If you make a mistake in jazz, you don't give up. You work it into the next line, so it isn't a mistake —Dave Brubeck, December 6, 1920 - December 5, 2012Jazz musician Dave Brubeck thought he was going to be a cowboy when he grew up. He was born and raised on a ranch in Concord, and at age 11, his family moved to a 45,000-acre ranch in the Sierra foothills near Ione, Ca. He could ride and rope with the best of them. But his mother, afraid for his hands, wouldn't let him rope anything older than a yearling. His uncle had lost a finger that way.
While at school, Dave was studying to be a veterinarian, but music led him astray. No matter that he couldn't read sheet music. He memorized everything from Chopin to cowboy songs. One thing led to another.
Brubeck's mother, Elizabeth Ivey, was a classically trained pianist who had studied in London. "When Dave was 4 or 5, he would position himself under the piano while she was playing Chopin," Gloyd said. Because of poor eyesight, Mr. Brubeck had trouble reading (music), and "his mother gave up on trying to teach him." Mr. Brubeck learned by listening, and by the time he was a teenager, he was playing with adults in a local dance band. —SF Gate
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| Dave's family had a ranch and hotel on the east side of Honey Lake (Amedee). He had numerous relatives including the Gibson/Haley clan of Litchfield, Carol Doyle of the old Doyle Motor etc. His aunt is buried there. —Tim Purdy |
During the late 1950s, Dave used to hang out in North Beach and at the Sausalito Gate Playhouse theater, where my mom was an actress. I met him when I was very young. I thought the opening line to Take Five was like the rhythm of galloping horses. He liked that.
I remember asking my mom what the Off Broadway stage director Skip Rognlien meant when he said, "Take Five everybody!" during a rehearsal—I was still putting two and two together. I wanted to know what that had to do with Dave Brubeck's Take Five. She laughed and said it meant that they could all take a five-minute smoke break. I was disappointed. Dave's music was more exciting.
I was five-going-on-six, precociously collecting numbers. Quartet was four. Fourfivesix! This many? Two hands. She said: "jazz interlude."
Take Five peaked at #2 on the Top 40 Billboard singles chart in 1961. It was a signature piece for that era. You heard it playing everywhere. Down Bridge Street to Caledonia in Sausalito. Take Five (with Blue Rondo on the B-side) became the best-selling 45 rpm record ever released. But Dave Brubeck had a heart as big as the wide open skies of California. He never forgot his roots. The album cover was signed.
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| To be viewed in 5/6 time. When I was young, I loved the album art on Brubeck's album cover by S. Neil Fujita, and probably embellished it with crayons. For some reason, I insisted that it was mine, and not my mother's, though the record was hers. It must've held some triggerpoint of memory of my meeting Dave. It was a half-pint's wild west standoff. Reasoning was not going to work. She finally relented, and let me keep it. |
“One of the reasons I believe in jazz, is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born—or before you’re born—and it’s the last thing you hear.” —Dave Brubeck, NYTimes obitDave Brubeck was into collaborating with other musicians and poets. He didn't pull rank or status. My friend Ken Bullock said that there may be a tape—rare as a photo of Khrushchiev's shoe pounding the UN table—somewhere of poet Jack Spicer reading to Brubeck's combo. Herb Caen heard it & said it was good.
The Spicer-Brubeck tape—one of the great missing treasures. From his pre-serial poem period, as in The Collected Books. He was a great reader in those days. For all the wonderful collection of mostly serial poems—again, the real stuff—on PennSound, it lacks his finest extant reading, at the Poetry Center in '57, including great, even eerie readings of "Poem for Bird & Myself," "Imaginary Elegies" & "Psychoanalysis: An Elegy" to a crowd primed to the hilt. Can only begin to imagine what he would've sounded like with Brubeck. —Ken Bullock
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Tom Pich photo courtesy of National Endowment for the Arts
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After a long interlude indeed, I ran into Dave during the early 1990s, at the Russian River JazzFest—I was on assignment taking photos for The West Sonoma County Paper, and Dave and I got to talking about those days of Beat-Bohemia in the SF Bay Area.
Being painfully shy and also being at odds with being so out in the public as a photojournalist, I broke the ice by way of introduction, by giving Dave an anthology of my student art and poetry from my California Arts Council artist residency at Mark West School in Santa Rosa.
Dave thumbed through it, thoughtful, pausing here and there, then he asked me to read a poem or two (I chose Trevor Yeats—This Body is to Ask), and then he handed it back to me and said, "Now, sign it!" There was no early warning signal for paradigm change. There I was. There we were. Is-ness incarnate.
Because I was a poet-artist-photographer working in the schools, Dave introduced me to the musicians (Bob Dorough (Doboro sp?—I can't find a reference to him but I can sing you his song about an old mattress tag he once knew, "Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law"). The incredibly sweet, Blossom Dearie, and Polish pianist Adam Mankowicz) were interviewing me! Tables turned. What did I know about jazz? Nada.
Not exactly sure what to do, I gave all the jazz musicians poetry books. For some reason, poetry was my ticket to ride. What I didn't know was the role that poetry played in jazz, or repressed nations—like Poland. (Bell learning curve ahead. I later wound up in Russia.)
Dave and I held other held themes in common. He wanted to be a rancher like his father, he grew up on a cattle ranch in Ione; my grand-uncle, Wild Bill Walsh, sold his truck for a bottle of bad whiskey and a good hand of cards in Ione.
Dave wanted to be a veterinarian. As did I. His first love was rodeo roping. I was a fan of All Things Horses—my religion was The Grand National—and rodeo champ Larry Mahan was an idol. But art hogtied us in 30 seconds flat and that was that.
We did not discuss Dave's myriad accolades, we just sat in the warm sun like a couple of cowboys and talked about other things that moved us, as the California hills cradled us, and the long silvered tongue of the Russian River played a riff toward the sea.
Perhaps my editor, Nick Valentine, was disappointed because I didn't mine Dave for pithy quotes. But Dave wanted to blur the boundary between subject and object. I was fine with that.
I found I didn't have the reporter's cold heart, I was no ambulance chaser, after all. The being at-one in the moment was more important than the storyline. Strange meadowlarks, indeed.
I wrote a little story of praise on Dave for The West Sonoma County Paper, and sent the clipping to him. Dave wrote ME a letter (to the editor) in praise of my story and photography. I have it
somewhere, along with the photos.
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| Dave’s letter to the editor, The Paper, December, 1983 |
RIP Dave Brubeck, your heart never failed you. Take five, Dave. Take Five.
It's a staccato of horses hooves, pounding an opening heartline to the melody. Trust me, I'm not that intellectual, I suck at math. I never set out to find jazz, but jazz just keeps on finding, and outing me.
