Dave Brubeck

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a musician. Still drawing huge crowds at the age of seventy eight, he's recently finished an anniversary tour of Britain. Born in California, his father was a cattle rancher and his mother a classical pianist who trained under Myra Hess. The greatest influence in his musical career, however, was the composer Darius Mio, who told him he had to compose, even though at that time he couldn't read music. And compose he did, jazz improvisations that took him from small beginnings at college gigs to one of the most popular and biggest selling jazz musicians in the world. The album, which includes his signature tune Take Five, is still selling in huge numbers nearly forty years after it was first recorded. Jazz musicians don't give up, he says, till they can't walk any more or they drop dead.

Speaker 41:19

Hmm hmm

Presenter1:19

He is Dave Brubeck, 78 years old, and still walking, Dave, and still enjoying jazz as much as ever.

Dave Brubeck1:27

Maybe more.

Dave Brubeck1:28

I've really enjoyed this tour.

Dave Brubeck1:32

And the audiences have been great and the band is playing wonderfully.

Presenter1:37

But when you walk out onto that concert platform, which it is these days a concert platform for you, do you do you still get the same thrill that you ever did?

Dave Brubeck1:46

Well, you still get scared and nervous. In fact, Dame Myra has.

Dave Brubeck1:52

said the worst part of a concert was walking from the wings to the piano, and then looking out at the audience over a river of ice.

Presenter2:05

But in your case, of course, it's perhaps even worse,'cause you can't rehearse. You never play anything the same twice. That is the nature of jazz.

Dave Brubeck2:15

Yeah, and we always hope to rehearse. And if we could, we would, but we don't have the opportunity to. But you can't by definition, can you?

Dave Brubeck2:26

Well you can set yourself up.

Dave Brubeck2:30

like a basketball team or football team.

Dave Brubeck2:33

And then somebody will do something differently than the plays you have worked out, and that'll always be the the beginning of the best part of the game or the performance. It this is when improvisation comes in, whether it's on the sports field or

Dave Brubeck2:53

Plain jazz.

Presenter2:54

And the tunes, although wordless, are usually based on the rhythm of a line you've heard. I can you explain that? I you've got one it's deja vu all over again. Where does that come from?

Dave Brubeck3:05

Zekum

Dave Brubeck3:06

Oh, that comes from

Dave Brubeck3:08

Not the cartoon character Yogi Bera, but the real Yogi Berra, the baseball player and the coach.

Dave Brubeck3:18

And he said to his team, when they were behind

Dave Brubeck3:22

It's deja vu all over again. And I just took that rhythm because the saying is so funny.

Presenter3:25

Mm-hmm.

Presenter3:30

Yeah, and it's always there.

Dave Brubeck3:32

Yeah, and it's always there. It's always there all through the piece.

Presenter3:36

There's another great title as well. The things you'll never remember are the things I'll never forget. You can just hear it all there, can't you?

Dave Brubeck3:41

Then you can

Dave Brubeck3:44

I've written a lot of tunes that way. All my children have a tune.

Dave Brubeck3:48

based on their name, Now my grandchildren

Dave Brubeck3:52

Eventually, I'll have to start on the great-grandchildren. There's two of those that

Dave Brubeck3:58

have remained nameless.

Presenter4:01

Tell me about your first record.

Dave Brubeck4:04

Well, the first one I chose was my old octet.

Dave Brubeck4:09

Playing a standard tune of the day the way you look tonight.

Dave Brubeck4:14

Whenever I wonder

Dave Brubeck4:16

How I got where I am.

Dave Brubeck4:19

I could listen to this and understand

Dave Brubeck4:23

Some of the things I I was doing that hadn't been done much, if ever, in jazz.

Dave Brubeck4:30

Like using There's always two themes.

Dave Brubeck4:34

Most of the time, in any composition, whether it's a sonata.

Dave Brubeck4:39

or a jazz tune or a Broadway show tune. There's uh always the first theme, you and you usually repeat it, then a bridge.

Dave Brubeck4:52

And in this piece, the way you look to night

Dave Brubeck4:55

I used the first steam.

Dave Brubeck4:58

and the bridge together in Connor Point.

Dave Brubeck5:02

And what's funny about that is the guys in the band are were paying so much attention to what they were playing, they didn't realize both themes

Dave Brubeck5:12

were going on at the same time.

