Dave Brubeck

Innovative jazzman Dave Brubeck passed today at the age of 91, just one day short of what would have been his 92nd birthday.

During a period of the 1970s, between, say, the demise of "progressive rock" and the advent of punk, when  disco, mellow California pop, and Stevie Nicks ruled the airwaves, I very nearly stopped listening to rock music altogether and retreated into a world of jazz.  I was amazed at the richness and variety of this American art form that was largely ignored by the American public.  Coltrane, Miles, Mingus, and Monk became my new John, George, Paul, and Ringo, and as I went further down the rabbit hole of the avant garde, Shepp, Pharoah, Braxton, and Sun Ra became my new Coltrane, Miles, Mingus, and Monk. Speaking of Monk, though, there's a link to a great, nearly half-hour performance by Monk in all of his eccentric genius at the end of the Brubeck clip above.

Somewhere in the background of all this great music, though, there was always the Dave Brubeck Quartet.  They weren't my favorites, and I don't think I ever owned an album of theirs, although I had managed to accumulate a fairly prodigious collection of vinyl.  They were cool and cerebral, and my interests in jazz leaned more toward the visceral and the emotive.  No disrespect toward the departed today or the living back then, but it simply wasn't my thing.

I always did have an appreciation, though, for the playing of Brubeck's alto saxophonist, Paul Desmond.  In 1977, at the height of my jazz enthusiasm, Desmond died of lung cancer, the result of chronic chain smoking.  He was 52 when he passed, and I remember thinking that he was an old man then, even though I'm older than that now.

In any event, at some point around the rise of late 70s punk and the emergence of New Wave, rock music got interesting again.  At the same time, the number of musicians playing music that could legitimately be called jazz had already started to diminish due to sickness, old age, and death, as well as to the economics of the music industry.  I still appreciate jazz and my musical tastes today are informed and influenced by the freedom and creativity I encountered in jazz, but rather than listen and re-listen to the same old recordings over and over, I continue to explore the new and the different, just like Brubeck had during his lifetime.