Aventures In Time - Dave Brubeck

 

Blue Shadows In The Street

Bluette

Dave Brubeck

Adventures In Time

Produced by Ted Macero

Editing Engineer: Russ Payne

Cover Art and Design: Teresa Alfieri

Cover Photos: Lee Freidlander

Manufactured by Columbia Records

Columbia STEREO G 30625

1971

From the inside cover: History has justified Br. Brubeck. But when Dave started fooling with odd time figures the predominant, almost exclusive, rhythm of American music was in 4/4.

Things in 5/4 or 7/4 or even more complex meters do not startle the people of many foreign countries. An Armenian drummer wouldn't bat an eyelash at 7/4 and tabla players in India approach much more complex rhythms with confidence, aplomb, and maybe even a little of that polite amusement with which many Western musicians look on the lay listener. In the first decade of this century Stravinsky wrote rhythmic configurations that boggled the minds, to say nothing of the fingers, of musicians required to play them. For a long time, however, American musicians, in popular music and jazz, were rendered acutely uncomfortable by anything other than good old 1-2-3-4.

When Fats Waller recorded The Jitterbug Waltz, it was considered peculiar, if not downright disloyal. Nobody played jazz in three. Three, in fact, was looked on as a little old fashioned, square, the kind of rhythm Mother used to make. Also, it was said, it didn't swing. Not so: three swings harder than four once you get the hang of it. The problem was that jazz an popular musicians didn't have the hang of it.

It always came out sounding as if they were wearing straight jackets while performing The Band Played On for a society wedding.

Dave Brubeck probably had more to do with changing that than any single bandleader.

Brubeck claims he was not alone. Drummer Max Roach and others were also making early experiments in the use of unconventional rhythms. But Dave, too, was a pioneer, and many authorities feel that he did more to popularize these ventures in time that anyone else in jazz.

There are two basic metric figures in music: two and three,. That's it. Everything else is compounded of them. A bar of 5/4 is a compound of three and two. You count it: one-two-three-one-two, one-two-three-one-two. (Sometimes however, just to make things harder on everybody, it's one-two-one-two-three.) Seen-four is simply four and three: four beats, three beats, four beats, three beats. In Indian music things can get much wilder, but let's leave that to someone else's liner notes about Ravi Shankar, and good luck to him.

Dave has long believed that the next direction in music is the assimilation of the various musical vocabularies of our many world cultures into one huge, enriched, musical language. African polyrhythms, European harmonic connections, Indian for even Japanese or Balinese or whatever) melodic ideas. This conviction lies at the foundation of much that Dave has done.

This album is a compendium of tracks of sundry Brubeckian adventures in time, most of them dating from the early 1960's. There is only one tune in the album that wasn't written by Dave or members of the quartet. He Done Her Wrong, and that's a variant on Frankie And Jonnie. Take Five and Eleven Four are Paul Desmond's handiwork, and Shim Wha was written by Joe Morello. Everything else came from Dave's pen for pencil, as the case may be). But most significantly only one tune in the album is in the traditional 4/4 of jazz.

Looking back on all these experiments, Dave provided the following breakdowns of the time figures of the tunes:

Unsquare Dance 7/4

Blue Rondo A La Turk: 9/8, the figure being divided into one-two/one-two/one-two/one-two-three.

Take Five: as noted, in 5/4

Castilian Drums: 5/4

It's A Rage Waltz: in three, sort of.

Blue Shadows In The Street: 9/8

Unisphere: 10/4

World's Fair: to quote Dave, "It's in 13 or 15. 1 forget." Don't worry about it, just enjoy. I make it fifteen.

Waltz Limp: in 3/4, basically. This was written for a ballet. At this point, the ballerina has lost her shoe – and her accent.

Countdown: 10/4

Maori Blues: 6/4

Three To Get Ready obviously implies the phrase "and four to go." And that's how it is – 2 bars of three, followed by 2 bars of four, making a basic rhythmic structure of 14 beats.

Cassandra: 4/4 until the release, then 3/4 is superimposed over the 4.

Cable Car: 3/4.

Charles Matthew Hallelujah, written for one of Dave's children on the day he was born, is the one selection in straight-ahead 4/4.

Kathy's Waltz, written for another little Brubeck, is in 3/4.

For More Drums: 5/4.

Shim Wah And Bluette: 3/4.

The interesting thing about these Brubeck tunes is that they feel and sound so natural, even more so today than at the time they were originally recorded. The success of this adventure can be seen in a personal anecdote. One day, in the spring of 1962. I was in a little night club in Georgetown, British Guiana. The strains of Take Five were coming from the juke box. The local people were dancing to it. I don't suppose they knew or cared that the music was in 5/4. It felt good, it felt natural, and that was all that mattered. The song was, of course, by then a huge international success.

Since then many musicians have plunged into experiments in rhythmic complexity. It should not be forgotten that Dave Brubeck and his cohorts pointed the way. This album is the proof of that. – Gene Lees

Unsquare Dance

Blue Rondo A La Turk

Take Five

Eleven Four

Castilian Drums

It's A Raggy Waltz

Blue Shadow In The Street

Unisphere

World's Fair

Waltz Limp

Iberia

Countdown

Maori Blues

Three To Get Ready

Cassandra

He Done Her Wrong

Cable Car

Charles Matthew Hallelujah

Kathy's Waltz

Far More Drums

Shim Wha

Bluette