DAN BRUBECK CELEBRATES REMARKABLE JAZZ FAMILY
> Dan Brubeck riffs on his famous father’s musical legacy and his mother’s key role,
The Dan Brubeck Quartet When: Tonight at 8 (doors at 6) Where: Hermann’s Jazz Club, 753 View St. Tickets: $22 at Victoria Jazz Society, Hermann’s Jazz Club Brubeck also performs Friday at Simonholt restaurant in Nanaimo.
Iola Brubeck wasn’t the type to stay in the shadow of her husband, piano legend Dave Brubeck. She stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the seminal jazz figure, guiding his career as a manager and groundbreaking promotional wizard.
“Her role was to push my dad’s career, but she decided to stay behind the scenes,” said the couple’s son, drummer Dan Brubeck. “But where she could, she put her creative energy. Writing lyrics was the perfect outlet.”
The couple’s 70-year personal and professional partnership forms the crux of Celebrating the Music and Lyrics of Dave and Iola Brubeck, a new live recording by the Dan Brubeck Quartet. In many ways, the double album (which was recorded live at The Cellar jazz club in Vancouver, the city where Brubeck lived until two years ago) is a love letter to what appeared to be one heck of a family.
Dave Brubeck, who died in 2012, was once the biggest star in popular jazz, thanks to a unique playing style that ushered in the cool jazz genre. His was the Brubeck name everybody seemed to know. But it was the family matriarch, according to Dan Brubeck, 60, who devised the plan that would ultimately bring stardom to the jazz scene as a whole.
Iola Brubeck suggested that her husband and his quartet tour post-secondary campuses, a move that led to a series of acclaimed “college” recordings that began with 1953’s Jazz at Oberlin. She should be credited for taking jazz out of the clubs and putting it on mainstream stages, Dan Brubeck said, “the idea of making it a respectable art form and not something that just happens in the basement of a whorehouse.”
The success of Dave Brubeck’s college recordings put him on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, from which he never looked back.
The package for Celebrating the Music and Lyrics of Dave and Iola Brubeck includes a 27-page book of notes partially written by Brubeck’s mother, who penned them when she was “very close to fading away” from cancer. Her backstories on songs such as Take Five, perhaps the most revered song in Dave Brubeck’s catalogue, paint an insider’s view of a creative catalogue that will forever be part of his family name.
“It was pretty cathartic doing this project, actually. Her liner notes gave a history, a kind of insight, to the project that no one else could really give. That spurred me on. It was one of the last things she did. She knew the ins and outs and origins of every tune.”
Iola Brubeck finished her liner notes not long before her death in 2014. Her death leaves a legacy that Dan Brubeck, who now lives in Half Moon Bay on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, is hoping to further with saxophonist Steve Kaldestad, pianist Tony Foster and singerbassist Adam Thomas, the members of his own quartet.
Brubeck has plenty of experi- ence playing the music of his father, having been a member of Dave Brubeck’s touring unit for more than 25 years prior to his dad’s death. He joined his brothers Chris Brubeck (bass) and Darius (piano) in the combo.
Dave Brubeck found in later years that the stress had dissipated, especially that of having his sons along for the ride.
“There was a lot of pressure for him having his kids in the role of some of these musicians. But later in his career, I know he felt really proud of all of us,” Dan Brubeck said.
One of the last gigs Brubeck played with his dad was at the Rivinia Festival in Chicago, a few years before Dave died. That’s how Dan Brubeck chooses to remember the musician he began playing with when he was just 17.
“He was so chilled out at that point. He had nothing left to prove to anyone. In a lot of ways, I felt that was some of his best playing. He was so relaxed. He had lost a lot of facility, but he had gained insight and the ability to compose on the spot. I thought that was his strength, and he played to those strengths at the end. He wasn’t trying to prove a whole lot.”