Dave Brubeck Dead (1920-2012)

[robmid]

So sad to hear of Dave's passing. Two of the best jazz concerts I've ever seen were with Dave. The best was in the SF Bay Area right after 9/11 when some of his players couldn't make their planes, so he was able to get two of his sons to play. It was magic. One of his sons played the best drum solo I've ever heard on Take Five.

What a magnificent, person and musician he was!

Cheers, Robert

[princeplanet]

During the Burns doco, I remember Dave crying whilst telling the story about how Duke Ellington knocked on his hotel door to give the news that Dave was the first Jazz musician ever to make the cover of Time Magazine. To hear that from Duke really tore him up. It kinda took that for me to get past the cliche he had become in my mind, I'm ashamed to say.

Take a long 5 chief, you did good.

[kooljazzman]

R.I.P Mr Dave Brubeck He is somewhere right now playing piano with Miles,Coltrane,and Mingus and Elvin Jones !!!

[Tenorman]

I have been a long time fan of most things that Dave did, but he certainly suffered the slings and arrows from the Jazz purists after the success of Take 5.

History usually tells the truth providing no-one interferes with it. He was a great man who produced great music

Although he got a lot of stick for Take 5, it was actually written by Paul Desmond

Let's hope that the grands up there are really GRAND

[Ecaroh]

Dave Brubeck Quartet was first jazz concert I ever attended ('62 or ,63 - Sheffield City Hall : Ronnie Scott as support band). In those days my little clan were very sniffy about white folks playing jazz- not really "authentic" . Sorry Mr Brubeck: it was the ignorance & arrogance of youth. I have several of your albums and like them all.

[Buddha]

I cut my jazz teeth on Time Out, Bill Evans, and Getz/Gilberto. Thanks, guys!

I guess João Gilberto is the only one still alive.

[jonesy]

Dave never seemed to get the amount of respect he deserved by the established Jazzers of the day. You would often hear how the quartet "didn't swing".. I never saw it that way. I found his music supremely lyrical. There was a time I idolized Morello for his concepts of odd meter - I think there was more than a little of jealousy in those who put down Take Five and the sequel Time Further Out album as un-swinging or even weird. Morello was a bitch of a drummer. He was pulling off shit in odd meters that most guys couldn't work their way through the first few bars. I saw Dave in concert with his sons shortly after Desmond passed away. It was one of the most touching musical events I've seen. You could feel how much he was touched by the loss. RIP.

[djangoblackbird]

I'm really chastising myself for being a stuck-up jazz nerd when it came to Brubeck. I was in the camp that wrote him off for being "Barnes and Noble jazz", one who theorized that he gained success over other more talented pianists because he was white (which may be true, but that's not his fault) and that his music was overly polite and not really "in the canon" of "real" jazz.

But now that I'm composing music more, I'm listening back to Blue Rondo and I'm like, "Man, he wrote a tune in 9/8 that varied rhythmic subdivisions and occasionally switched to 4/4 swing...and he made it TOTALLY accessible!". That's a feat in and of itself. Then there's the immortally beautiful "In Your Own Sweet Way" and the criminally underrated "Strange Meadow Lark" (Seriously, why don't I hear more people playing that tune??).

He had a real knack for beauty and cleverness that it took me a while to appreciate. Bon Voyage, DB.

[augymented]

Only recently found out about Dave Brubeck's passing....a real innovative GIANT for many years. Almost made it to 92.....RIP.

[Quatermass]

Sad to hear of his passing, especially the day before his birthday. I was actually at a gig at the time I found out and what made it hit hard was the band had just played 'The Duke' and were completely unaware too, so that was an unusal note to hand to the band.

For me Time Further Out is the better album as there is a lot more going on in it in terms of styles, rhythms and tempos.