10 More Essential Dave Brubeck Albums

A collage of 9 of the 10 more essential Dave Brubeck albums. I left out Paper Moon, because it has a pretty ridiculous cover.

Jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck made a lot of incredible music during his long lifetime. In 2015, I wrote a post covering 10 of my favorite Dave Brubeck albums. Since Brubeck’s discography is so deep, I decided to write this sequel and focus on 10 more essential Dave Brubeck albums. I was lucky enough to work on a documentary about Dave Brubeck and meet him a couple of times and hear him live in concert several times, so his music has a special place in my heart. The albums are listed in the order they were recorded. 

The Dave Brubeck Trio: Distinctive Rhythm Instrumentals (Recorded between 1949 and 1951) The CD has all 24 songs this group recorded together. Featuring Ron Crotty on bass and Cal Tjader on drums and vibes, Brubeck’s trio could swing like no other. Highlights include a great version of “Indiana” that starts out very slow, as though Brubeck is going to play it as a ballad. Then, suddenly, Brubeck starts playing it fast, and Crotty and Tjader jump in, making the old tune swing. There’s also a fun version of “Avalon” that starts out in ragtime before it starts to really cook. 

Jazz Goes to College (1954) After a 1951 diving accident which injured vertebrae in his neck, Brubeck was looking for someone to share the soloing duties with in his group. He turned to alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Desmond had played in Brubeck’s Octet in the late 1940’s, but had earned Brubeck’s enmity when was playing in a group with Brubeck. Desmond was offered another gig, and took the rest of the group with him, but hired another piano player instead of Brubeck. Fortunately for music lovers, Brubeck and Desmond were able to patch things up. Jazz Goes to College was Brubeck’s first album for Columbia Records, and it followed in the steps of Brubeck’s 1953 album Jazz at Oberlin, which was recorded live on campus. Bob Bates on bass and Joe Dodge on drums made up the rest of the quartet. Jazz Goes to College starts out with the slow blues “Balcony Rock,” and both Brubeck and Desmond take excellent solos. Brubeck’s solo on “Le Souk” is awesome. At the end of the year, Brubeck was featured on the cover of Time magazine. He was the second jazz musician to ever be on the cover of Time—Louis Armstrong was the first. Brubeck actually felt some embarrassment about the cover, as he felt that part of the reason he was getting the cover was because Time didn’t want to put a black jazz musician on the cover. Duke Ellington was the first person to show Brubeck the cover and Brubeck said, “It should have been you.” 

Jazz: Red Hot and Cool (1955) Recorded live at Basin Street East in New York City, the album featured a cover photograph by Richard Avedon, showing 1950’s supermodel Suzy Parker gazing longingly at Brubeck while a blurry Desmond holds his sax in the background. The album was cross-marketed with Helena Rubenstein lipstick, as they had just introduced a “jazz” shade. The music inside the album sleeve was excellent, as listeners heard the exquisite interplay between Brubeck and Desmond, who were again backed by Bob Bates on bass and Joe Dodge on drums. A highlight of the album was the first recording of Brubeck’s composition “The Duke.” Brubeck said that the initial inspiration for the song was his car’s windshield wipers. He later said, “When I first wrote it, I didn’t really understand how complex it was. It goes through all twelve keys in its first eight bars.” (It’s About Time: The Dave Brubeck Story, by Fred M. Hall, p.58) Something that’s so striking about Brubeck and Desmond is how they could take the oddest songs, like “Fare Thee Well, Annabelle,” a 1935 hit for the Boswell Sisters, and make them interesting vehicles for their improvisations. Brubeck recorded “Indiana” again on this album, and this version features an excellent, complicated solo from him. 