Presenter5:46

Dave Brubeck, Mike Castaway, and his octet playing The Way You Look Tonight, and they recorded that back in nineteen forty-nine. Of course, Dave, it's the opening bars of Take Five which are the most famous in your repertoire, and the audience applauds every time you know you move into them. Has that Take Five gone on coming out differently every time, or you must have played it the same twice.

Dave Brubeck6:07

Never.

Dave Brubeck6:09

That will be the last night I play if it comes out to sing.

Presenter6:13

It was the first piece of jazz to get into the pop charts, nineteen fifty nine. Can you explain why is it possible to explain why that particular tune captured the mass imagination, musical imagination?

Dave Brubeck6:27

Hard to know.

Dave Brubeck6:29

Columbia Records did not want to put it out.

Dave Brubeck6:32

It was an album of originals.

Dave Brubeck6:35

It had a painting on the cover.

Dave Brubeck6:38

And you couldn't dance to it.

Dave Brubeck6:41

Only the president of the company, who was a musician,

Dave Brubeck6:46

thought it was the best thing I'd ever done, and he was tired of hearing versions of Body and Soul and Stardust. And he said, you are really doing something that's very important.

Presenter6:59

Because it it was in five four time, which which was not considered to be really jazz then.

Dave Brubeck7:05

only by people that aren't aware.

Dave Brubeck7:10

There was a discussion at a place called the Music Inn.

Dave Brubeck7:14

where there were the top jazz musicians in the country and critics, and they were discussing whether a jazz should be in four four, occasional three four.

Dave Brubeck7:27

and a very respected Afro-American.

Dave Brubeck7:32

Doctor Willis James, who was the biggest authority on Afro American music, stood up and went to the podium and sang something and he said to all these top guys,

Dave Brubeck7:46

What time signature was that in? And it was so complicated none of us knew.

Dave Brubeck7:51

And he said that was in Phi Four, it's an African work song, and the Dave Ruback quartet is on the right track.

Dave Brubeck7:59

From then on, if you had any sense, any sense of jazz history.

Dave Brubeck8:05

Then you shut up about whether jazz should be in

Dave Brubeck8:09

uh a different time signature than four, four.

Presenter8:12

But it it kind of happened by accident, didn't it? Because in fact you didn't write it, it was your Alto Sachs player and great friend Paul Desmond. Did did you have uh much to do with it at all? Did y you gave it the title, I think, didn't you?

Dave Brubeck8:24

Well, I gave it a lot more than a title. Ball didn't have a tune when he came

Dave Brubeck8:30

To rehearse.

Presenter8:30

What did he have then?

Dave Brubeck8:32

He had a statement, I can't write anything in five four, was his opening statement.

Dave Brubeck8:38

And that beat was my drummer's Joe Morellos.

Dave Brubeck8:42

and I asked Paul to put a melody over it.

Dave Brubeck8:45

and he had attempted

Dave Brubeck8:47

two melodies, but he he didn't have a tune.

Dave Brubeck8:51

And I've fixed it so that

Dave Brubeck8:54

It became a piece.

Presenter8:56

And why take five? Because it was five four?

Dave Brubeck8:59

And there's another thing. Paul didn't want to call it take five. He said, Nobody knows what that means. And I said, Paul Desmond, you're the only person in the world that doesn't know what take five means.

Presenter9:12

Let's take five and have your next piece of music. What is it?

Dave Brubeck9:17

The opening of Box Brandenburg Concerto, number two.

Dave Brubeck9:21

It's the music I love to wake up to in the morning if I want to be happy. It's it's just the most exciting, joyful music I know.

Presenter10:31

The opening of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, number two in F major, played by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Apparently you might not have been a jazz musician, Dave Brubeck. You were brought up in California out there in the nineteen thirties. I think your father wanted you to be a cowboy.

Dave Brubeck10:46

Yeah, so did I.

Dave Brubeck10:48

We moved away from

Dave Brubeck10:51

A town called Concord, California, which was 25 miles from San Francisco.

Dave Brubeck10:57

And we moved much further north to a forty five thousand acre cattle ranch, which was so huge it was in three counties.

Dave Brubeck11:08

My dad became manager of that.

