George Avakian, 1919-2017

Artists in all disciplines depend on a variety of behind-the-scenes personalities who bring their visions to life. George Avakian, who passed away on November 22, was an integral part of the presentation and marketing of jazz for six decades. In addition to his role as a producer, George was a jazz historian, a talent scout, and a prolific writer of LP liner notes. Early in his career he made a significant contribution to the jazz canon by compiling and re-issuing historically important recordings by Louis Armstrong and other jazz pioneers.

There is some debate about when jazz changed from entertainment to an art form. George addressed this question during our interview:

MR: Yesterday I had asked you a question about if the early jazz musicians thought of their music as an art form. And you said probably not.

GA: No not really. They were just playing happy music that they had developed within their lives, and they were happy making a living at it as best they could in many cases of course. Because a jazz musician’s life has never been easy unless you happen to hit it big. But I don’t think musicians ever took it seriously as an art form until they were told it was an art form, and that probably started, I think it would have to be during the World War II years. Because before there weren’t any articles being written in magazines, God knows no books to speak of, but once that started, quite a bit of pretension did begin to creep in. And some of it spurred I feel the bop movement because that was something new and hard to understand compared to the relative ease of listening to the earlier music because that was, among other things, dance music, social music, good time music, popular songs were involved. Bop became something which for the most part did not depend on familiar standard selections, even though a lot of the earlier compositions were simply variations on the harmonies which were themselves altered along the way, of standard tunes by Gershwin and Cole Porter and so forth. So it became a kind of an inside arty thing. And this was encouraged by the people who wrote about jazz because more and more writing about jazz took place in magazines.

George’s expertise in production and marketing played an important role in moving jazz not only into the retail marketplace but also into the greater culture. His range of projects included work with Louis Armstrong and other innovators such as Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, and Gil Evans. Notable LP productions included Benny Goodman “Live at Carnegie Hall,” “Ellington at Newport,” and “Miles Ahead.”

George was the co-founder of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and was named a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master in 2011.

From the Fillius archive, here is a link to the full YouTube interview I conducted with George on April 21, 1998.

Iola Brubeck, 1923-2014

Iola Brubeck, in 2011

In the process of gathering 300+ interviews for the Fillius Jazz Archive, I have found myself in a number of memorable settings, none more so than the two visits to the home of Dave and Iola Brubeck. My interview with Mr. Brubeck took place on November 21, 2001, and we made a return visit on July 17, 2011 to do a session with his wife, Iola. This time my wife Romy accompanied me as cameraperson and for logistical support. Going to the home of a jazz icon can be intimidating, but both Dave and Iola put us at ease.

Iola Brubeck passed away on March 12, 2014. She was a wife and mother, and an integral part of Dave’s career, acting at various times as manager, critic and as creative collaborator. Iola wrote lyrics for a number of important compositions, and acted as a sounding board and second set of ears for Dave.

One of their important collaborations was the play with music entitled “The Real Ambassadors,” recorded in 1961 with a stellar cast, and performed only once at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival. I’m happy to learn that “The Real Ambassadors” will receive its first New York performance on April 11 and 12, 2014, in the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center. It’s bittersweet that the Brubecks will not be at the performance. Iola’s contribution to this work was lasting and memorable. My favorite composition from the production is “Summer Song” — an enchanting piece that features Louis Armstrong on the vocals. We wrote about this appropriately in the summer of 2012, and you can read that entry here. There is a gorgeous cover version of “Summer Song” (combined with “Summertime”) by Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, featuring Brubeck’s longtime saxophonist, Paul Desmond. Oddly, neither Dave nor Iola had heard this version of their own song, and I was pleased that I could play it for them and later send them a copy. Personally, if any of my compositions had been performed by well-known jazz artists, I would have been all over it.

I was pleased to learn that the late singer Joe Williams (who was instrumental in the creation of the Fillius Jazz Archive) played a role in the birth of “The Real Ambassadors.” Jazz people all seem to know one another, and we get the impression that everybody loves everybody else. Iola told this anecdote regarding Joe and Dave:

IB:    It’s interesting too, and I should have brought it up when we were talking about where did you get the idea for “The Real Ambassadors,” because Joe Williams was a part of that. That summer I was in New York and I went to Central Park and Joe Williams was with the Basie band, and he was just so great. And the night before I had gone to a Broadway musical. And I said to myself Joe Williams said more and reached more emotionally with the Basie band that night than that big production I’d seen the night before. And that was one of the reasons why I started thinking in terms of a Broadway show.

MR:   Well thank you Joe. He was a big help to us getting this started.

IB:    That’s what I understand. Well I loved Joe Williams. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. He was another example of a black man who, right at the height of the sort of division that was going on in jazz was not effected by that. And I can remember in Europe one time, Joe and some other musicians were sitting outside a hotel in the summertime, on a sort of patio, and our car pulled up and Dave and I got out of the van and Joe got up from where he was sitting with the other musicians and came over and they embraced, he gave Dave a hug and so forth. And it was just kind of a way of him saying “cool it guys.”

MR:   Another great story.

IB:    A lot of humanity.