Dave Digs Disney (1957) Featuring songs from Walt Disney’s cartoons, Brubeck helped introduce these songs into the jazz repertoire with this album. “Someday My Prince Will Come,” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, quickly became a jazz standard, as it was soon recorded by Bill Evans on his 1960 album Portrait in Jazz, and Miles Davis made it the title track of his 1961 album. Other highlights of the album include “Heigh-Ho (The Dwarf’s Marching Song),” and “When You Wish Upon a Star.” The lineup of the Brubeck Quartet was changing with this album, as the unfortunately named Norman Bates, brother of Bob, played bass, and Joe Morello was on drums. Morello gave Brubeck’s Quartet much more rhythmic drive, and Morello was a drummer who could play the complex polyrhythms that Brubeck was interested in. The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s most famous lineup would form the following year, as Eugene Wright took over on bass. 

Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein (1960) This album was a fascinating experiment, as the Quartet played “Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra” alongside the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The piece was written by Dave’s brother Howard Brubeck and took up all of side one of the album. Side two was comprised of the Quartet’s versions of songs written by Leonard Bernstein. Unfortunately, this album wasn’t reissued on CD until it was issued in the EU in 2011. It finally made its US debut on CD in 2012, as part of the Complete Columbia Studio Albums box set, but it isn’t available separately. I was able to gather the whole album before this because the Bernstein songs on side two were reissued in 1986 as Dave Brubeck Plays Music from West Side Story, along with other tracks from the Quartet’s albums Anything Goes and My Favorite Things. The orchestral tracks were harder to track down, as they weren’t issued under Brubeck’s name, but as part of Sony Classical’s Leonard Bernstein series, surfacing on the 1998 CD Bernstein on Jazz. Fortunately, you can now listen to the album as intended on Spotify and other streaming services. “Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra” is a successful pairing of jazz and classical styles, and the Brubeck Quartet does a superb job of handling the material. Section one, “Allegro,” has sudden twists and turns, but the Quartet was used to playing material that often shifted—think of Brubeck’s twisty “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” Sections two and three, “Andante” and “Adagio,” are lovely without ever sounding like easy-listening “jazz plus strings.” Section four, “Allegro: Blues” is sprightly and swinging, with Brubeck’s solo at the end upping the tension until the final climax. 

Countdown: Time in Outer Space (1962) The third in Brubeck’s series of “Time” albums, Countdown features more Brubeck originals written in unusual time signatures. Desmond wrote “Eleven Four,” one of his rare contributions as a songwriter—although he did write the Quartet’s most famous song, “Take Five.” When Brubeck began his explorations of different time signatures, there were many nay-sayers among jazz critics. Like many cultural sub-groups, the jazz world has a way of arbitrarily deciding who is “in” or “out” of jazz. But those critics who dismissed what Brubeck and the Quartet were doing missed out on some fantastic music. For this album Brubeck re-recorded “Someday My Prince Will Come,” taking a more adventurous piano solo. Another highlight is “Castilian Drums,” which gives Morello an opportunity to stretch out and solo, and it reminds the listener that one of the reasons Brubeck was able to be so successful in his time experiments was because he had Joe Morello on drums. The album was dedicated to astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. 

Jazz Impressions of New York (1964) Released the same year as the wonderful Jazz Impressions of Japan, this album featured some of the songs that Brubeck wrote for the TV show Mr. Broadway. While the show only lasted 13 episodes, Brubeck’s theme for the show remains a classic. My favorite song on the album is the rollicking “Summer on the Sound.” Other highlights include “Broadway Bossa Nova,” and “Autumn in Washington Square,” which features a wonderful, yearning solo from Paul Desmond. 

Paper Moon (1982) Brubeck broke up the classic lineup of his Quartet at the end of 1967. He wanted a break from touring and time to work on longer compositions. A few months later, he was back out on the road. In 1976 the classic Quartet reunited for a 25^th anniversary concert tour. It’s fortunate that they did, because Paul Desmond died of lung cancer in 1977. Brubeck formed a touring band with his sons Chris, Darius, and Dan, and they performed together throughout much of the 1970’s. The lineup on 1982’s Paper Moon found Brubeck backed by Jerry Bergonzi on tenor saxophone, Chris Brubeck on bass and bass trombone, and Randy Jones on drums. The songs on the album are mostly jazz standards. There’s an excellent, bluesy solo by Dave on “Music, Maestro, Please!” Another highlight is the song “Symphony,” by Alex Alstone. It’s a bit unconventional, as it finds Brubeck playing super high on the keyboard at the beginning. Bergonzi’s tone and sound is totally different from Desmond’s, so there’s no sense in comparing them. Paper Moon also includes a nice solo version of “St. Louis Blues,” a song which was long a staple of Brubeck’s live concerts. 

