Today is the centennial of jazz legend Dave Brubeck’s birth — on Dec. 6, 1920. To mark the occasion the Brubeck family recently released “Time OutTakes: Previously Unreleased Takes From The Original 1959 Sessions” as the debut recording on their new label Brubeck Editions.
It features recently discovered outtakes from Brubeck’s groundbreaking album “Time Out” — an experiment in exotic, odd-metered time signatures that included saxophonist Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” based on a 5/4 rhythm.
The album was considered so far out that Columbia Records executives blocked its release for nearly a year, but when it came out in 1959 much to everyone’s surprise it became the first jazz album ever to sell 1 million copies.
Here’s the outtake of “Blue Rondo a la Turk” from the new album.
And “Blue Rondo” will be the jumping off point for a centennial celebration of Brubeck who was perhaps America’s foremost jazz diplomat and an advocate for cultural exchange.
In March 1958, Brubeck came to Istanbul, Turkey on his first-ever U.S. State Department tour. He was on the way to meet with the big radio orchestra of Turkish musicians, when he stopped to listen to an intriguing rhythm he heard being played by a group of street musicians. He kept this rhythm in his head and sang it to himself until he got to radio studio where he asked the orchestra members about this rhythm in 9/8 time.
Brubeck recalled telling the musicians, “’just heard the craziest rhythm and I love it.’ … Pretty quick the whole radio orchestra started playing that rhythm and jamming. And this Turkish musician said, `This rhythm is like your blues. To us, it’s so common.”
When he returned to the U.S., Brubeck combined that 9/8 rhythm, American blues, saxophone solos in a standard jazz 4/4 time and the classical rondo form to create “Blue Rondo a la Turk” which ended up as the opening track on “Time Out.”
“Blue Rondo” also proved influential in other ways. Brubeck said he later heard from musicians in countries like Hungary and Romania who told him that: “If Brubeck can do this why can’t we use our folk music in jazz.”
Brubeck’s life experience led him to see jazz as the voice of freedom for the world. As a jazz ambassador, he believed that jazz presented the best face of the United States to the world. He told me in one interview:
“Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States,” Brubeck said in in an interview I did with him..
“Many people don’t understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz. And that is really the idea of democracy — freedom within the Constitution, or discipline. You don’t just get out there and do anything you want.” .
Brubeck was also aware of his country’s shortcomings — particularly the racist Jim Crow laws in the south. His famous quartet — which included African-American bassist Eugene Wright, drummer Joe Morello, and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond — had no problems playing anywhere abroad, but had to cancel gigs in the U.S. because Brubeck refused to play any segregated venues. He turned down a prestigious date on the “Bell Telephone Hour“ TV show when the producers insisted on shooting the quartet so Wright could be heard but not seen on camera.
After returning home from World War II, Brubeck used the GI Bill to study at Mills College with the French composer Darius Milhaud who encouraged the pianist to stick with jazz but showed him how to use elements from classical music in his jazz compositions.
Milhaud also taught another lesson that guided Brubeck as a jazz ambassador. Brubeck recalled: “Darius Milhaud told me, ‘Dave travel the world and keep your ears open.””
Brubeck would get his chance to put Milhaud’s lessons into practice in 1958 when the State Department came calling. His quartet would become the first American jazz band to perform behind the Iron Curtain with concerts in Poland. The rest of the itinerary would be hard to imagine for an American band today — with stops in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as India, Pakistan and Turkey.
In March 1958, Brubeck’s quartet received a warm reception as they performed 13 concerts across Poland, followed from city to city by a small group of Polish jazz musicians and fans. Their ranks included a young pianist-composer and medical doctor, Krzysztof Komeda, who would go on to form Poland’s first modern jazz group and compose the music for such Roman Polanski films as “Rosemary’s Baby.”
In interviews with Polish media, Brubeck denounced the then existing racial segregation laws in the U.S., while expressing the hope that his country might learn something from the color-blind attitude that existed among jazz musicians.
At his concerts, Brubeck drew a huge ovation when he declared: “No dictatorship can tolerate jazz. It is the first sign of a return to freedom.”
At the last stop on his Polish tour, Brubeck performed a piece he had composed inspired by a visit to Polish composer Frederic Chopin’s home which he titled “Dziekuje,” Polish for “Thank You.” Brubeck recalled that there was absolute silence at first after he had finished playing the new piece.
At first Brubeck thought he had insulted the audience by linking the memory of Chopin with jazz. But then there was wild applause, and a relieved Brubeck realized that the Polish audience had understood that his piece was meant as a tribute to their great musical tradition.
At a party after the tour’s final concert, a Polish musician toasted Brubeck and said: “You’re going home tomorrow. I want you to know how we Poles love freedom as much as you Americans.”
Upon returning to the U.S., Brubeck’s wife Iola mentioned the scarcity of jazz recordings and sheet music in Poland in a newspaper interview. That prompted an outpouring of unsolicited donations from American jazz fans. Iola Brubeck began sending shipments of jazz items to Poland via the U.S. Embassy’s cultural attache in what became known as the “Jazz-Lift” — a play on the Berlin Airlift a decade earlier.
From Poland, Brubeck’s quartet headed to Turkey and then on to the Middle East and South Asia. The pianist believed that jazz diplomacy was a two-way street. His interest in the complex harmonies and exotic rhythms of non-Western musics led him to hold informal jam sessions with local musicians.
Once back home, Brubeck recorded the album “Jazz Impressions of Eurasia,” with original compositions inspired by the music of the countries he had visited on the tour, including “Dziekuje.”
Other compositions included “Nomad,” reflecting music he heard being played by nomadic herders driving their flocks through Kabul, and “Calcutta Blues’ which used elements from Indian music. “Golden Horn” — a reference to the inlet in Istanbul that’s a bridge between Asia and Europe — reflected that mixture by using a modal-like theme characteristic of Turkish music along with Western harmony.
(To be continued. Part 2 to be published Monday will look at Brubeck’s collaboration with Louis Armstrong on “The Real Ambassadors” and how Brubeck helped break a diplomatic impasse at the 1988 Reagan-Gorbachev summit.)
