Dave Brubeck

S = Standifer
B = Brubeck

S That's okay. You can help yourself. It's there for you, I'm sure. We're at Hill Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the date today is December 14, 1982, and we're interviewing Dave Brubeck, who is here to play a concert of his work entitled "Fiesta De La Pesada". Is that correct?
B Right.

S Maybe you could explain just to get us off the mark here. The idea behind the concert tonight.
B Wellit's taking the Christmas story that's a product well known to most of Europe and the United States, South America, and a lot of the world and using the same Joseph and Mary story with the Mexican point of view. Fiesta De La Pesada is a celebration that happens in Mexico every year starting December 16 for 10 days until December 26, where if you're in the more remote parts of the country it's done in small villages where the people go from house to house every night for 10 days, knocking on the door knowing they will be refused entrance into the house, and everyone knows on the 26th of December-the 10th night-there will be a house that is appointed in advance where they will be received in, after they've been turned away like they have been for 10 nights before.

S I see.
B And then you have a celebration, as I believe you should do, and I want you to always keep that in mind that he is my favorite jazz pianist, and yet he didn't approach improvisation the way I would like to approach it. Now, why, is because I knew the man and I knew that he could do anything better than any jazz pianist that ever lived and he chose in public and often in a jam session to play these pieces like he'd play Chopin-note for note the same. But he didn't have to. He could turn around and play in the hardest piece for most pianists, keys that 20 or 30 years ago very few jazz musicians played in B, or in F( or C(, and Tatum had no problem playing anything in any key, improvising, I think, better than anybody under any circumstances, yet, he chose to play in the category where you have things worked out. And that was just his idea of perfection, the idea of what he wanted to do. Now, I would say if I could have perfected my greatest moments in playing where I was truly inspired, which I was usually working for, especially when I was younger where I would take more chances, I wasn't known, I wasn't expected to produce as much every night in front of an audience, but you're in a small night club where it doesn't make that much difference. But, some of my best moments have been then and I know the power of true improvisation to be the strongest thing there is in jazz; I still believe it. But I still realize what a risk you're taking if you do that as a controlled person. In other words, you're not zonked out of your skull on drugs and you're not on any kind of pills or booze. You're out there creating with your natural resources so to speak. That's a tremendous strain, a tremendous struggle and a tremendous triumph when it works.

S So, you're suggesting perhaps that after a reputation is established that it may have a negative influence on creativity at the moment when performing, I mean?
B If you're great enough you can overcome anything. I've always felt that I played my best when I don't have to prove anything.

S I see.
B And yet, sometimes you play the best you've played in a month at Carnegie Hall because your adrenalin is going so strong. And if you're scared enough and still in control, it's like the woman picking up a tractor off of her husband that 5 men and a derrick couldn't pick up.

S Right. It adds that edge.
B You've got an edge going sometimes.

S I see.
B In other words, there's no real way you're going to explain anything about jazz or creativity ever. Once in a while you're fortunate enough that your mind and body put it together.

S So, you really still believe in these same levels today, but they may have taken on different emphasis?
B No. I'll say I believe them. They've been something for me to shoot for all my life and I do believe that you can put yourself in a frame of mind to be creative and it's almost impossible to explain if you've read Thomas Myron(?), Dr. Faustus, there's some pretty good explanations of it there. If you've read about Mozart where he said he heard his symphony in a flash and you examine that sentence for the rest of your life or 4 or 5 lives and try to figure that one out, you might get someplace but you'll never understand it. Do you know why you won't understand it?

S You tell me.
B You tell me what that means to your symphony in a flash. You've done the impossible. You've heard in a flash the art form that takes a certain amount of time to produce and to deliver.

S It's just a creative moment happening I suppose.
B It's the impossible happening. That's why I say you're never going to explain creativity because there are too many things like this. And if you think Mozart didn't hear an entire symphony in a flash to start it thinking of technology today where on a chip in a computer you can put a whole symphony that somebody else has completely prepared, you can put into. So I think Mozart was the first computer and he had a brain like God never put out here before, except maybe some of the great spiritual leaders like Christ.

