Today Dave and
Iola Brubeck are celebrating their 70th anniversary. They have
supported each other during the ups and downs of a life in jazz, and I was
lucky enough to interview them both — ten years apart — in their Connecticut
home.
Dave Brubeck |
After the Hamilton
interview project was well underway, I began to get requests to do
presentations about the Archive to small groups. Some of these were at the
college, others in community venues. People often approached me after these
presentations and asked if I met with this person or that person, favorite jazz
personalities who were elderly but still vital. I don’t know if I would have
thought to pursue an interview with Dave Brubeck, but after one presentation at
Hamilton an alumni couple approached me and asked if I had done an interview
with Brubeck. When I answered that I had not, they said I should pursue it.
They said that Dave lived near them in Connecticut and they spoke glowingly of
him and his community philanthropy, and indicated he was very approachable.
Shortly thereafter I contacted the Brubeck Institute which was just getting
underway at that time, and I was directed to George Moore, the fellow who
handled most of Brubeck’s business contacts.
I was 14 or 15
when I first heard “Take Five” on the radio. It was one of very few jazz songs
that made the AM radio playlist in the sixties and it altered my listening
habits significantly. The Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond on saxophone
was the first group I sought out and began to analyze.
When it was determined
that I would be able to interview Dave for the Archive, my only contact was
with Brubeck’s business manager, George. He was helpful, but he made the idea
of conducting an interview with Brubeck quite imposing. First of all it was
decided that we would do the interview at Brubeck’s home, and George made it
clear in a polite way that Dave would not want to talk about the past, the
“Take Five” type questions. This is analogous to getting a chance to interview
Paul McCartney but being warned to not ask about The Beatles. The time of
Brubeck’s life with the quartet for which he is most renown is with Desmond,
but it was a relatively brief period of his life and hence the warning from
George not to go back there with my questions.
I suppose if I
had the opportunity to ask questions about Brubeck’s period in the sixties, I
would have asked him if he was surprised that “Take Five” made the AM
playlists, or if casual listeners were aware of the odd time signatures, liner
notes notwithstanding. I might have asked him why he added the 4/4 swing
section interludes in “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” with its 9/8 time signature.
Maybe I would have asked him to comment on Al Jarreau’s lyrics to the piece or
ask him how that came about. Early on when I began doing these jazz interviews
I learned not to make the mistake of asking questions which contained an agenda
or an opinion if I could avoid it. A question such as that might have been “Did
you add the swing section in ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ because you thought the audience
needed a safe haven by this part in the song?” Asking questions in this way
causes unwanted outcomes in the interviews. It’s not my job to try to dazzle
either Brubeck or any potential audience of the video with my expertise or insights. The point was to direct the subject and
then to create subsequent questions based on the interviewees’ responses.
That’s the only way you can possibly get at the true feelings, motives and
ideas of the interviewees. It’s not the time to hear any of my opinions, difficult
as it is to restrain myself at times.
I would have
prepared many questions on this era if I’d had the chance, and it probably
would have been a good interview. As it turned out, Brubeck reminisced on this
period in his life, but he went there of his own accord, without my prodding. I
was grateful for that meandering of thought.
George sent a
series of four cassettes of interviews Brubeck had recently done, and listening
to these cassettes probably represented the most homework I had ever done on
one person, keeping notes and trying to figure out how to engage him in subject
matter that was more recent, material I wasn’t all that familiar with, such as
his symphonic compositions.
Thinking back, it
clearly was the one interview that had me the most nervous beforehand. I wanted
to make sure everything went smoothly. Normally the equipment necessary to
conduct these interviews involved two cameras with lighting, separate DAT
machines for audio, and backdrop curtains. Typically in hotel rooms we’d move
furniture around to accommodate the set up. In the case of going to someone’s
home you want to disrupt as little as possible and get in and out as quickly as
you can, yet still get a good-looking video. I also knew that he had another
appointment scheduled for later that afternoon. The cameraman and I were
planning to drive that day from one place in Connecticut to another, and we
arrived in Brubeck’s community well over an hour before our scheduled
appointment, necessitating that we kill time and heightening my nervousness.
When we finally
pulled up and met George, it looked like an appropriate set-up. We would be
situated on a closed in porch overlooking a little ravine, and Brubeck would be
seated at his piano. We did not meet Brubeck until we were all set up and then
George went and brought him to the interview. I felt anxious for the interview
to get rolling, and for the challenge of picking-up that comfort level with
people, which is always the preliminary part of the interview. I wanted him to
feel that I was asking questions that he would enjoy discussing.
Watching the
interview now, I think I spent too much time on subjects I hadn’t anticipated.
