With Jazz 101, newCDnews.com and AcoustiCDigest in association with Amazon.com's expert editors introduce music fans to key performers, important stylistic movements, and milestone recordings in the history of jazz. In this mailing, Amazon.com Jazz editor Andrew Bartlett offers an introduction to pianist Dave Brubeck's works.

You can find our picks for the Essential Dave Brubeck titles at http://www.amazon.com/essential-davebrubeck

You can listen to and read about Brubeck's "Time Out" CD at Get Brubeck here
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After Bebop: Brubeck's Dawn

In the 1940s, bebop was jazz's iconoclastic king. The music's fast and furious pace was matched by an argot and style of dress that drew the attention of the press and young jazz fans. But bebop was a largely New York-based musical phenomenon, even though key episodes and artists were located in Los Angeles. It was also dominated by African Americans, while white musicians came to be associated with West Coast "cool jazz," an umbrella genre that encompassed the work of Northern California-based pianist Dave Brubeck. What fascinated Brubeck was not bebop itself but rather the ways improvisation and composition could share languages with bop and European classical music. This idea equally fascinated Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, and many others in the bop world, but Brubeck relentlessly pursued the European angles. His studies with composer Darius Milhaud produced a fresh framework for exploring his complex arrangements and tunes. The Dave Brubeck Octet had a short life but produced some pioneering work that today sounds fresh and invigorating--at times like bop and at times like chamber music.

"Dave Brubeck Octet" Dave Brubeck Octet Get Brubeck here

Brubeck Goes Small

Brubeck's octet had all the pieces that would later form his most memorable band. Or at least he had the one vital piece: alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. As a bandleader, Brubeck toiled through the early 1950s, experimenting with time signatures and rhythms as he explored different ways of organizing his piano playing. He wasn't a fast, dancing player like Bud Powell. And he didn't have the imaginative deconstructions of Thelonious Monk at his command. But he did have a cast of greats. With Brubeck (and Desmond) was drummer and vibraphonist Cal Tjader. Brubeck would record some spectacular piano-trio dates with Tjader in the late 1940s, sounding to Generation X ears like a mix between Conlon Nancarrow, lounge music, and straight-up bebop.

"24 Classic Original Recordings" Dave Brubeck Trio Get Brubeck here

Prodigal Paul

Paul Desmond urged Brubeck through the late 1940s and early 1950s to expand the trio to include a horn. With all the jaunty, playful harmonies and melodies the pianist conjured in the trio, it sometimes seems surprising that he'd listen to Desmond. But luckily, Brubeck did listen. And one of jazz's great piano and horn pairs was born. They found new ways to field the quartet, taking it on the road to play college campuses, putting Brubeck in a different league from the largely club-bound jazz scene in so many American cities. This both isolated the pianist and his band and allowed them room for invention. Brubeck would find himself overrun with notes at times on 1953's "Jazz at Oberlin," even as Desmond hit ever-new levels of reserve and careful minimalism. The group refined their conversational familiarity on another college date, "Jazz at the College of the Pacific," where they tackled a bevy of standards and perfected the kind of simultaneous soloing that would mark Brubeck and Desmond's work through the '50s and '60s.

"Jazz at Oberlin" Dave Brubeck Quartet Get Brubeck here

"Jazz at the College of the Pacific" Dave Brubeck Quartet Get Brubeck here

"Jazz Goes to College" Dave Brubeck Quartet Get Brubeck here

Heading for "Time Out"

Brubeck and Desmond fronted the quartet with an assortment of rhythm sections, bassists Ron Crotty or Bob Bates with drummers Lloyd Jones or Joe Dodge. Then came two key players, drummer Joe Morello and bassist Eugene Wright. Morello came first, fully thrilled to indulge Brubeck's loopy rhythms and fondness for playing the piano with stiff fingers, which alternately made the music sound reserved and especially percussive next to Desmond's transparent tone. Morello helped revive the energetic, rhythmic play that Cal Tjader instigated several years earlier. And you can hear the energy Morello supplies on, surprisingly, Brubeck's Disney tribute. He recorded the album because his kids loved Disney, and it digs deeply into the music's rhythmic undercurrents to make melody of percussion and percussion out of the piano. Of course Brubeck was never wanting for ideas to send through the piano, and the polytonal, polyrhythmic nature of his imagination come through clearly on the rare solo-piano recording "Brubeck Plays Brubeck."