Private Brubeck Remembers (2004) A rare solo piano disc from Brubeck, this title finds him playing songs associated with World War II. There’s a wistful, poignant feeling to much of the album as Brubeck plays these songs that he’s known for so long. A limited edition included an extra disc of Walter Cronkite interviewing Brubeck about his experiences in the war, which is a fascinating listen. 

London Flat, London Sharp (2005) Recorded in 2004, this was the last quartet recording by Brubeck. The album featured his excellent group of Bobby Militello on alto sax and flute, Michael Moore on bass, and Randy Jones on drums. The title track shows Brubeck’s vibrant, swinging style still fully intact. Another highlight is the groovy “Mr. Fats,” a tribute to Fats Waller. This record really shows that Randy Jones was definitely up to the task of following in Joe Morello’s footsteps. It also shows that Bobby Militello is an excellent saxophone player whose sound is so different from Paul Desmond’s that he doesn’t invite comparisons. The pieces on London Flat, London Sharp come from throughout Brubeck’s long career, ranging from new pieces, like the title song, to one written sixty years before—“Ballad of the Rhine,” written in 1945 as Brubeck watched his Army unit cross the Rhine River. Taken together, they show Brubeck’s relentless spirit of innovation and his quest to keep creating, which lasted throughout his career.

Album Review: The Dave Brubeck Octet (1956)

Album cover of The Dave Brubeck Octet, with cover art by Arnold Roth, who did many covers for the Fantasy jazz label, 1956.

One of the only photographs of the Dave Brubeck Octet in concert. Paul Desmond is second from the left, Cal Tjader is on the drums, and Brubeck is in the back, at the piano.

Recorded between 1946 and 1950, the 18 tracks on the album The Dave Brubeck Octet offers up the fruits of the very first recording sessions that Dave Brubeck participated in. The 18 tracks were issued in different formats during the early 1950’s, and then in 1956 combined into one 12-inch LP, featuring the same track listing found on the CD. 

The Dave Brubeck Octet was comprised of composers and musicians who would go on to have a significant impact on jazz music in the 1950’s and beyond. The Octet was: Brubeck on piano, Bob Collins on baritone saxophone, David Van Kriedt on tenor sax, Dick Collins on trumpet, Bill Smith on clarinet, credited on this release as William O. Smith, Jack Weeks on bass, Cal Tjader on drums, and an alto sax player named Paul Desmond. Brubeck had met Desmond when they were both in the Army, and they would go on to play together, off and on, but mostly on, until Desmond’s death in 1977. 

Brubeck had studied music at the College of the Pacific and at Mills College, and had managed to get through his studies without learning how to read music. The dean at College of the Pacific told Brubeck that he couldn’t let him graduate without learning how to read music. But several professors stuck up for Brubeck’s talents, and COP let him graduate as long as he promised not to teach music. 

Many members of the Octet had studied under the French composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College, and they shared an interest in polytonality and counterpoint. The Dave Brubeck Octet is an interesting record—it has at least a surface similarity to Miles Davis’ nonet recordings of the late 1940’s, released under the title Birth of the Cool. Both recordings were influenced by classical music, but where Birth of the Cool has gained considerable critical acclaim, the recordings by Brubeck’s Octet have languished in obscurity. 