Presenter11:10

And he was a champion rodeo rancher or something. What did he do?

Dave Brubeck11:14

He roped, he was the champion steer rooper in California and the champion calf rooper.

Dave Brubeck11:22

He was a fantastic uh

Dave Brubeck11:25

Cattleman

Presenter11:26

And is that what you aspire to? Is that what you were doing?

Dave Brubeck11:28

I wanted to be like him. I didn't want to ever go to college, ever leave, and my mother insisted. And the compromise.

Dave Brubeck11:38

was that I would study to be a veterinarian.

Presenter11:41

So he let you go to to become a vet so that you'd come back, besides?

Dave Brubeck11:44

I could come back.

Presenter11:45

But were either of them musical? I've said your mother was. Um she was a classical pianist, yes?

Dave Brubeck11:50

Very good.

Dave Brubeck11:52

Yeah

Presenter11:52

How how big a part did it play in your life?

Dave Brubeck11:54

It started before you were born, prenatal influence.

Dave Brubeck11:59

And then as soon as you were born, you were put in a crib next to the piano.

Dave Brubeck12:05

And while she taught students most of the day you were right there listening.

Presenter12:10

So did you always know it's what you wanted to do, or was the the the pull of the wild, as it were, the pull of the getting out onto the ranch greater always?

Dave Brubeck12:17

For some reason I couldn't learn to read music.

Dave Brubeck12:21

I could make up melodies from the time I was four years old.

Dave Brubeck12:26

And uh it became very hard for me to to do what my mother wanted.

Dave Brubeck12:33

I was drawn to be like my dad, and that that's where I was the happiest, was to get out of having to play.

Dave Brubeck12:43

Classical piano, but still

Dave Brubeck12:45

improvise, make up tunes, and play jazz.

Presenter12:49

But in a sense, you wanted to escape from the the classical

Dave Brubeck12:52

Oh boy, did I. And I did.

Presenter12:54

And

Dave Brubeck12:55

I d I did make the great escape.

Presenter12:59

Tell me about your third record.

Dave Brubeck13:01

Duke Ellington, playing cottontail. This was.

Dave Brubeck13:06

A very uh pivotal point in my life was the discovery of the Duke Ellington Band.

Dave Brubeck13:14

This particular tune.

Dave Brubeck13:17

Which

Dave Brubeck13:18

also has to do with George Gershwin, because

Dave Brubeck13:22

Cottontail by Ellington is based on I Got Rhythm.

Dave Brubeck13:27

But it's so changed.

Dave Brubeck13:29

That to me, the Ellington band was playing in two separate keys at once. When you first hear

Dave Brubeck13:38

The original melody

Dave Brubeck13:40

It's superimposed over the chord changes of I Got Rhythm, but it's up a whole step.

Dave Brubeck13:48

And when I heard that, I just.

Dave Brubeck13:51

went totally out of my mind to hear more Ellington and to start.

Dave Brubeck13:57

doing what people condemn me for.

Dave Brubeck14:00

polytonality, and later polyrhythms.

Speaker 414:11

Love me, let it be.

Presenter14:34

Duke Ellington and his orchestra featuring Ben Webster playing Cottontail, and that was recorded in nineteen forty. When did you meet him for the first time, the Duke, Dave?

Dave Brubeck14:44

Just about that time I could have met him.

Dave Brubeck14:48

Because his great bass player, Jimmy Blanton, had just passed away.

Dave Brubeck14:54

and the bass player substitute.

Dave Brubeck14:58

named Junior Ragland from San Francisco.

Dave Brubeck15:01

and I were friends. So I went backstage

Dave Brubeck15:05

to see junior

Dave Brubeck15:06

And he said, Would you like to meet the Duke? And I said, Oh, I'd love He says, Come here, just walk in his dressing room.

Dave Brubeck15:15

So I walked in,

Dave Brubeck15:17

And Duke looked up at me and I couldn't open my mouth.

Dave Brubeck15:21

I I couldn't really speak to Duke until we were on tour together.

Dave Brubeck15:26

and they put the leaders in a separate dressing room and all the side men in another one.

Dave Brubeck15:33

And we became very close friends.

Presenter15:37

Hmm.

