Another centenary to celebrate today, dear reader...
Mr Dave Brubeck [for it is he] was a pioneer of jazz, right at the pivotal moment when the music began to embrace "modernity" in the 1950s - yet thanks to his innate musicality, he avoided joining the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk in adopting the "free-form" bebop style that split the movement (in particular here in the UK) between "modern" and "trad" genres. As a consequence, he became equally popular with the public and the serious jazz aficionados, selling millions of LPs in the '50s and '60s.
He was also a steadfast supporter of the burgeoning civil rights movement. He toured ceaselessly with his mixed race quartet, and refused to ever perform before a segregated audience. He even walked off a live television broadcast when he realised the director was trying to prevent the quartet’s African-American bassist Eugene Wright from appearing on screen.
His legacy lives on with a catalogue of innovative, and eternally memorable, numbers - and here, truly fitting the bill of "Sunday Music", are just three of them...
The coolest of the cool cats.
David Warren Brubeck (6th December 1920 – 5th December 2012)
Ah, that was lovely. It's been a long time since I've heard "Take Five" - I'm just going to give it another listen...
ReplyDeleteApparently it is the biggest-selling jazz record of all time - though where they draw the line in defining that one is somewhat tenuous, I'd say... Jx
DeleteThe times I tried to play Take 5 on my sax - haha!
ReplyDeleteSx
Did you succeed, Miss Scarlet? Jx
DeleteAll I remember is that it has a very odd timing to it, and I couldn't fit all the notes into a bar. Which sounds like I was in a pub throwing money around in a pub! Oh dear.
DeleteSo the answer is no, no really - I ended up with something that sounded vaguely similar but not quite right.
Sx
That'll be due to its "unorthodox quintuple (5/4) time" [according to Wikipedia], then... Jx
Delete" Nice ! "
ReplyDelete"Smokin'!" Jx
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