S Yes.
B But, he was still just an artist, but he heard a symphony. He makes you think that the whole idea of space and time that we accept now is not prepped at all.

S I see.
B This sentence I tell you can be pondered for a long time by your greatest minds and among other things that Mozart did.

S That's a very interesting comparison. I will think about that as a matter of fact, being a person myself involved in music that certainly is something to consider. Now, at this stage of your development and talking of the levels that you first articulated, do you think that other levels have been added beyond the first three (3) let's say?
B Probably they could be.

S I mean, are you aware of any added levels perhaps in your own playing at this point in your...
B A lot of things I used to talk about, people would think are impossible and yet I know that many things that I talked about, people have come along and done. I could teach Jerrod playing the whole concert without anything too worked out is something that I used to believe. In fact, I think in this album that you're talking about, there's a piece called "In Search of a Theme", and if it's not in that album, it's in another solo piano album, however I didn't have a theme and there was some controversy about that at the time, whereas a few years ago I think Keith Jerrod made 6 albums in Japan where he didn't have much prepared and they were very good.

S Yes.
B I talked about many things in the 40s that I thought were possible in jazz that I have actually seen come about, although I didn't bring them about. I may have opened the door so somebody else brought them about. Keith Jerrod may not know anything about how I was thinking years before, or he may have played this album at some time in his life, forgotten he had it, and just the idea made him go that direction. I know nothing about that, but I do know that many of the things where guys developed a whole style were areas that I talked about in the 40s and he may not even know it.

S So he may have subconsciously influenced any number of pianists.
B Yeah.

S Or any number of musicians as far as that goes.
B And some of them talk about it once in a while. Some of the very modern players today say, "well, the first time I heard anybody do that" or something like that with Brubeck in the 50s or something like that. And Cecil Taylor, for instance.

S Yes.
B Most people wouldn't dream that I had any influence on him at all. And there's a string of guys that are very important. I often read that I didn't influence anybody and then I'll start thinking of the guys that are out there doing a lot of new things, and they did come around and see me.

S Yes. Well there are a number of books on jazz and jazz musicians that have been focusing on just that subject and your name has come up in discussions as being listened to, studied, and in doing that, of course, you're bound to have an influence one way or another. I'd like to ask you about a statement that you made at the time of this album in question, "Brubeck plays Brubeck", you said on the album that you tried to remain free of musical straight jackets and to retain freedom of choice within the jazz idiom. And that primarily your style of playing and composing was a summation of all musical experience. This statement really, I think, needs explaining. I was wondering if you could give some concrete descriptive details about what you think your style or styles are or have been-in terms of how you've approached the actual playing of the piano.
B Sure. I think it's all encompassing the music that is referred to as jazz. It can cover most of Europe and most of Africa and at any minute you can lean(?) on Africa or on Europe, or on everything you've ever heard in your life. I remember Fats Waller, and older musicians like Kit Orrey, and Charlie Parker and Charlie Mingus all as equally important or Stan Kenton or Dick Biderbeck, and I don't think any musician alive isn't some way influenced by someone else and if you're lucky, your Bach was a summation of what's gone before him. Or if you're any number of pianists playing today, you respect the entire history. That doesn't mean you have to, because you can be more of an individual sometimes by not being influenced by anybody, but I don't know of this person playing that just came along and all of a sudden he's himself. I think what I did was cut myself off from all my influences and I wouldn't listen to anyone oh, after World War II for about 3 years I didn't want to hear other people unless I had to. I went to somebody's house and they put on a record, but I won't play a record at home alone because I wanted to make my own statement for a while.