About half of the songs on the Octet album are lightly swinging versions of jazz standards, “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Love Walked In,” “Let’s Fall in Love,” “You Go to My Head.” In part because of the limitations of recordings of the time, almost all of the tracks are three minutes or less, so there’s not a lot of solo space. One of the more interesting songs on the album is “How High the Moon,” which the group plays in various different jazz styles, taking it from Dixieland to bebop, with an uncredited narrator guiding us through the different styles. On that song the listener is able to hear the versatility of the group. Brubeck’s piano playing is smoother than it would be with his famous Quartet—we don’t hear much of the block chords that would be one of his trademarks later on, although some crop up on his solo on “Laura,” a tune that Brubeck would soon re-record with his trio of Ron Crotty on bass and Cal Tjader on drums. 

What’s interesting about the Octet for fans of Brubeck’s music is how early he was interested in polytonality, which would be one of the musical subjects that he returned to again and again throughout his career. 

On The Dave Brubeck Octet we also get to hear Brubeck’s debut as a composer. He wrote three songs on the album: “Playland-at-the-Beach,” “Rondo,” and “Closing Theme.” Interestingly, Brubeck doesn’t play the piano on either “Playland-at-the-Beach” or “Rondo,” which both sound like exercises written for the classroom. 

The Dave Brubeck Octet isn’t quite essential Dave Brubeck, but it’s worth listening to if you’re interested in learning more about Brubeck’s roots, or if you’re a fan of West Coast jazz or Third Stream jazz.

Concert Review: The Brubeck Brothers Quartet at the Dakota Jazz Club

The Brubeck Brothers Quartet: Daniel Brubeck on drums, Mike DeMicco on guitar, Chuck Lamb on piano, and Chris Brubeck on bass and trombone.

On Sunday night I saw the Brubeck Brothers Quartet at the Dakota Jazz Club. The group is made up of two of Dave Brubeck’s sons, Chris Brubeck on bass and trombone, and Daniel Brubeck on drums. They are joined by Chuck Lamb on piano and Mike DeMicco on guitar. I’m a big fan of Dave Brubeck’s music-I interned on a documentary about Brubeck that Hedrick Smith produced, and I’ve written about Brubeck a few times on this blog-I wrote this piece after Brubeck died and this essay about 10 Essential Dave Brubeck albums. 

The Brubeck Brothers Quartet put on an excellent show, full of lively and inventive jazz playing. Their show is also a nice memorial to their father’s legacy as a composer. Chris and Daniel both bear a resemblance to their father, and there were moments during the concert when Chris’s face would break into a large grin as he responded to a bandmate’s solo and I would think, “Yup, I’ve seen Dave Brubeck make that face too.” Like their father, Chris and Daniel take a joy and pleasure in what their bandmates are playing, and you could tell as Chris turned his attention on Chuck and Mike when they soloed that he was really listening to them. 

All four members of the group are excellent soloists. Daniel got a chance to stretch out on the drums during “The Jazzanians,” playing a fantastic solo. Chris played bass almost the entire evening, except for one trombone solo. Mike DeMicco’s guitar solos were superb, as smooth as Wes Montgomery at the Half Note. DeMicco also played with Dave Brubeck, and he played Paul Desmond’s melody line on “Take Five.” Chuck Lamb’s piano playing was outstanding and for me a highlight of the show was his new composition, which Chris said doesn’t have a name yet. It began with Lamb plucking the strings of the piano, and then playing a lengthy solo before the rest of the band joined in. Lamb’s style is very different from Dave Brubeck’s, but his playing still fit Brubeck’s songs very well. Side note: I love Dave Brubeck’s piano playing, but I haven’t heard many jazz pianists whose styles are similar to his. 

The concert opened with “Dance of the Shadows,” which had a Latin flavor. The other songs played were “Kathy’s Waltz,” from the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s most famous album, 1959’s Time Out, “Marian McPartland,” a tribute written by Dave to the longtime host of NPR’s Piano Jazz, “The Jazzanians,” and the last two songs of the evening were “Blue Rondo a la Turk” and “Take Five.” 

I got to chat with Chris for a minute or two after the show, and I told him of my distant connection to his father. (I did meet Chris briefly at Birdland in 2001 at the opening party for the documentary.) Chris was a warm and funny guy to chat with. If it had been a Friday or Saturday night instead of a Sunday, I would have stayed for the second show. If you’re a fan of Dave Brubeck or of great jazz, go see the Brubeck Brothers Quartet.

