A Review of Jazz at the College of the Pacific
I cannot enjoy music in a musical sense. Anyone who doubts this can examine the grade received in a history of music course taken at Kenyon College, a grade which was a dropped martini glass during an otherwise all right jazz session. I don't doubt that a good technical knowledge can improve your enjoyment of an art form — few enjoy a brawl over the dread Oxford comma more than me — but as far as music goes, I cannot discuss the circle of fifths, timbre and augmented sixths. When I hear these terms, the scales (so to speak) fall from my eyes; I see music for the cold air oscillations that please our societally-trained watery organs that it is, and I despair. If you wish to kill a thing, discuss it in technical terms.
For me, music is stories, and scenes, and moments. And few albums are more full of effortless portraits and vistas than the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Jazz at the College of the Pacfic (1953). This album has travelled with me from the late nights of high school years poring over college applications to fog-laden mornings in San Francisco as the cable cars rattled sleepily up Nob Hill and has only grown stronger for the journey. It is an album of anecdotes.
I like to think my anathema for technical musical interpretation is not the only thing that makes it so. Brubeck and his quartet play this set from the same college which, nine years earlier, had nearly refused him a diploma on the grounds that he could not actually sight-read music due to poor eyesight (the compromise: Brubeck was never to teach music). Two years prior to the performance, Brubeck had suffered an injury which forced him away from the swift single-note melodic parades growing popular at the time and into striding, blocky (though never awkward) chords. But here he is, at his alma mater, with a mature style that is in no way handicapped and in every way full of vision.
"All The Things You Are" is a classic Brubeck piece, with the confident warm-up stride on the piano immediately receding into the background of Paul Desmond's alto saxophone. It's no small ability to be able to lead a quartet and then recede behind its players, especially a potential stage-stealer like Desmond. But the piece is a prime example of how a leader like Brubeck can guide a virtuoso like Desmond despite being unable to keep pace with his rapid melodicity. He doesn't shy too far into the background: his piano solo, when it comes, is driving but not heavy-handed, a rhythmic tour de force in a set's first track that could easily be its grand finale. To listeners in the future, his solo seems to prompt us: if you are hearing this album, it is worth sitting down and listening to it with the same exclusivity of attention you would give were you watching the performance. Desmond steps in and rescues us from Brubeck's genius with a soft concluding section.
No piece better captures what it is to be a writer than "Laura" — that haunting, traipsing melody punctuated by waterfalls of heartfelt wistfulness. I have sat in the perfect stillness that is a San Franciscan evening and been overcome by this short three-minute track, Brubeck saying "of course it will be" to an unspoken question of whether it will be all right or not. Desmond, perhaps cooling his heels, does not play at all; Brubeck replaces him with his right hand, enchanting floating cords coming out into the song like stars. If Brubeck's professors were in doubt as to his ability after "All the Things You Are," they are surely in full belief now.
"Lullaby in Rhythm" is a playful duet between Desmond and Brubeck, but Joe Dodge's anchoring drumplay is more obvious here than in other songs. About halfway through the song, he takes his sticks off the snare and plays only the hi-hat, pulling away a curtain that reveals Ron Crotty on bass, providing the other half of the quartet's foundation as he has for the entirety of the album. It's hard not to pay attention to Brubeck's adventuresome solo (and someone, perhaps Brubeck, humming along to it), but in this song observe Dodge and Crotty when they are most easily observed, providing the needful track for the driving train of notes coming from Brubeck, then Desmond, as the song closes.
"I'll Never Smile Again" is as consummate a Brubeck Quartet piece as they come, at least in this period of the artist's career. Desmond can't help but take the spotlight with his saxophone whenever he has a chance, but here the piano is a distinct hook, too. I'll doubtless receive some heat for saying it, but this song eclipses 'Take Five” for me — a masterpiece in its own right. But when that melody strides out, I can't help but smile, again. There are many songs that describe moments living in San Francisco, the jewel of the Bay Area, with its green Pacific pines and melancholy fog at eternal debate with the Califonian sun coming over the Berkeley Hills (Desmond and Brubeck, respectively) ... but this one does it best. It is as good as spending a Saturday morning on the cable cars, drinking steaming coffee off Hyde Street before the tourists are up and smelling the spiced evergreen morning; better, nowadays.
"I Remember You" starts in the middle of itself, and is not a bad song by any stretch of the imagination; but if the set tuckers out anywhere, it is here. I can hardly criticize; there is simply less of a ride than there is in the preceding pieces. But perhaps this is part of Brubeck's wisdom — every good album needs a chance to catch up with itself if it is being listened to all the way through (how albums were listened to in olden times). But ah! Six minutes in, Brubeck remembers himself. We are found in a two-minute solo that is driving, flighty, then gives Crotty a chance to pluck some fat strings and revive us.
"For All We Know" is the final piece in a set that goes far too quickly, and at first it seems out of place for its haunting reflection — more wandering and listing than 'Laura' as Desmond takes the lead. But as a farewell song it is apt, with the alt sax sounding less like a dry martini and more the last Manhattan of a successful evening. The confluence of narratives that this evening ties up, for Brubeck at least, ought not end with a celebratory romp but the jazz equivalent of walking off into the sunset, and the valedictorian song is that.
Dave Brubeck did receive his degree shortly before joining the US Army, where he led a band and met Paul Desmond some six thousand miles from the Bay. He'd go on from this night to color jazz significantly and dominate the West Coast style, providing amateur listeners with many sippable entry points while never sacrificing style for approachability.
In my mind, though, it was this evening that was his own private graduation and the true conveyance of his degree — the night jazz went to college with him. Sometimes, I lament that we can only access these moments through our recordings of them. There are so few art forms that are made with the intent of that moment, for that moment, and last completely beyond that moment… live performances are not among them. But it was enough to know that it was played once.