In my house we have a certain back and forth about creative work, and I often wondered what a conversation was like between Dave and Iola when he presented her with his latest effort. I do know that she did not simply say “oh yes, that’s fine, keep going” if she didn’t like the direction in which he was headed. Iola addressed this in our interview:

MR:   I’ve gotten the sense over the years that [Dave] has used you as an opinion and a sounding board about some of his work. When I was here ten years ago he was working on a piece. Unfortunately it was the beginning of the Afghanistan war, and he was working on a piece that I believe he said the text encouraged women not have children because the times were so awful. And you told him nobody’s going to want to sing that, it’s too sad. And it made me think that you’re fairly forthright with your opinions about his work.

IB:    Well yes. If it’s in an area where I think I know something I’ve always felt that I was sort of like the audience. And if I think there’s something that an audience would really love I will tell him that, or if I think it’s something they won’t — musically I won’t step in that area at all. You know I’m not qualified in any way. But going back to the first recordings of the trio, I remember there is a recording on one side, in those days it was 78’s so you had two sides. “Body and Soul” with Cal Tjader on bongos. And Dave didn’t think that maybe that should go on that side. And I said “that’s the best thing you’ve done” because I was thinking from an audience standpoint. And sure enough it was something that really went over extremely well. So I guess a sounding board is maybe what you would call it.

MR:    Well it’s very valuable to have an outside ear I think, because sometimes musicians can’t divorce themselves from what they did personally on the performance.

IB:    It isn’t always an objective opinion perhaps, but at least it’s outside the actual creating of the piece itself. And then of course we’ve worked together on a lot of different projects, and that way we are — I was going to say critical of each other, but we’re not critical of each other, we’re just honest with each other.

I asked a question of Iola that I have never asked of anyone else. As I was talking to this gracious and charming woman, I was trying to picture her displaying a temper, and I couldn’t imagine what would make her mad.

MR:    I don’t know if you can answer this question, but you and Dave seem like such peaceful people. I wonder, is there anything that makes you angry?

IB:    Yeah. Injustice. That is something. It’s not a just world. You have to accept that fact, but I hate to see anyone treated badly, not even the right to be themselves, and the stereotyping of people, that’s an injustice, by the color of the skin or the way they look or the way they walk or the way they’re dressed or whatever. That I really can’t tolerate. That’s where I’m intolerant.

MR:    Are you an optimist though? Is Dave an optimist?

IB:    Oh yeah. Why not? The alternative is to be unhappy and not enjoy the day as it is. I think you know, at this point in our lives we have to accept each day as a gift and I think that being pessimistic and all that angst that one goes through one times in younger people, it’s okay. I mean that’s part of growing up and coming through it. I think we’ve all had those periods. But generally speaking Dave and I both, even at the worst times, have felt well we’ll get through this.

I’ve been fortunate in this work to converse with and stand close to a select group of people who exude a consistently positive and uplifting spirit. Simply being in their presence made me feel better. Dave and Iola Brubeck both radiated this quality, and I feel fortunate to have had the chance to capture them on camera during their later years.

The Sound of Inspiration

The act of composing has been on my mind recently, due to the fact that I have compositions underway — self-imposed writing assignments for two annual fall events.

The two pieces are quite different: a Latin flavored duet for saxophone and bass; and a straight ahead chart for full jazz ensemble. A lot has been written about what inspires composers, painters, authors and choreographers, and there is no one answer.

In the course of my oral history project at Hamilton, numerous interviewees have cited life experiences as inspiration for their compositions, or for the way they improvise. Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon spoke about this in our interview from March of 2001:

Wycliffe Gordon

MR:   Where does your inspiration come from for writing new music?

WG:   Oh different things. It could be life experiences. I grew up in the church down south, I was in church every Sunday whether I wanted to be or not. But it depends. It comes from many things. But mainly things that are blues based and the feeling of the music of the church. And sometimes I just am walking around, I hear things and I start to sing. And I learned a very important lesson when I was in college. I write everything down now. Because if you don’t, I think it’s very mysterious how this music thing works in terms of new music coming to you. I’d like to be able to hear everything that I’ve written, get it out of here, on the paper, and maybe get the music performed. I love to play and to perform but I love to write. Because a performance can last — if you get it recorded it can last forever, but I would like to continue to compose music for various aggregations but not just jazz, and that’s what I would like to do.

Maria Schneider

Maria Schneider’s anecdote about her start as a composer and arranger offered a different story. Her experience is almost the opposite — it was actually the lack of a relevant life experience that set the stage for her defining moment, and the impetus to embrace the big band as her platform.

MS:   As far as jazz composition goes, when I did my undergrad at the University of Minnesota, there was no jazz program at that school. I also didn’t have a jazz high school band or anything like that. You know I’m from Minnesota, a very small town, and there was only one person in Windem that really knew anything about jazz, but she was an extraordinary stride player. This is kind of going off on your question, but it kind of leads up, because my education really started with her. And as I was learning classical pieces, she taught me how to play in this old stride style. So we were learning standards and I would come up with my own piano arrangements of them basically, with a little bit of improvisation. And I learned to play out of a fake book. The thing is, she didn’t tell me anything about the development of jazz. And there was no record stores, the only records I had were old Ellington records from the 30’s, Teddy Wilson, Artie Shaw — I didn’t have any modern jazz records. And public T.V. and public radio wasn’t so big back then. I had a lot of classical music, but I always felt sad because I felt that I grew up in the wrong era. I thought that jazz had died and I felt really sad that I grew up in the wrong era, because I wanted to be part of that. So by the time I went to college for music, I thought well maybe I’ll study composition. But I felt weird in the classical world. Because the classical world, in the universities especially, even more so at that time, tonality was something that, if you wrote something that was tonal, you were just shunned.

