The Dave Brubeck Quartet “Jazz at Oberlin”

A 1953 live Dave Brubeck Quartet record, recorded at Finney Chapel in Oberlin, Ohio. It’s on the Fantasy label, and is on red vinyl. The quartet includes Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Lloyd Davis, and Ron Crotty. This is a fine record, and I can listen to it any time, day or night. I guess it’s considered “cool jazz,” but also, in places, Brubeck on piano, to put it in technical terms, plays some “crazy shit.” It’s a live record, but nicely recorded—my crude ear couldn’t tell it from a studio recording, and the polite applause doesn’t get in the way and, more important, no one is bantering between songs, or saying stuff like, “How many of you like to take a taste of alcohol?” This is an early Dave Brubeck record, I guess, and he kept putting out records for about six decades. Also, signifiant, according to the liner notes, is this concert was a catalyst for jazz being a big deal at Oberlin, which known for its music education. I grew up a bike ride away from that college, and sadly, never considered it for studies; my grades probably weren’t good enough, and it’s one of the more expensive schools around there—it’s akin to Ivy League in a lot of ways. This performance was held at the renowned Finney Chapel, where I did see a concert once (Michael Stanley Band)—though probably the only connecting threads with that show and this Brubeck one was that I attended with a bota bag filled with grain alcohol fruit punch. Years later, a band I was in, The Chanel Masters, played live on a radio show in Oberlin, which is a musical, and lifetime, high point for me. Finally, I may as well take this opportunity to announce that I intend to move to Oberlin in the not so distant future.

Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond “At Wilshire-Ebell”

I didn’t even know I had this record, and I don’t have very many records, but then I regularly lose notebooks, and it took me months to find a particular pair of socks once, and then it turned out they didn’t grant me the gift of invisibility anyway. You can pick up Dave Brubeck albums in cheap bins, I suppose, because they made a lot, and he doesn’t have the collector appeal of certain jazz legends whose records you never see, like Coltrane and Miles Davis. I mean, you see those at record shops where you have to pay for them. Sometimes I question my cheapie approach to cheap records—why not just spend the money on ones I really, really like? But if I start questioning that, I have to question my whole life, like why can’t I figure out how to make above poverty level wages. And just, generally, why do I suck so much? This thinking is a vicious cycle. It’s much better to just try to keep moving.

I picked a random card, Ace of Spades, lined it up to my random record picking system, and this one came up. It’s got a glossy cartoon cover, a drawing of a proscenium, presumably the Wilshire Ebell theater in Los Angeles, with some little cartoon musicians, white guys with glasses, Dave Brubeck at piano and Paul Desmond with an alto sax. The drawing is small enough to fit full-size on a cassette, without the theater that dwarfs them, of course, but then you’d lose the effect. The back cover is covered with words, not one but two sets of anonymously written liner notes. It’s a delight, if not particularly entertaining or weird. This 1957 record is on Fantasy, who seemed often to favor the red vinyl, so if nothing else, when you’re having a guest over, the visual of putting the records on will mix well with a well-mixed cocktail and mood lighting. This record, in spite of its live recording format, could function well in that setting. All good songs on here, standards that don’t sound enough like classic versions to put them in the forefront of your evening’s activities. The massive but polite applause at the end of each number sounds like someone briefly turning on a water faucet full blast.

For me, I’ll always associate Brubeck with his most famous composition, “Take Five,” (written by Paul Desmond) which, if you’re a certain age, you’ll not be able to disconnect from its use commercially here and there, now and then. I seem to remember some really corny TV stuff from my childhood that used either Dave Brubeck music or very similar stuff, but I can’t remember what exactly—nor do I particularly want to return to it, as I consider the bulk of my TV watching as a mild version of childhood trauma. Not to be negative—I love Dave Brubeck. Maybe I should just have a Brubeck marathon someday, with all my thrift-store vinyl, to try to shake overplayed associations. Really, I could spend weeks, or even a season, listening to nothing but scratchy old “Cool Jazz” records—though it would be best in hot weather, preferably while staying at a beach house, overlooking the vast Pacific.