Jesuit publication America.)

Honors came Brubeck’s way from early to late in his career. In 1954, he became only the second jazz performer (after Louis Armstrong) to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In the decade before his death in 2012 (a day shy of his 92^nd birthday), he received a Living Legacy Jazz Award from the Kennedy Center; a Lifetime Achievement Award from the London Symphony Orchestra; and the Kennedy Center Award from President Obama. He may have derived some of his greatest personal satisfaction, however, by performing with sons Darius, Chris and Dan—also professional musicians—starting in the 1970s.

(For a recent discussion of Brubeck music being released in time for the centennial of his birth, see this blog post for the magazine Jazz Times.)

(The image accompanying this post is “Portrait of Dave Brubeck”, with sheet music as backdrop, taken by Carl Van Vechten, Oct. 8, 1954. Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection.)