"Brubeck Plays Brubeck" Dave Brubeck Get Brubeck here

"Dave Digs Disney" Dave Brubeck Quartet Get Brubeck here

"Time Out"

With Joe Morello on board, Brubeck's quartet reached its apex with bassist Eugene Wright and a simple Desmond tune, "Take Five," that made the band's "Time Out" Brubeck's best-selling title. They'd conceived of "Take Five" as a Morello solo vehicle. And it starts with all the resounding twist of so much Brubeck, a weird time signature framed by a hard-hit piano vamp. Then Desmond begins his wispy melody line on alto sax, and "Take Five" is from then unforgettable. Morello elects not to solo for the most part, even though he's given the space. He creates a rhythmic shell with his spare cymbal and drum hits, giving the track an odd center of gravity. In 1960, "Take Five" was the rage, coupled with "Blue Rondo a la Turk" as the B-side of the single. The tunes show two sides of the Brubeck experience: "Blue Rondo" is almost hyper, running through virtuosic harmonic structures and time shifts in a sprint; while "Take Five" is laid-back but still electrifying, an introspective masterwork.

"Time Out" Dave Brubeck Quartet Get Brubeck here

After Desmond

It seems cruel to refer to the three decades since 1967 as Brubeck's "after Desmond" period. He's come up with clearly brilliant material since Desmond left the quartet, but none of it is equal in full-group conception or execution to the days with Desmond. In the 1970s, Brubeck was able to continue with an excellent band comprised of several of his sons. And then he did a stint on the Concord Records label, releasing albums that showcased his more moody side. "Back Home" came in 1979, rich with Jerry Bergonzi's tenor saxophone (at times so energized that he sounds as hot as Brubeck ever did on piano). "Paper Moon" came two years later, equally charged and showing Bergonzi drawing Brubeck into heated, powerhouse improvisations. And then there's the '90s Brubeck, captured on the indispensable Telarc three-CD bundle "Triple Play." With the ballad-rich "Late Night" showing off Bobby Militello's saxophone in a very Desmond vein, the solo album "Just You, Just Me" showing off Brubeck's still spry sense of adventure, and the all-star festivities of "Young Lions and Old Tigers" paying homage to the pianist, this discount-priced package is a stellar update. It shows where Brubeck's been in the '90s and how well developed he was even in the 1950s. His is still a fresh, daring, and inviting approach to tunes.

"Back Home" Dave Brubeck Quartet Get Brubeck here

"Paper Moon" Dave Brubeck Quartet Get Brubeck here

"Triple Play" ("Late Night," "Just You, Just Me," and "Young Lions & Old Tigers") Get Brubeck here

Desmond Redux

Desmond left the Brubeck band in 1967, having recorded his best-known material there. He'd also recorded some fine quartet albums with guitarist Jim Hall. Where Brubeck was Desmond's foil, a sometimes agitated blow-thrower whose keyboard techniques seemed to be drifted over by Desmond's unflappable alto, Hall was an understated accomplice. They made several fantastic, creatively deep albums in the early 1960s. After '67, Desmond seldom recorded, save for a date with the Modern Jazz Quartet. His death in 1977 is an event Brubeck still laments. Here are selections that encompass the Jim Hall albums, as well as the MJQ session and an omnibus tour of Desmond's lyrical love of ballads.

"Take Ten" Paul Desmond with Jim Hall Get Brubeck here

"The Complete Paul Desmond RCA Victor Recordings" Paul Desmond Get Brubeck here

"Paul Desmond & the Modern Jazz Quartet" Paul Desomond and the Modern Jazz Quartet Get Brubeck here

"Falling in Love with Paul Desmond" Paul Desmond Get Brubeck here