S Wouldn't you say that's probably true of most musicians as they gain development and expertise on their instrument that they reach a point where they want to see if they really have something of their own to say, so they kind of stop listening to the people they've been listening to.
B I think it's a good healthy period to go through and when you have more people doing this you have more individuals. I think there were more individuals playing when I was young, and there're better players now. Just a whole bunch of better players that - for instance, when somebody is playing the synthesizer it's hard for me to tell the individual's styles, but I know my sons can say, "Oh, that's Chic" or "that's so and so" immediately. To me, I hear the sound of the synthesizer and I'll think, "well, that's a young, new guy coming up." So, the individuals that were ____ self taught and not coming out of the universities and music schools of my day, I think there were more creatively their own people.

S Is there a point in that stage where you then again start listening to other people? Or, ...
B Yeah. Sure. You start listening again.

S I see.
We're back now Dave Brubeck. It was a known fact that you were once quite a controversial figure in jazz. Do you miss the controversy or the attention that it drew?
B The controversy hasn't gone away.

S I see. Would you care to expand on what has been happening with that regard?
B Well, almost everybody I really liked was controversial-if it was Ellington or Placker or Mingus, Kenton-most people if they're going to say anything individualistic have to offend a group of writers and critics, and I've been fortunate enough to play long enough to have the guys that really dislike me be on my side years later. I know I haven't changed. I'm still basically trying to do the same things and still have a quartet and still playing my own music and they've grown up. There's been very few that has stuck with it and just said well, they didn't like you-period. So, I think a good thing for people to realize is that George Bernard Shaw said he was the greatest writer maybe in England and certainly the critic that knew the most about music and he didn't agree with most of the things that he had written after re-reading them. I know we had a person review us two nights ago who didn't stay for the second half. The second half was entirely different than the first. Yeah, he'll go print something in the paper and the people reading it don't know that he left and wasn't there the second half and pretended like he was. How many things in print are you sure are accurate and well qualified by people that really know what they're doing. All you have to do is read a book called the invective of music which Marion LePartlan gave me and see what they said about the masters in Europe-Beethoven-any one you can mention and you'll see how the critics completely miss what took years-50 to 100 years-to appreciate because these people were ahead of their time or the critic was so behind his time that he couldn't understand what they were doing. When I used to talk about following tonality, following rhythms, I was hitting a blank wall because the critics didn't know the words. The other musicians didn't know what I was talking about. After all, I've had to live with reviews that absolutely thought that jazz should be in 4-4 time, and I'll tell you if you want to know a turning point in my life-there's been plenty of them, but this is the one that made feel the best. If you know who Dr. Willis James is. Do you know Dr. Willis James?

S I don't think I'm familiar with him.
B A black musicologist. One of the first And I was being questioned by some very great musicians and being told that they weren't sure that jazz should ever be out of 4-4 time. And it was not correct for jazz. Can you imagine? These are guys that I really respected, too. And I still respect. But Dr. Willis James stood up at the meeting and started singing a work song and he said this is 5-4 time, and he said "Dave is on the right track." There's no reason that jazz should be in 4-4 time. In fact, maybe it shouldn't be.