Presenter15:37

Let's go back to you at college. You'd gone to study veterinary science, as you say, but at some point you cross over into music. How did you manage to make make the bridge?

Dave Brubeck15:48

At the request of the zoology teacher, he said, Brubek, your mind is not in this laboratory it's across the lawn at the conservatory. Go over there next year.

Presenter16:02

And you did.

Dave Brubeck16:03

Idea.

Presenter16:04

But you still couldn't read music.

Dave Brubeck16:05

That's right.

Presenter16:06

But then how did you manage to con most of the people most of the time at Music College?

Dave Brubeck16:11

By not playing the piano.

Dave Brubeck16:13

You see, you have to take

Dave Brubeck16:16

Clarinet or a reed instrument, and so you're just learning the scales and everything. So they don't know that you can't read well. They aren't putting the

Dave Brubeck16:25

a difficult piece of music in front of you. And then they made me take piano.

Dave Brubeck16:31

And boy, that lady came marching down the stairs

Dave Brubeck16:35

To the dean and said, Brube can't read a note. The dean said, You're a disgrace to the college.

Dave Brubeck16:43

and said I couldn't graduate.

Dave Brubeck16:46

And the ear training and harmony teacher, the composition teacher, the counterpoint teacher went to the dean and said.

Dave Brubeck16:55

This is the most talented guy I've ever had in my class. You're making a big mistake.

Dave Brubeck17:01

And I did get to graduate and he made me promise never to teach music.

Dave Brubeck17:07

and disgrace the Conservatory.

Presenter17:09

And you never have.

Dave Brubeck17:10

No, but I

Dave Brubeck17:12

My archives are going to that school, and they've given me an honorary doctorate.

Presenter17:18

So they recognized you in the end.

Dave Brubeck17:20

Ah, sure.

Presenter17:23

Tell me about your fourth record.

Dave Brubeck17:26

This is the Shotzakovich Fifth.

Dave Brubeck17:30

Although I had heard piano music all my life from my mother, the greatest classics, she played them all.

Dave Brubeck17:38

There was something about

Dave Brubeck17:40

The Symphony

Dave Brubeck17:42

piece, the Shostakovich fit, that made me decide that some way I want to compose music some day for symphony orchestra.

Presenter18:49

Part of the first movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No. five in D minor, played by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutroy. And you've even incorporated that theme into Take Five, you said, Dave.

Dave Brubeck19:00

Yeah, when we played uh

Dave Brubeck19:02

In Russia.

Dave Brubeck19:04

I took that theme and put it into 5-4 time in the middle of my improvisation. It's on a record.

Presenter19:14

You said that you went away to war after college, and and when you went away America was swinging. When you came back, they were numb. You just couldn't get any work. They didn't want to know about you. Is that right? It was that tough.

Dave Brubeck19:26

For a while I did have have a job, but most of the time it was almost impossible to work.

Dave Brubeck19:34

So I took the rhythm section from the octet.

Dave Brubeck19:38

Cal Jader, Ron Crody, and myself.

Dave Brubeck19:41

And we started making some headway.

Presenter19:44

But in the meantime, you'd found Darius Miot, the French composer who who'd learned a lot about jazz, I think, in Haarlem and was teaching over on the West Coast, and he became your teacher. That was incredibly lucky, as it turned out, wasn't it?

Dave Brubeck19:52

This

Dave Brubeck19:59

Yeah.

Dave Brubeck20:00

After the war a lot of us could study.

Dave Brubeck20:04

Free.

Dave Brubeck20:05

and have our tuition paid.

Dave Brubeck20:08

So that's how I first got into Mills College.

Presenter20:12

And and did he spot your talent? I mean, is are you able to say? Do you think he spotted it early on? Because I know that he said to you somewhere along the line, you've just got to compose, didn't he?

Dave Brubeck20:22

Right.

Dave Brubeck20:23

See, I was in a class where most of the class

Dave Brubeck20:29

were getting their masters or doctorates, and I still couldn't read music.

Dave Brubeck20:34

And Mio knew this very well, being my teacher, and he he told me, You've got to be a composer, you've got to learn how to do it on your own.

Dave Brubeck20:48

Because it's too late for you to get a European background.

Dave Brubeck20:52

And he said, I'll know I know you will do it.