MR:   Is that right? That’s really weird.

MS:   Well it’s absolutely true. And I remember I wrote a piece for two pianos that was on a sort of composer forum concert at the school or whatever. And there were people looking at each other, because everybody was writing sort of atonal music and this thing was very tonal and romantic. And I remember seeing two older composers looking at each other and giggling. And I remember feeling, I just don’t have a place in this world, in this music. And then two things happened at once. I went to a Bob Hope show, of all things, and they were backed up by a big band from the college. This is right when I started school, and I thought oh my God, there’s a big band. And there was this kid playing drums, and people improvising a little bit. And I was like, oh my God, I want to — I had no idea this sort of thing existed. And this guy who lived in the dorm down the hall from me, he heard me playing some old Ellington album, and he said “do you like jazz?” And I said “yeah, you know what that is?” Well as it turned out, I didn’t know what it was, he knew what it was. He brought me all these records. He brought me Herbie Hancock “Head Hunters,” he brought me Coltrane, McCoy Tyner. I’d never heard a piano player play without a root before. So suddenly I heard all this modern jazz. And I’ll tell you, I was like in tears, because it was like oh my God, the dream came true that this music had evolved and I could be part of it.

In a wonderful bit of irony, Maria Schneider, who was laughed at by avante garde composers in the classical world, has now become one of the most adventurous and ground-breaking writers in the jazz world.

Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck cited inspiration that grew from other cultures, (Blue Rondo á la Turk being the most obvious example). Later in his life, excerpts from spiritual texts served as inspiration for his new work. On the day of our interview (November 21, 2001) Dave was working on a piece of music for voice and piano, inspired by both current events and an ancient text. The United States had just launched the war in Afghanistan, and Brubeck was reminded of verses from Luke 23, exhorting women to not bear children because of the tumultuous times. The piece was so dark that his wife Iola, a trusted confidant and advisor, could not encourage him to complete it. Dave then shared a brief anecdote about an earlier composition, a commission to celebrate a visit by the Pope:

MR:   When you go to compose a new piece, does it usually come from a commission that has some guidelines for what they want? A subject area perhaps?

DB:   In some cases yeah. The piece I wrote for the Pope, they gave me a sentence, “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the jaws of hell cannot prevail against it.” So I decided I couldn’t do that. They wanted nine minutes while the Pope entered the stadium in San Francisco. Candlestick Park. And I said you know I don’t have enough text to do nine minutes. And then I went to bed, dreamt the subject and countersubject of a fugue, and I knew how to do it, how Bach would have done it. He’d take a sentence and make it last a while. And so I did a chorale and fugue on that sentence and I got a second sentence from The Bible. I said give me one more sentence. And they decided they’d give me the next sentence, it was in keeping what they wanted. “What is bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what is loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven.” So I had those two sentences.

Vocalist and writer Jon Hendricks was one of the many musicians who collaborated with Dave Brubeck. Their work together resulted in the stage show “The Real Embassadors.” Like Dave, he is a spiritual man, and the term divine inspiration meant exactly that. He shared his thoughts about this in our interview from October of 1995:

Jon Hendricks

MR:   When you did this “Sing a Song of Basie,” it seems like a tremendous amount of writing went into this.

JH:   Yes.

MR:   Did it take a long time?

JH:   It took a shorter time to write it than it did to learn it. Like I can attest to the spirituality of the creative process you know, and there have been symposia on that, people have talked about that. And I know that when you’re in the process of creating something, you become God’s pencil, you know? Because you’re watching the pencil to see what’s coming out. So if you’re the one doing it, you wouldn’t have to do that. You would know what’s coming out. But all during “Sing a Song of Basie” I would be watching the pencil to see what was coming. And it was almost like revealed writing. It just came. And to this day if I do a lyric I do the whole band with the solos and all in one draft. And I go back and maybe I have to change one or two words here, but it just pours out. I think it’s revealed. I think that’s the way it is.

Bobby Watson

Saxophonist and composer Bobby Watson addressed the rare arrival of divine inspiration and the necessary work that follows:

BW:   Sometimes the chords come first, but most of the time I go for the melody. And I keep a little journal if I hear something I’ll write it down and then I’ll get back to it later. You may have a change here or there, but basically you know, if something comes to you, you write that down. You used to say like your divine inspiration — divine inspiration doesn’t come that often. And usually when it does it comes in four bars. Very rarely do you hear a song and it’s complete. I have written a few songs that way, it just comes so fast you can’t hardly get it down on paper, the whole song. I can probably count that on one hand. But most of my songs, you know you have to toil over them, and I get maybe four bars of divine inspiration. And with the craft you stretch that into a whole song.

Bobby credits a professor, Christian Williams from the University of Miami, for some lasting insight into the process. Professor Williams demanded that students start their composing by relating to an emotion, and then use only a melody to try and capture it.

The “four bars of divine inspiration” rang a bell with me. Both this summer and last summer I’ve had a serendipitous experience with composing and inspiration. In both instances there was a need for me to write for an upcoming event, as I mentioned in the beginning of this blog. The inspiration both times came on my daily morning walk around the block with our dog. For whatever reason, a bit of melody entered my head, with a specific groove. Last summer’s was a rather old-timey swing beat, circa the thirties. This year the melody had a strong Latin feel to it. In both cases I kept repeating it over and over in my head until I returned home in frantic search of staff paper and pencil to capture it before it left my mind. Then the work started. These were snippets, not nearly four bars, in fact they were less than two. But the germ of the idea was there. Where did it come from? I like the fact that we don’t know. I like the fact that there will always be a bit of magic, a new idea, a new way to improvise, or a new-found phrase never before used in a particular context.