S What was the rationale for being locked into one particular meter?
B Here's one way of looking at it. There was an Englishman who wrote some articles a few years ago that he didn't accept the whole New Orleans myth at all and I don't think it was right. I think he was partially right. But when I taught a class at the University of California at Berkeley on Jazz, it was the first time I had to think about what jazz is. I was just interested in playing it. And I came up with - to get the job I had to give the definition of jazz, which is ridiculous. I made $15 a week by getting this course and that's about all I was making. I couldn't work as a jazz musicians. I was desperate, so I took this job at CAL Extension in Berkeley. The definition of jazz was a combination of European and African art, which met in New Orleans. But going a little further I started examining the instruments on the European side were European, and right away, that almost made it melodically European because of the fingering of the instruments but not wholly. It was a combination of African and European melodically. But more and more you saw that the original jazz rags were an exact copy of European marches and to be specific so I'm just not talking, the subdominant in a march which you call the trio section always does the subdominant. A rag always goes to the subdominant-or most of the time-99% of the time, I learned never to say all, but most of the time you're going to go to the subdominant. Most of those rags follow European form. When they asked me about fusion in music, what greater fusion happened in New Orleans in the beginning of jazz between two continents they had a fusion. Fusion was the beginning of jazz. There had never been a fusion in jazz as big as this fusion. So the whole idea of fusion is ridiculous to me. If you jelly-roll Martin saying he invented jazz and I think that might be a slight exaggeration, but he still said it and he also made statements like the greatness of jazz is because of it use of European music. And he said how he listened outside the French Opera House in New Orleans and he goes on and on. Take from the beginning, I didn't come along and all of a sudden started using European forms. They're from note 1. If anything, I went back before this because I happened to have a recording called the Dentist Roosevelt Expedition into the Belgium Congo. Before anybody else I knew, I had that recording. When I talked to my ____, in those days we said "Negro" friends. They didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Poly-rhythms, playing in 5, playing in 7. They didn't want to hear this recording. They were trying to get away from these things. So, you've got to remember everybody and where they're coming from, and I was coming from a place nobody else had bothered to look.

S I see.
B And then when I wanted to come up with 5, 7s, and it's not me alone; my whole octet which is Bill Smith, Paul Desmond, Dave VanCrete and I shouldn't even be considered the leader of that group. We were all friends. We all worked together. We're all studying together. We came up with all kinds of new concepts because we were alone out in San Francisco, and if you think we weren't into poly-rhythms and poly-tonalities in '46, all you have to do is look at the old octet book. Like I've read that Max Roach did all this before me. I don't think he did, but if he did, we did it independently and Max was definitely into this, but I don't think before me. Maybe he was, but we didn't hear each other, and I've read "Downbeat" that I stole everything from Max. And Max would laugh himself if he heard that statement.

S He did laugh. I talked to him earlier.
B Yeah. Well this is the kind of thing you have to put up with. My biggest supporters have been people like Duke Ellington and Charlie Vegas and Charlie Parker because they weren't thinking anything about anything but what we were doing out in San Francisco and they loved it. There was none of this racial crap in those days and there should never be again, and the only thing that makes you play is your brain. Now what goes into your brain, where you were raised does determine what's going to make you play, but it sure is no pigmentation jazz.

S Mr. Brubeck, we're back and you did say on your recording that the post ragtime jazz musicians and the fact that they had been exposed to vast amounts of classical music tradition, and that if these jazz musicians had not utilized composed music-at least what it had to offer-then, contemporary jazz would be as limited today as literature for the marching is, and you went on to say that what a revolting development that would have been. Do you have a low opinion of jazz bands. Marching bands, I'm sorry.
B Marching bands. In the context of the notes I would say, "Yeah." In the context of a good marching band, I can cry at a football game if the marching band is good. And I cry if it's bad.

S Let me ask it another way. Do you have a low opinion of the quality of marching band literature?
B Well, two Sundays ago I heard Blue Rhondo a la Turk used with a marching band and I never thought I'd live to see that day. So I think...

S Did you regret it?
B No. Although I didn't get to hear it. Someone called me and said they couldn't believe it. The next piece they were playing was Cal Jader, and Cal had just died so I tried to call his widow up in California and said change it to channel 13 which is in New York which is the educational station in California and if she'd turn it on she'd hear Cal with a marching band which was thrilling, because I did hear that and they had played ????? and 4 or 5 very good jazz people. So I think my opinion of being limited to just 4/4 is changing because the marching bands are changing and I've played in marching bands in the Army and would that I could have stayed there another 2 years, but they dissolved it and put us in the infantry for the invasion of Europe. I know marching bands because as a pianist I played glockenspiels, symbols, peckhorn and tuba and oftentimes I'd hold an instrument just to fill out the line. But I've heard some great marching band music,
Tape made a strange sound and cut off.

END OF INTERVIEW