Dave Brubeck20:55

Because it's just in you to be a composer.

Presenter20:59

But how do you compose? Because I I've I've read before now, of course you compose in the traditional way, but I've also read that you can go to sleep and you can dream it and you can get up and you can write it.

Dave Brubeck21:09

Yeah. That happened with the Mass. I had left out the Lord's Prayer, as the Catholics call it, and the priest said

Dave Brubeck21:20

and the mass is great.

Dave Brubeck21:22

But you've left out the Our Father. And I said, they didn't ask me to do it.

Dave Brubeck21:28

And he said, You should do it. I said, I'm finished with the mass. I'm going to take a little time off, go to the Caribbean.

Dave Brubeck21:36

So when I was down there

Dave Brubeck21:38

In the middle of the night I dreamt the whole Our Father with the choir singing and the orchestra playing. I jumped out of bed and wrote it down.

Presenter21:47

And was that the mass that you ended up performing in front of the Pope on his trip to the States in'eighty seven?

Dave Brubeck21:53

Yeah.

Presenter21:54

Candlestick Part

Dave Brubeck21:55

Candlestick Park, seventy-two thousand people.

Presenter21:58

Yeah.

Dave Brubeck21:59

Yeah.

Presenter21:59

And he came over and and and and spoke to you.

Dave Brubeck22:02

Yes, he he came over he blessed us from the altar and then came over and spoke to us.

Presenter22:08

Well, w yes. Blessed. What is blessed?'Cause I gather when he came over to talk to to say hello to you, you were doubled up in laughter.

Dave Brubeck22:15

Oh, well I didn't know you knew that story.

Dave Brubeck22:18

When he blessed us I happened to look up

Dave Brubeck22:22

And see this

Dave Brubeck22:24

And I said to Russell Gloyd, the conductor,

Dave Brubeck22:27

Did the Pope just bless us? What happened? he said.

Dave Brubeck22:31

Either that or he's trying to learn to conduct him for time.

Presenter22:37

Tell me about record number five.

Dave Brubeck22:39

This is Didarius Mio conducting one of the most important

Dave Brubeck22:45

Pieces in Music. It predates George Gershwin. You can hear Gershwin all through this piece.

Dave Brubeck22:54

Oh.

Dave Brubeck22:55

The influence of Mia on Gershwin.

Dave Brubeck22:59

And uh i it's just full of jazz.

Dave Brubeck23:03

Rhythms and the feeling of jazz and improvisation, but it's a classical piece.

Presenter24:07

Darius Miot, conducting L'Oquesse de Duterato des Champs Lyses, playing his composition La Creation du Monde, the Creation of the World.

Presenter24:16

Improvisation, though, Dave Brubeck, is your first love. That's what gives jazz its validity for you.

Speaker 224:23

Mm-hmm.

Presenter24:24

It nevertheless must take great courage to do that to do that live in front of thousands of people, sometimes when you're being recorded as well. It's a it's a high risk business, isn't it?

Dave Brubeck24:35

Yeah, and this week we

Dave Brubeck24:39

Took that risk three nights in a row.

Dave Brubeck24:42

I've written more.

Dave Brubeck24:45

Then we had time.

Dave Brubeck24:46

to rehearse or record or take a chance on playing

Dave Brubeck24:50

Live

Presenter24:51

Why?

Presenter24:51

How can you write something that's improvised?

Dave Brubeck24:54

Oh, you write the theme.

Presenter24:57

So the writing is really quite a short business, because you're just writing something that you're going to begin with and end with.

Dave Brubeck25:02

And use the structure.

Presenter25:02

And use the structure.

Dave Brubeck25:04

You see, the structure is very important because if the structure is not good.

Dave Brubeck25:09

The musicians will not want to improvise on it.

Dave Brubeck25:12

And you see this is nothing new.

Dave Brubeck25:15

Bach did this, Mozart did this, Beethoven did this.

Dave Brubeck25:20

When Beethoven came to Mozart's house in Vienna,

Dave Brubeck25:25

He played some things for Mozart.

Dave Brubeck25:28

And Mozart had some cronies in the next room, and he was kind of bored with Beethoven, and he walked in and started talking to them. Beethoven stayed and improvised in the other room.