My Latin idea will be premiered in September at a Hamilton College concert. Perhaps we’ll revisit the song when that concert takes place. For me, pressure helps. Desperation leads to inspiration, hopefully. 

Marian McPartland, 1918-2013

Marian McPartland and Monk Rowe
Photo by Val DeVisser

Today I am reflecting on the life and career of Marian McPartland, who passed away on August 20, at the age of 95. The accolades and tributes are pouring in, and almost all of them include the qualifier that Marian was one of the most accomplished of all women jazz musicians. In fact, if we want to pay proper tribute to her, it would be more appropriate to say that Marian McPartland was a wonderful jazz pianist, educator, radio personality, and a classy individual. While it is difficult to not feel melancholy at the passing of another legend, I keep reminding myself that Marian defied her parents’ wishes for her to lead a proper British life; she waded onto the beach at Normandy, forged a career as a major jazz artist, created the longest running NPR series, and touched the lives of countless fans and fellow musicians. This is a cause for celebration.

Marian emigrated from the U.K. to the U.S. in 1946, a time when a woman jazz instrumentalist was a rarity, and an Englishwoman jazz musician even more so. I think she enjoyed exceeding peoples’ expectations, and the fact that she was accorded a different response in the press and in the jazz community in general was less bothersome to her than most people think. She touched upon this in our interview, which was conducted in April of 1997 before a concert in Utica, NY.

MM:    I don’t think it was ever an uphill struggle for me, because I sort of had my indoctrination in working with Jimmy, and boy Jimmy was so supportive and proud of me. And so when I started at The Embers as a trio — Ed and Don, they couldn’t be nicer. I mean very seldom did I have a bad experience. The only problem would be like I remember the first review I had from Leonard Feather: “she has three strikes against her: she’s English, white and a woman.” And it didn’t bother me that much. I don’t remember being too upset about that. And if there were things it’d probably be from the audience like “oh you play good for a girl,” or “you sound just like a man.” I mean you don’t hear those things anymore. And I mean there were a lot of women on the scene: Mary Lou Williams, Barbara Carroll, people I’d heard before I got there — Hazel Scott, Lil Harden. I never felt that the women were in such bad shape I guess. They went ahead and they had consciousness raising and I remember talking to Barbara about this, and she said “well I didn’t know it was a thing, we’ve just been playing and doing our thing right along.” And I never had to feel that things were tough. I never did.

MR:    I think it’s often the case when the people that are doing it, aren’t aware that there’s a real problem. It’s the people that are observing from outside, you know, think there’s a problem that needs to be dealt with.

MM:    Well and there were some women who were trying to get gigs. Like somebody I recently had on “Piano Jazz” was a bass player named Coline Ray, was really wonderful, and she said years ago she would get a call for a gig and as soon as the person knew it was a girl, he’d hang up. But I don’t think it was all that prevalent, truthfully. There’s probably still an air of male chauvinism there. But I don’t care. I still like things like having the door opened for me and I don’t have trouble with political correctness. If the bass player wants to put his arm around me, that’s okay.

The Jimmy she refers to is of course cornetist Jimmy McPartland. In a story that seems like a fairy tale, Marian and Jimmy met and connected in a turbulent time. She spoke about her involvement in WW II and the direction her life took afterwards:

MR:    Can I take you back to when you met Jimmy and, it must have been quite an experience to be a young lady in World War II, you started with the British version of USO, is that right?

MM:    Yes.

MR:    Did you have a contract with them? Was it a volunteer thing, or was it a real job?

MM:    Oh I think we had a contract, it was a real job. In fact at that time I had the choice of either being dropped into the woman’s Army, or going into some kind of entertainment, so naturally I decided I would do that immediately, I didn’t have to think about it at all. So the pay was pretty decent, and we played all over the country. Accommodations and travel were not always the best because there was a war on. And there would be bombs dropping once in a while. But then I switched and went with regular Merchant USO. Somebody said “oh you ought to join USO, the pay is better and you’ll meet all these wonderful American guys” stuff like that, and I though oooh. So that’s what I did. And then we worked, it would be a regular show, like with a comedian or a singer or dancer, they had a guitar player and then I did the piano player thing for the whole show. So then it got to be when they were going to have the invasion and after the invasion, they were sounding people who wanted to go over to France and of course I wanted to go and did go with the first group which was about a month after the invasion. And we went over in a boat and we had helmets and combat boots and everything the GI’s had except the guns. You know I felt like MacArthur wading ashore onto Omaha Beach and straggling up the beach and we knew how to put up pup tents. But we never had to because somebody always did that for us. I should have kept a diary. And we went through all of these miserably bombed and strafed areas that were just a mass of rubble, and we finally arrived in Belgium in a rest area, and it was called Eupen, and they had a big band and they had all kinds of stuff going on and the area shows would come there to rest, and they had an Officer’s Club, and that’s where I met Jimmy. One of the people, Willy Shaw, was a comedian from Chicago, knew Jimmy, and said “we can’t have this man out there being in combat, we’ve got to get him into Special Service,” so that’s what they did. So that’s how I met Jimmy, because he then became a member of this little band. But first they had a big party for him, all the band members and people are saying “Jimmy McPartland’s coming, Jimmy McPartland’s coming,” and I’m going “who?” I’d heard of Bud Freeman and Sidney Bechet, but I hadn’t heard of Jimmy yet. And they had a party in this tent and they were going to have a jam session, and Jimmy always told me afterwards, “oh I saw you across the tent and I knew you wanted to play and I said to myself ‘oh a woman musician, she wants to play and I know she’s going to be terrible,’ and you were,” he says. But I really wasn’t terrible I think I just didn’t know how to play with a big band at that point.