I wasn’t prepared for the depth of his spirituality. I don’t know whether I
would have been able to prepare for it even had I known, but I recall not
feeling comfortable getting into discussions about religion. The things that
inspire Dave Brubeck to write seem weighty compared to what inspires me to
compose. To me, musical compositions are mostly about getting a start and then
solving the problem, how to get from one place to another in an interesting
manner. In one sense, though, that part of the musical puzzle is the way he
thinks, as when he talked about getting a commission along with some other
composers to do new settings of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” the choral movement
at the end of the Ninth. He didn’t want to do it, because he thought the piece
was sacrosanct, but when his musical mind took over he immediately went to the
challenge. How then could he do this? Oh! It’s perfect in five:
And then:
One interesting
moment in the interview was his description of finishing pieces in oddball
places, like writing a Christmas mass in the back of a Volkswagen bus as his
wife was driving them to visit one of their sons at summer camp. I remember
when finishing my graduate hours, taking a course called “The Philosophy of
Testing,” which was excruciatingly dull. I recalled being in this class in the
basement of a church in the Upstate New York boondocks, sitting in the back of
the room using a big book to camouflage manuscript paper as I worked on an
arrangement of “Your Smiling Face,” the James Taylor song. I remember that vividly
because I was in the talking stage of forming a new group and I intended to use
the arrangement for the new band.
There were two
significant moments in the interview. The first was about him traveling in
Russia, and talking about how the music brought the Soviets and Americans
together. As he spoke I realized he was starting to choke-up on camera and I
remember thinking to myself how far is this going to go, how long do I wait
before I try to say something, do I respond to what the subject is or do I move
into a different area. My response to this came from doing the homework and
being aware of a previous comment he had made in another interview. People
often say that music is the universal language. His previous interview comment
was that rhythm is the universal
language. I used that comment and also used the well-known piece he wrote back
in the sixties called “The Real Ambassadors,” where he was touting music and
its pioneers, including Louis Armstrong, as the real ambassadors, and thinking
he was one of them, so that’s what I chose for my panic-stricken comment. I
said “you said it the best, when you said rhythm ties humanity together. Am I
correct? That’s an absolutely amazing story. And you are one of the real
ambassadors. We’re most appreciative that you’ve done that in your lifetime.
[Pause] I’m really interested to hear about your vision for the [Brubeck]
Institute.”
The second
significant moment in the interview was when I played a small excerpt from a
Jackie [Cain] & Roy [Kral] medley of the two songs “Summertime” and “Summer
Song,” from their “Time and Love” album. It had some significant springboards
for discussion. “Summer Song” was his composition and his wife Iola’s lyrics.
It was from their musical “The Real Ambassadors,” and it was a song that Louis
Armstrong had originally sung. Also significant was that Paul Desmond was
playing on the cut from the Jackie & Roy recording. It was a nice moment
when he realized what it was that I had brought for him, and his spontaneous
and wholly positive reaction to it, a piece he clearly had not heard in
decades. Significant for me was his serene facial expression when he heard the
dissonance resolve in the a cappella section at the words “swimming hole,”
because the beauty of this was the precise reason I chose to bring that piece
from among the myriad I could have selected.
Afterwards I was
humbled and fortunate as he took me to his workspace. He had two pianos, one
being an upright that was set on cinderblocks so that he could play standing
up. I recalled that as a young man Brubeck had a serious swimming accident
where he hurt his back, and dealing with that injury was still part of his
life. He showed me the piece he had been working on that morning. The interview
was done in November of 2001, and the piece was about the war in Afghanistan.
He had mentioned it in the interview, and said that Iola had commented that no
one would want to hear this, and he shouldn’t write it, because it was too sad.
He played a little of it for me and asked what I thought of it. I can’t
remember what I said. I’m sure I said it was lovely or striking. I did refrain,
however, from making an idiotic crack such as “well if you work for a few more
years you can become a well-known composer, Mr. Brubeck.”
Iola Brubeck |
In the summer of
2011 I returned to the Brubeck home, this time to interview Iola Brubeck, as
she is a lyricist. Iola and I had been trying to find a time that was
convenient for both of us, and it was a relief to finally be able to obtain
this interview, as she is also in her early nineties. This time I was under no
constraints as to questions being off limits, and she seemed genuinely pleased
to have the opportunity to be interviewed for our Archive.
Over the years, Iola’s
impact on Dave’s career cannot be understated. It was Iola, for example, who
suggested they focus their efforts on the then-budding college circuit in the
fifties, an astute observation. Dave and Iola were both raised in California
and attended college at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. After
college, and as he began his career, Dave was working clubs in San Francisco.
Iola said it was Duke Ellington who advised Dave that if he ever wanted to make
it big in jazz that it was necessary to move to the New York market. At that
time they bought the house where they now reside in Connecticut, and proceeded
to raise their six children.
At the time of
the interview I asked Iola if she still traveled with Dave. She said that for a
few years they only traveled to places they could get to by car, for example
the Newport Jazz Festival. But she said that nowadays she didn’t venture far
from home. She said that it wasn’t exciting anymore to get on a plane and
travel.
Iola was a
gracious and humble interviewee. Like many of our interviewees, she didn’t
realize she’d be receiving a modest honorarium from the college in exchange for
her time. Hamilton requires that a W-9 IRS form be filled out for any amount at
all if funds are to be disbursed by the college. I found it delightful that
Iola didn’t know her own Social Security number. She had to retire to the
office in the house to fetch it.
A few weeks after
we sent the Brubecks a DVD copy of Iola’s interview, she emailed me to say that
she and Dave had watched it together and that they both enjoyed it. I felt
proud to be able to conduct an interview that would please Dave Brubeck, as
most interviewees do not acknowledge receipt of the finished DVD.