They say that a long
time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was once an American jazz quartet that
released multiple albums a year: records that sold in droves, actually making
money for the companies that released them. The quartet traveled around the
world performing in sold-out venues from Paducah to Tokyo. The pianist leader
of the band found himself on the cover of Time magazine, while the saxophonist had to be content with dating Audrey Hepburn.
The band's signature song became a pop hit that soon transformed itself into a
ubiquitous muzak-ready standard familiar to multitudes who couldn't tell you
how to spell the word "jazz" let alone explain what it is… And then I
woke up—was it all a dream?
Not
quite, and we have the still active, soon to be 90-year-old Dave Brubeck to
remind us that the original Dave Brubeck Quartet was the most popular jazz
ensemble of the 1950s and early '60s. That Brubeck, for all his fame and
fortune, lacks the enduring cultural cachet and critical credentials of, say,
Duke Ellington or Miles Davis, is a given. There's something too timely, too
circumscribed about the tightly controlled jazz vibe and self-conscious
experimentation of Brubeck's music to have it remain vibrantly contemporaneous.
This is cool jazz, which—unlike that of Chet Baker and Stan Getz—has not
remained cool.
And
yet, as this basic Brubeck primer honoring the nonagenarian reminds
us, the charms of the leader's alternately lyrical and eccentric piano, the
precise rhythmic purr of bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello, and,
above all, the gentle-toned yet incisively melodic improvisations of star saxophonist
Paul Desmond (the composer of the band's mega-hit "Take Five") remain
hard to resist. Brubeck's music may not always reach out across the decades and
shake our collars with its tactile strength, but the dustbins of bygone taste
will never be its rightful home.
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