MR:    So you guys hit it off pretty quickly?

MM:    Yes we did. And I guess going out every day early, out to the carrier to entertain the troops and going — maybe had to perform on a flatbed truck or they’d build a stage out of boards or it would be raining and they’d put a top over the piano and stuff like that. It wasn’t exactly the greatest. But they just loved it, and then they would wine and dine us and oh, it was something. So you know there we were, so I think it was a case of propinquity — that’s a good word — like we were there and so it just followed on that we would get together. And of course I admired Jimmy’s playing and he started to tell me that he liked my harmony so one thing led to another.

MR:    From a logistical standpoint it must have been interesting seeing what kind of instrument you were going to deal with every day — what kind of piano were they going to find for me?

MM:    Well it’s funny because I thought it was going to be terrible, in fact one of the prerequisites of the job was that you would learn to play accordion in case there were no pianos. Oh, boy, I’ll never live this down. But I never had to actually play the accordion because they had these wonderful little like a G.I. piano which was not quite a full keyboard, like a small upright, painted gray, Army style. And I always got to play on one of those. I never had a problem. And then when we were in Eupen, Jimmy went out to somebody’s house, some people that had been branded as traitors, and removed the piano and put it on a truck and brought it over to the theater for me, and this was like “oh, you went out and got a piano for me, oh.”

MR:    What a nice gesture.

MM:    So that sort of fixed the deal right there. So we got married over there in Aachen, Germany.

Her music, life and career prospered in the United States, first with the assistance of her husband Jimmy and his musical connections, and soon after as a leader of her own trio.

My association with Marian dates back to 1975. For a few years I taught music in Verona, NY, a rural school district outside Utica. I was flabbergasted one day to find a note in my mailbox, distributed to all the teachers, about an upcoming assembly for the students featuring pianist Marian McPartland. I specifically remember saying to the nearest teacher, “Marian McPartland is coming to VVS!?” Her response was “who is Marian McPartland?” As it turned out, our principal was significantly hipper than we had realized. He was a jazz fan and when he saw Marian’s name on the list of performing artists sponsored by our local BOCES, he jumped at the opportunity. I will never forget Marian performing before an auditorium full of middle and high school students. She handled it well, and in recognition of the then-current pop music, included Stevie Wonder’s “You are the Sunshine of my Life” in her performance. In what was a first for me, I approached her afterwards and wondered if she might return during the school year to perform as a guest with my newly-formed high school jazz ensemble. She did, and the concert was a great success. Marian exuded class and was attuned to the level and needs of the students on stage. In reflecting on her visit I am reminded that the life of a musician, no matter where they are in the hierarchy of the jazz community, is never an easy one. Marian would have been 54 at the time of this visit, at the height of her career, yet she was playing a rural high school assembly in Central New York, and gladly doing so. Her only complaint was that the Verona Motel had no phones in the rooms.

Our paths crossed a number of times after that, most significantly in 1997. By that time I had been at Hamilton for three years and was in the midst of our jazz oral history project. She brought her trio to a nearby Utica venue for a concert, and soon after received an honorary degree from the college, one of 13 jazz musicians so honored to date. The last time I saw Marian perform was in Toronto at the 2003 IAJE conference. Marian would have been 85 at the time, and was slowed by age and arthritis. When I saw her hands before the concert I could not imagine that she was about to go on stage with a piano trio. But like many veteran musicians, Marian learned how to compensate and her stage presence, dry wit, knack for creating perfect set lists, and her always-keen harmonic sense enabled her to enthrall a standing-room-only audience.

Most jazz fans are familiar with the photo called “A Great Day in Harlem” by Art Kane, taken in 1958. Marian was one of three women among the 57 jazz artists pictured that day. She stood next to Mary Lou Williams, one of her musical heroes, and when a restaging of the picture was conducted in 1997, Marian was one of the nine remaining musicians. The updated 1997 photo drew a considerably large jazz contingent and Marian can be spotted next to the late Dave Brubeck, a mutual admiration society. I stumbled across this audio YouTube today of Dave and Marian playing “Take Five” together.

