Dave Brubeck: In
His Own Sweet Way
Director:
Bruce Ricker
Year: 2010
Rating: 8.0
The opening notes of Take Five and Blue Rondo are
probably as familiar as any jazz song in history - perhaps along with Take
the A Train or Summertime or The Saints Go Marching In. This is a terrific
documentary on the life of Dave Brubeck presented by Clint Eastwood who appears
in it as the biggest fanboy in the world (so does Bill Cosby). It is 90 minutes
of his music, his reminisces, his ideas about jazz - and to a large degree
it is about his over 60 years of being married to his wife who he clearly
loves.
He grew up on a cattle ranch of all things in northern California and his
father sent him off to college for veterinarian studies. He lasted a year
before he switched over to music. He went off to war and was in Patton's
army and actually wrote one of his first songs to the sound of tanks crossing
the Remagen Bridge over the Rhine. He got lucky though when one day a group
of USO singers needed a piano player and he was drafted into the army band.
After the war, he gained success fairly early on - no tale of years of struggle
or drugs here - just forming a band that eventually became his famous The
Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond on sax, Joe Morrello on drums, Eugene
Wright on bass and Brubeck on piano. Their album Time Out in 1959 was huge
- perhaps the best selling jazz album of all time and Take Five was a big
selling single.
Brubeck was to his dismay lumped into the Cool Jazz school along with a few
other white jazz musicians such as Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans
and Stan Getz who were all quite successful while so many black musicians
labored in anonymity. Brubeck was the first jazz musician to be on the cover
of Time Magazine which he felt was just wrong - he said that honor should
have gone to Duke Ellington who he adored. He was an incredibly prolific
composer - able to write complex rhythms that often incorporated various
influences (he says he got the idea for Blue Rondo listening to some street
musicians in Istanbul) but were fully accessible to the public. When so many
jazz artists began to fade away in the 1960's, Brubeck kept producing albums
and playing in concerts. He has so much music - most of which I have never
heard - he even wrote a musical and a Mass - but one piece I love is called
Elementals from his album Time Changes and is 16 minutes long but simply
brilliant. It is up on YouTube as is this documentary.
In this documentary Brubeck just seems to be a guy who loved music, loved
his work, loved his wife and loved his life. You can't ask for much more
than that. He was to pass away two years after this documentary and his wife
Isola two years after him.