10 Essential Dave Brubeck Albums

The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto sax, Joe Morello on drums, and Eugene Wright on bass.

A wonderful photo of Dave Brubeck at the piano.

Collage of the album covers for 9 of the 10 Essential Dave Brubeck albums. I left off Their Last Time Out, which has a nice cover, but someone had to be the odd album out. The cover for Jazz Impressions of Eurasia always makes me smile. I love the cover for 1975: The Duets, which looks like a wine bottle.

The jazz pianist Dave Brubeck was a remarkable artist. Brubeck was the rare jazz artist who was fortunate enough to become popular without compromising his ideas about jazz. He expanded the palette of jazz, as he let rhythms and melodies from cultures around the world influence his music, and he brought jazz out of strict 4/4 rhythm and into other time signatures. Brubeck was also a remarkable composer who wrote many memorable songs, as well as classical pieces like cantatas and oratorios. To cap it all off, Dave Brubeck was by all accounts the nicest person you’d ever want to meet. 

I had the good fortune of meeting Dave Brubeck twice. When I was in college I interned for the journalist Hedrick Smith, who at the time was working on his 2001 documentary “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck.” I had the chance to go backstage with Smith after a Brubeck concert and meet Dave, and he was very nice, a true gentleman. I wrote a longer piece about my memories of Dave Brubeck, and I was lucky enough to see him in concert 5 times. 

Dave Brubeck’s recording career spanned nearly sixty years, and he left behind many superb recordings. But where do you start with such a formidable discography? To help you get introduced to a great jazz artist, I compiled a list of the 10 Essential Dave Brubeck albums. Of course there are many more excellent recordings that Brubeck made, but these would be a great entry point into his music. Albums are listed in the order they were recorded.

Jazz at Oberlin, 1953. This album was a live recording made on the campus of Oberlin College. Brubeck was hugely popular among college kids in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and he made several live recordings on college campuses. After suffering a neck and back injury in a diving accident in 1951, Brubeck, then the leader of a jazz trio was looking for someone else to join his group so he wouldn’t have to be the only soloist. Fortunately, he reconnected with the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Brubeck and Desmond had met during their military service in World War II. Desmond’s light and airy tone was reminiscent of Stan Getz’s sound on the tenor saxophone, and it contrasted well with Brubeck’ pounding approach to the piano keyboard. Brubeck and Desmond’s musical partnership lasted for more than a quarter of a century, until Desmond’s death from lung cancer in 1977. Jazz at Oberlin shows the close musical connection that Brubeck and Desmond had on songs like “These Foolish Things” and “Just the Way You Look Tonight.”

Brubeck Time, recorded 1954. Dave Brubeck was so popular in 1954 that he made the cover of Time magazine. He was the second jazz musician to be on the cover of Time, and Brubeck himself said that the honor should have gone to Duke Ellington. The title of Brubeck Time was meant to play off of this connection, and the album cover even featured the painting of Brubeck that adorned the cover of Time. The album included the classic song “Audrey,” a beautiful ballad that was Desmond and Brubeck’s ode to Audrey Hepburn. There were also swingers like “Jeepers Creepers” and “Stompin’ for Mili” that highlighted Brubeck and Desmond’s facility with uptempo songs.

Jazz Impressions of Eurasia, recorded 1958. By 1958, drummer Joe Morello had joined Brubeck’s quartet, and now Brubeck had a drummer capable of playing the complex rhythms and time signatures that he wanted to experiment with. Paul Desmond and Morello didn’t get along at first, as Desmond found Morello’s style too loud and flashy for his tastes. Eventually though, Desmond realized what Morello could bring to the group. Brubeck was also coming into his own as a composer, and he wrote all of the songs on Jazz Impressions of Eurasia. The music was inspired by the sounds that Brubeck heard on a long world tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. The album covers a lot of ground, from the stately serenity of “Brandenburg Gate,” to the tense and exciting rhythms of “The Golden Horn.” 