Her personality and spot-on memory enabled her to make the NPR program “Piano Jazz” a long running hit. For over three decades Marian interviewed and performed with a long list of both veteran and up and coming musicians. Her willingness to take risks and her encyclopedic knowledge of the history of jazz piano enabled her to perform with everyone from Eubie Blake to Cecil Taylor, and with young jazz artists of today. When it came time for Marian to step aside, she chose fellow pianist Jon Weber to become her replacement. When I interviewed Jon at Hamilton College in June of 2012, he was understandably honored to fill the role:

JW:    I am humbled beyond belief that Marian has chosen me to follow her concept into the next generation. I’m very, very happy about it. She started something in 1978 from scratch. There were no jazz radio programs like it. There wasn’t one where you brought on a guest, another musician, and they played together, and they said “oh remember that time at the Hickory House” “remember at the Palladium when the Duke was there, yeah, and Tito Puente walked in and Monk was there.” They have these stories, these jazz stories, that sort of humanize jazz musicians and in a little bit take away from the mystique and make them, oh jazz musicians aren’t so brooding and indecipherable as I had thought, they’re just regular people. And yes, to follow Marian’s concept is an honor that I am humbled beyond belief. I try to research everything about every guest that I have on the show. Because I want to know something, I want to ask something if I possibly can that hasn’t been asked before. Marian does this naturally. Marian could just listen to someone’s records, in those days the albums and probably iron clothes and make a turkey and, you know, write a chart. And then the next day go on the show and say “oh yes on the eighth album on the second side that thing you did in your solo, I got a kick out of it.” She remembers everything.

Marian had an adventurous musical spirit, and during our pre-concert interview in Utica I asked her about playing free jazz, and mentioned one of her more harmonically challenging records called “Ambience.”

MM:    Michael Moore had written several of those tunes that were on “Ambiance” and then I had written “Ambiance” and there was a couple of other things. But we had this very freestyle drummer too, Jimmy Madison. He was on most the tracks, and Billy Hart was on the rest of it. And boy if I could just set up that same thing again I probably would get into that same bag. You’re making me think I should do some more. I mean I can and I do, like every time on “Piano Jazz” if the guest wants to do it, we’ll do at least one free piece. Some of them turn out better than others. It’s always a kick doing it.

MR:    Well there’s always tonight.

MM:    Yeah, that’s true.

Two hours later, at the halfway point in her concert she said to the audience, “well my friend Monk Rowe challenged me to play something free tonight, so here we go,” and they launched into an extemporaneous exploration. I don’t have much of an ego, but I will say that I was proud to have had Marian call me her friend.

Marian so inspired me as an interviewee that I tried to capture her personality in this song called “Queen’s Waltz.”

Global Channels

An argument can be made that everything comes from someplace else. Even jazz, frequently extolled as “America’s only original art form,” is a blend of disparate styles blended together into something new. British pianist Keith Ingham came to America to pursue a career in jazz, and described this unique blend with great passion:

MR:    Are there any counterparts of American musicians who’ve gone over to England and learned as much about your music as you have about —

Keith Ingham

KI:   What do you mean, the British music? I mean we never had anything as wonderful as jazz. You see, I think it comes from a melting pot society where you’ve got all these different strains coming together. That’s the whole point. You had Italians here, so you have these wonderful lyric qualities; you have African-Americans, that rhythmic thing they do they brought that looseness and that sense of swing; you had the Germans here so you have the correctness of intonation and things like that. You have that whole melting pot. And they all brought their music. You have the Russians with all that minor key, soul stuff. It’s wonderful. Gershwin is Russian but also very Jewish and that kind of sad, soulful feeling that’s in his music. It’s the melting pot that America is that made American music. That’s what it is. There’s nothing like it in the world. You’re so lucky, don’t lose it, because it’s your great contribution to world culture. I mean it’s your Beethoven, your Haydn, your Schubert, your Debussy, your Ravel, your Rachmaninoff, your Stravinsky, it’s all there. It’s Duke Ellington, it’s Fats Waller, it’s Henry “Red” Allen, it’s Bix, it’s Eddie Lang, it’s Joe Venuti, it’s up there. And God bless it.

Saxophonist and arranger Frank Foster expressed it succinctly: “we have such a melting pot here, we’re all into each other’s culture.”

Until the early part of the twentieth century, America’s music, dance and visual arts were mostly based on European styles. The cultural tables have turned in major fashion as we now identify music as America’s most significant export. It’s a shame that America can’t be compensated financially. If we could charge for the export of our creative innovations, our trade imbalance would immediately be in the black. Musically the world is now hard-wired. National and geographical borders are meaningless as musical genres spread globally via the internet.

It’s no secret that America’s musical seeds have been spread around the globe and found fertile ground. European musicians jumped on the jazz bandwagon as early as the 1920’s. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones learned their lessons well from American blues and rock & roll, and sent it back to us, new and improved.

I got my first taste of the pervasive effect of American popular music some years ago when I played a gig for a Korean fraternity at Colgate University in Upstate New York. On our break a student asked if he could play their music through our PA system. I obliged, and in my naïveté expected to hear something exotic and different, perhaps flute-based pentatonic melodies with some twangy plucked sound from an unknown instrument. What I heard was American-based pop music, rhythms, forms and instrumentation, with Korean lyrics. More recently I became acquainted with a Hamilton College student who had traveled to the college from Kenya. In getting to know him, I asked some basic questions about his home and surroundings. I was curious about the kind of music popular in his hometown. His answer was “Kenny Rogers.” Kenny Rogers!? And even in the last month, the evidence mounts. I recently played a lunchtime gig at a Chinese restaurant, run by immigrants from China. The presence of a saxophone player in the group prompted one of the young waiters to ask me “does the sax player know the song ‘Go Home’?” “Go Home?” I asked. “Come Home” he stumbled with his English. Then a vague memory surfaced. I think Kenny G had such a song. I said, “do you mean ‘Going Home’?” He said, “oh yes, Kenny G, Kenny G ‘Going Home’. Kenny G is very big in China.” Nelson Mandela has survived to recently see his 95^th birthday. Outside the hospital his well-wishers sang to him, first in their Sotho dialect, then in the Dutch-based Afrikaans, and finally in English. The melody? But of course, “Happy Birthday,” written by two American nursery school teachers.