Dave Brubeck25:41

And

Dave Brubeck25:43

Mozart went back in, and then he told everyone, This young man's going to make a great noise in the world. You remember ever hearing that statement? That's when it was made.

Speaker 225:54

Yeah.

Presenter25:54

And that

Dave Brubeck25:56

You see, it's about his improvisation.

Presenter25:59

So in that sense, we can never really hear what you would call pure Beethoven and pure Mozart because we can never hear them improvise.

Dave Brubeck26:08

Well, there's wonderful ways to look at this that will always make.

Dave Brubeck26:13

Some people furious.

Dave Brubeck26:15

But um

Dave Brubeck26:17

I think it was Thomas Mahan, I think it was.

Dave Brubeck26:21

where he describes what it's like.

Dave Brubeck26:25

2

Dave Brubeck26:26

think musically, and he said that initial flush on the cheek

Dave Brubeck26:32

is when it's the greatest, and from then on is a series of watering down.

Dave Brubeck26:38

When you put it to the copyist

Dave Brubeck26:41

certain things get lost. When the copyist gives it to the conductor, certain things get changed. When the conductor gives it to the musicians, certain things get changed. But the f pure time of that composition is when you first think of it in your head.

Presenter26:59

Echo number six.

Dave Brubeck27:01

If I were ever going to quit,

Dave Brubeck27:04

It was after hearing our tatum.

Dave Brubeck27:07

and he has destroyed so many of us.

Dave Brubeck27:11

like one pianist was playing and he knew that uh

Dave Brubeck27:15

Artatum had just come into the hall.

Dave Brubeck27:19

And he said

Dave Brubeck27:20

God is in the house.

Dave Brubeck27:23

That's how we all felt.

Presenter27:51

Artatum and Tiger Rag is that as impossible to play as it sounds.

Dave Brubeck27:56

Yeah.

Dave Brubeck27:57

Now you know this is a Belgium march.

Dave Brubeck28:00

Syncopated.

Dave Brubeck28:02

And

Dave Brubeck28:03

This is what so many people don't realize is the influence.

Dave Brubeck28:09

of European music.

Dave Brubeck28:12

into New Orleans music. Now let me be first to say the greatest influence is African. The reason for jazz is from Africa.

Dave Brubeck28:24

But there's a lot of European

Dave Brubeck28:27

Influence

Dave Brubeck28:28

Now you could hear an artatum

Dave Brubeck28:31

Chopin double thirds and

Dave Brubeck28:34

As a pianist I could tell you

Dave Brubeck28:36

that I I've often heard my mother play those double thirds.

Dave Brubeck28:40

And Tatum must have heard those.

Presenter28:43

Tell me about that other great hero of yours, Louis Armstrong. You once wrote a musical for him, didn't you? The Real Ambassadors?

Dave Brubeck28:47

It's r

Dave Brubeck28:50

What an experience to really know, Louis

Dave Brubeck28:54

And

Dave Brubeck28:55

for him to tell me that I captured a lot of the feeling of what went in on in New Orleans in the arrangements I wrote for him.

Presenter29:05

But as I understand it, a lot of the stuff you wrote for him in that musical was meant to be funny. By the time it came out the other end through Louis Armstrong it was incredibly moving and people were in tears.

Dave Brubeck29:16

Yeah.

Dave Brubeck29:18

The the section They say I look like God Could God be black my God? If both are made in the image of thee, Could thou perchance a zebra be? My wife and I expected a laugh, The way Louis could deliver a lie.

Dave Brubeck29:36

And Louis was in tears, and the whole audience was in tears, and so many of

Dave Brubeck29:43

The lines that

Dave Brubeck29:45

We wanted to poke fun and and show the ridiculousness.

Presenter29:50

Uh

Dave Brubeck29:50

Yeah.

Presenter29:50

Yeah.

Dave Brubeck29:51

Segregation.

Dave Brubeck29:53

And Louie got into the middle of those things even in in the recording room.

Dave Brubeck30:00

He had tears in his eyes. I can

Dave Brubeck30:02

show you places where his voice cracked.

Presenter30:05

But you had to push him to do it, and you had to push him into the top hat and get him to carry the case like a real ambassador.

Dave Brubeck30:09

Carry the case like a real

Dave Brubeck30:12

Yeah.