Time Out, 1959. This was Dave Brubeck’s most famous album, and his best-selling. It included the catchy hit “Take Five,” which was written by Paul Desmond. All of the songs on Time Out were in unique time signatures, ranging from the 5/4 meter of “Take Five” to the 9/8 of “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” Columbia Records, Brubeck’s label, was nervous about Time Out for three reasons: All of the songs were originals, with no “standards” that the record-buying public was already familiar with, the songs were in weird time signatures, which meant that people couldn’t dance to the record, and the cover featured an abstract painting by S. Neil Fujita. Of course, all those objections proved to be foolish, as Time Out went on to sell a million copies and peaked at number two on the Billboard pop album charts. Bassist Eugene Wright had joined the Brubeck Quartet in late 1958, and now the classic lineup of the Dave Brubeck Quartet was complete. Time Out is a classic album that was one of the first jazz albums I ever heard, and it remains fresh and vibrant more than 50 years after it was recorded. 

Time Further Out, 1961. A sequel of sorts to Time Out, Time Further Out was another exploration of unique time signatures, and featured classic Brubeck songs like “It’s a Raggy Waltz,” and the supremely catchy 7/4 song “Unsquare Dance.” The album was a superb showcase for drummer Joe Morello, who demonstrated his ability to master any time signature thrown at him. Brubeck went on to record further albums of unique time signatures, Countdown-Time in Outer Space, Time Changes, and Time In, which are all excellent.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall, 1963. Before this live performance in February 1963, Joe Morello was recovering from the flu, and didn’t feel like playing. Eugene Wright, Paul Desmond, and bandleader Dave Brubeck all felt a little uptight. But you can’t tell any of that on this amazing two-disc set of an unforgettable concert. From the opening of “St. Louis Blues,” you can tell that this band is cooking, swinging their absolute hardest. Brubeck’s solo finds him charging aggressively ahead like a locomotive. Morello has a wonderful solo on “Castilian Drums.” All of the music is outstanding, but the highlight has to be the super fast version of “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” When Brubeck starts the song you think there’s no way the group will be able to keep it going at that pace, but they do. This concert showcases the Dave Brubeck Quartet at the peak of their powers.

 Jazz Impressions of Japan, 1964. A superb album full of the sounds and textures that Brubeck absorbed during the Quartet’s tour of Japan in 1964. It includes the catchy “Toki’s Theme,” which is close as Brubeck ever came to rock and roll, as well as the moving “Koto Song,” which was a highlight of Brubeck live performances for decades to come. 

Their Last Time Out, recorded in 1967. Unreleased until 2011, this two-disc set features the very last concert of the classic lineup of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, comprising Paul Desmond on alto sax, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello on drums. Brubeck wanted a break from touring so he could focus on writing longer pieces of music. Within a year Brubeck was back on the road with a new group. The classic lineup would reform for a brief 25^th anniversary tour in 1976. Their Last Time Out is not only a historic concert; it’s also full of great music, as these four men were all at the top of their games. There are songs that were staples of Brubeck’s concerts, like “St. Louis Blues,” “Take the A Train,” and of course “Take Five,” but also “Cielito Lindo” and “La Paloma Azul” that the Quartet had recently recorded for the Bravo! Brubeck! LP.

 1975: The Duets, 1975. This album of duets between Brubeck and Paul Desmond shows off their deep musical connection. The music is made more poignant by the fact that Desmond died of lung cancer less than two years after this album was recorded. Highlights include a moving version of “Koto Song.”

Indian Summer, 2007. This album of piano solos was the last recording released by Dave Brubeck in his lifetime. As befitting the title, the songs are mainly ones from Brubeck’s youth, as he looked back over a lifetime of music. Indian Summer proved that Brubeck was still a vital jazz artist in his 80’s. 

Dave Brubeck left behind many wonderful recordings, and he will continue to be remembered as one of the key American jazz artists of the 20^th century.

October 23, 2018: I've written a sequel to this post, "10 More Essential Dave Brubeck Albums."