I am currently seeking to collaborate with musicians from Utica’s refugee population, especially those from countries in southeast Asia. In attending their cultural presentations I am hearing more of the same. The singers are being accompanied by play-along tapes that could just as easily be accompaniment for Justin Bieber.

But it’s not a one-way street. American musicians embrace influences from around the globe: Latin jazz, Celtic rock, and other combinations now are common concert fare, and many bands tout their ability to combine exotic styles.

Academia has also played a major role in exposing and presenting music from other continents. I recently attended a summer concert at the Eastman School of Music, one of the most prestigious conservatories in the country. On the bill was music from Indonesia in the form of a Gamelan Angklung (ensemble), an Mbira orchestra playing music from Zimbabwe, and a Pan-African percussion and dance ensemble led by Kerfala (“Fana”) Bangoura. It was a fascinating evening of music, with sounds and sights that were a first for many in the audience. As with our home-grown jazz and blues, America has now taken traditional music from other countries and placed it in academic and concert settings. It was informative to view the members of the Gamelon and Mbira ensembles, an all-encompassing cross section of gender and generations, all of them energetic and committed to the performance of this music from the other side of the globe, and all of them from Central New York.

Fana Bangoura

Only the African percussion and dance ensemble included members who can claim their performance as part of their native culture. Fana, the leader, was a longtime member of Guinea’s prestigious “Les Ballets Africans and Les Percussions Des Guinee” national performing group. A number of his members include djembe players from other West African countries, and the rest of his ensemble is made up of interested Rochester residents. I am happy to say that my own daughter held down an incredible anchoring pulse on a trio of drums known as the dun dun. Calling this music polyrhythmic would be a understatement. I’m sure everyone in the audience experienced a dramatic increase in their pulse and blood pressure as the six djembe players added to the groove of the dun dun, and Fana improvised over the top of it, like our finest jazz artists. The dancers in their native garb added a further rhythmic and visual component. There’s something primal, intoxicating and magnetic about the sound of drums. The wood and animal skin are made to come alive with the energy of human hands, triggering a visceral excitement, no matter where you are on the globe.

Our friend Dave Brubeck knew it. He said “rhythm is the universal human language.”

Ironic Iconic Hits

So how do you write a hit song? You can find books and blogs that profess to have the secret. There have been songwriting teams called “hit makers,” and it’s safe to say there are certain formulas that increase the chance of a song becoming a hit. In the jazz world some of the most successful recordings have come about through a combination of serendipity and a large dose of irony. One reason I call them “ironic hits” is that the musicians who made them famous were not the writers of the tune, although they were composers themselves. Let’s take a look at three.

Duke Ellington, arguably America’s greatest composer, was a well-established bandleader and hit maker in 1940. Ellington was a member of ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and when the organization raised its licensing fees, Duke found he could no longer perform his own compositions during live radio broadcasts. This happened shortly after he had hired composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn brought an arrangement to the band called “Take the A Train.” Jazz lore has it that the title came from the first line of Ellington’s directions that would lead Strayhorn from his Pittsburgh home to Ellington’s apartment in Harlem. Take the A Train. Duke’s son Mercer Ellington, also an arranger, stated that he found Strayhorn’s original draft for the song in the trash. Strayhorn stated that it was too similar to a Fletcher Henderson arrangement, and so had discarded it. Whether or not that is true, it’s fascinating to realize that one of Ellington’s most enduring songs was not his composition at all. Ellington had the good sense to embrace talent when he found it, and he replaced his then current band theme, “Sepia Panorama” with Strayhorn’s first effort. The fact that Duke’s new collaborator was not an ASCAP member solved the licensing issue for a time.

A measure of a hit is not only the impact it first makes, but how long it lasts. “Take the A Train” is now a standard at jam sessions and any swing affair. Like most instrumental hits, lyrics were added later, in this case by vocalist Joya Sherrill, who later became a singer with Ellington. Joya’s lyrics hold up fairly well and are essentially an early Google Map: “You must take the A train/To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem.”

Amongst Ellington’s most ardent admirers was composer and pianist Dave Brubeck. When Brubeck was chosen to be on the cover of Time magazine, he unequivocally stated “it should have been Ellington.” The song “Take Five” has somehow entered the consciousness of the general population and provides another fascinating story of odd circumstances and irony. One of the first things I noticed after being hooked on the song and purchasing the LP was that the composer was the group’s saxophonist, Paul Desmond. As a devourer of liner notes and music trivia, this fact was not lost on me. Brubeck, whose success was tied to his writing, was not credited for what became the band’s biggest hit, and indeed went on to become the largest selling jazz single in history. The story is slightly more complicated. Apparently drummer Joe Morello was often given an extended solo feature at the end of their concerts in the early sixties. Often he would transition into the rarely-played time signature of 5/4, and eventually suggested to Dave that perhaps a song should be written over this groove. Paul Desmond stepped up and said “I’ll write something.” According to an NPR interview, Brubeck stated that Paul came back with two seemingly unrelated saxophone melodies to fit over the 5/4 time signature. Brubeck formed them into an A-A-B-A structure and provided the ear-catching vamp. The irony continues. It is a Brubeck hit without a hint of a piano solo, and features two other members of the group. Desmond thought the song was a throwaway and joked that his royalties would allow him to buy a new electric shaver. He also didn’t like the title “Take Five” suggested by Brubeck. In addition, Columbia Records was not pleased with the album as a whole. In her interview in 2011, Iola Brubeck reminisced about the attitude of the record company:

MR:    Were you surprised at the success of “Time Out?”