Dave Brubeck30:13

That's true.

Dave Brubeck30:14

I I uh wanted him to walk on stage in the top hat with the

Dave Brubeck30:22

Uh attach a case.

Dave Brubeck30:24

And he wouldn't do it.

Dave Brubeck30:27

And it's so

Dave Brubeck30:28

when he came on opening night, the only performance incidentally.

Dave Brubeck30:34

He had on the top hat and the attache case, and as he walked by the piano,

Dave Brubeck30:40

He said, Am I hammin it up enough to suit you pops?

Speaker 430:45

He's watching all the way.

Speaker 430:50

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth.

Speaker 430:55

He's watched us from our boy.

Speaker 431:01

And God's our everything.

Speaker 431:05

And if you care if you black or white And behold, it was very good.

Presenter31:15

They say I Look Like God sung by Louis Armstrong from Dave and Iola Brubeck's musical The Real Ambassadors.

Presenter31:22

You're obviously very canny, Dave. They tell me that unlike so many big recording names, Beatles included, you've um hung on to all the copyright for your material, you've got the the master tape for take five, and uh you even have a heart that beats in five.

Dave Brubeck31:38

Yeah.

Presenter31:38

Yeah.

Dave Brubeck31:39

One of the last times that I played at the Royal Festival Hall.

Dave Brubeck31:44

My heart was in fibrillation.

Dave Brubeck31:48

And I had gone to

Dave Brubeck31:51

Doctor Walker here.

Dave Brubeck31:53

To to try and get it back into a normal rhythm.

Dave Brubeck31:58

And uh they gave me electric shot.

Dave Brubeck32:02

Just before the concert, and he said, Now I want you to stay overnight in the hospital.

Dave Brubeck32:08

And then take it easy for a couple of weeks. And I said, I can't. I've got a full house.

Dave Brubeck32:13

at the Royal Festival Hall.

Dave Brubeck32:15

So

Dave Brubeck32:16

He tested me before the concert at intermission, and he was right there with my wife the whole concert.

Dave Brubeck32:24

And when I got home, my own doctor said, we can't keep doing this, you going to emergency and getting these electric shocks.

Dave Brubeck32:34

So he gave me the highest electric shock that he thought he should give me and it didn't come back in. So he said, the rest of your life, your heart will be arrhythmic and will control it. And all the young doctors started laughing, saying, think of Brubek being a arrhythmic.

Presenter32:57

Tell me about your last record.

Dave Brubeck32:59

Ode to Joy

Dave Brubeck33:02

Part of the Beethoven Symphony No. nine.

Dave Brubeck33:06

This is a great ode and

Dave Brubeck33:10

Some of my first uh choral pieces.

Dave Brubeck33:15

were written

Dave Brubeck33:17

By my looking up the ranges of the chorus

Dave Brubeck33:22

and seeing how high a soprano could sing and how low a bass could go.

Dave Brubeck33:28

And when I hear the Beethoven ninth,

Dave Brubeck33:31

It's so hard and impossible

Dave Brubeck33:34

In places

Dave Brubeck33:37

Beethoven should push the chorus as hard as it could go.

Speaker 434:26

Must take a moment!

Presenter34:41

The Ode to Joy, part of the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. nine in D minor, the choral, and that was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter34:52

If you could only take one of those eight records with you to this desert island, Dave, which one would you take?

Dave Brubeck34:58

Probably the old Troy, yeah.

Presenter35:01

What about your book? You've got the Bible and you've got Shakespeare waiting for you.

Dave Brubeck35:06

I would choose the spear in the sand.

Dave Brubeck35:12

which is about

Dave Brubeck35:15

A man trapped on an island

Presenter35:18

Looking for tips, huh?

Dave Brubeck35:19

Yeah.

Presenter35:21

What about your luxury?

Dave Brubeck35:23

Uh

Dave Brubeck35:25

A grand piano

Dave Brubeck35:28

Nine foot.

Dave Brubeck35:30

Not an uh uh uh electronic instrument, but an acoustic instrument, because you you might not have electricity on that island. I don't know.

Presenter35:40

Doubt it. Did you begin? Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear the visit and discs. Thanks.

Dave Brubeck35:43

Yeah.

Speaker 235:52

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.