IB:     Of “Time Out?” Well yes. There was no anticipation that it was going to be a hit of any kind. And in fact, it’s an old story now that Dave has often told of having to fight at Columbia to even have it released and Goddard Lieberson liked the concept and he said he thought he could sell it to the people on the west coast maybe, and he took “Take Five” and went out to sales meeting on the west coast, saying this is something new and I think we can really push this, and the sales people saying “no way.” So it really was a result of — God bless ‘em — disc jockeys who were looking for something different to play and saying well this sounds different and then putting it on and then it got a public reaction, and then it started taking off. So it was really the public deciding that this is what they wanted to hear. It broke the mold and that’s always a little challenging to a lot of people who don’t know how to handle it. And of course by this time — it’s notorious in jazz history lore — that terrible review that Downbeat gave “Time Out.” I think it got a star and a half or something.

Thanks to the unique quirkiness of the song and those DJ’s, “Take Five” took its place in music history. The record company put out a 45 RPM single which required some snipping of the drum solo to fit into the three minute format. “Take Five,” has certainly stood the test of time and has since been lyricized by Al Jarreau, “Won’t you stop and take a little time out with me/Just take five, just take five.”

When Billboard released their 1961 Top 100 chart, “Take Five” stood at #95, preceded at #94 by Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again,” and followed by Elvis Pressley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight” at #96. You’ll never see that in this day and age. Imagine a Wynton Marsalis recording on the charts, sandwiched between Justin Bieber and Adele.

I’ve stated numerous times that Cannonball Adderley was my musical hero. Not only was he the quintessential alto saxophonist, but also a savvy bandleader and major contributor to the soul jazz movement. In February of 1967, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet landed at #11 on the Billboard charts with the song “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” Cannonball wrote the occasional tune, but it was brother Nat who had penned some of the previous successes. In this case the liner notes conveyed that this Gospel-tinged song, steeped in American soul, was written by an Austrian. Pianist Joe Zawinul was born in Vienna and spent ten years as a member of Adderley’s quintet, contributing many compositions to the band’s repertoire, none bigger than “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”

Musicians don’t usually know when they have a hit on their hands, but Cannonball’s drummer Roy McCurdy stated in his interview that they thought they had something with potential.

MR:    With tunes like “Mercy, Mercy” and stuff, when you read them in rehearsal, did you get a sense that this tune is going to sell a lot of records?

RM:    Yeah. You know we were hoping, we were always experimenting. That band was experimenting all the time. And we played straight ahead jazz, we played all kinds of stuff. So when Joe [Zawinul] brought that tune in I think we were rehearsing in Teaneck, New Jersey. We rehearsed in Nat Adderley’s basement out there. When he brought that tune in he says “listen to this,” and he started playing it. And we were just starting to get into the electronics you know, where we were using electric piano. And we had a Wurlitzer that we wanted to use. And he played this tune and we says, “yeah, let’s try it.” We rehearsed it and got it together. We went and tried it and people loved it.

Perhaps the atypical characteristics of “Mercy, Mercy” are what propelled it to that unlikely spot on the charts. The song is unlike a hard-swinging Adderley performance. The slow groove is intimate but not overwhelming. The melody is simple but builds powerfully to its climax. There are no solos by Cannonball on saxophone nor brother Nat on cornet anywhere in the song. The only improvising was provided by Joe Zawinul on the Wurlitzer, and even this solo relies mostly on spare Gospel-flavored fills, as if to say the groove is sufficient. The song clocked in at close to five minutes, but as they did in “Take Five,” the record company needed to edit it for the 45 RPM. The engaging verbal introduction offered by Cannonball (“sometimes we’re not prepared for adversity”) was snipped out for the short version. Listen to the LP version to enjoy Cannonball’s eloquence.

Even the recording of the song had some jazz lore to it. The album is titled “Live at ‘The Club,’” when in reality “the club” was actually a recording studio. Invited guests sat at tables around the band recreating the atmosphere of a live performance. You can hear it and feel it on the record.

“Mercy, Mercy” lives on, although not as “Take Five” or “Take the A Train” did. The song was recorded by various artists in a number of settings, including the Buddy Rich Big Band. Somehow “Mercy” did not lend itself to memorable lyrics. The pop group The Buckinghams put out a cover version almost immediately, singing, “My baby she’s made out of love/Like one of the those bunnies in a Playboy Club.” Years later a set of lyrics that was only slightly better was penned, oddly credited to both Curtis Mayfield and songwriters Gail and Vincent Levy, “My love has turned her back on me/Heartache, why won’t you let me be?” Personally, I’ll stick with the instrumental version.

Joe Zawinul’s hit writing was not a onetime event. He penned memorable follow-ups for the Adderley band with “Walk Tall” and “Country Preacher,” and years later wrote the marvelous ear-catching composition “Birdland” as leader of the band Weather Report.

Regarding hit songs, Fats Waller’s famous phrase applies: “One never knows, do one.”

Dave and Iola Brubeck

Today Dave and Iola Brubeck are celebrating their 70^th 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:

 This is the kind of immediate musical problem solving that composers often demonstrate.

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.