Paul Desmond counted Gerry Mulligan as one of his friends, and enjoyed playing with him on records and in live performances. This friendship was evident in Paul's music,as he often drew upon Mulligan's innovative piano-less quartet format for his own recording sessions. Desmond also had Mulligan's records, and he used many of the tunes from [...]
Paul Desmond's penchant for slipping quotes from other songs or solos into his own solos is well known among jazz musicians and his fans. Desmond's discography is rife with examples. Dave Brubeck often talked about the way Desmond would weave together different quotes from various songs to tell a story or communicate a message. [...]
Any true Dave Brubeck fan will tell you that the Dave Brubeck Quartet always sounded its best when it performed live. Brubeck himself made the observation that the "audience is the fifth member" of his group, spurring him and the other members of the quartet to greater heights of musical inspiration. As a true fan, [...]
Great interview piece of Dave Brubeck
This may have just saved my life
One of the things that I liked about this African-American Literature class was that the things I learned in class almost always became relevant and useful afterwards. It was uncanny. One of these uncanny moments was when, a day after learning about the poet Amiri Baraka, born LeRoi Jones. I was reading a book about [...]
One thing I appreciated about this class was the absolutely fantastic discussions that we had. I looked forward to class primarily because of these discussions, in fact. Well, they started off as discussions, anyhow. Without fail, the discussions rapidly morphed into vociferous debates. I found myself learning a lot from these pseudo-discussions, and at the [...]
Second semester of my junior year of college undergrad is now wrapping up. In particular, my time in African-American Literature II is one project and a final away from being a happy memory. That class has been a blessing and a curse -a blessing more than a curse. In short, it was a blessing because [...]
From its beginning in 1951, the Dave Brubeck Quartet had a seemingly constant stream of new drummers and bassists join the group until settling down in 1958. When the group first began making records in '51 for Fantasy, the quartet consisted of Herb Barman on drums and Fred Dutton doubling on bassoon and bass. Dutton [...]
Hello and welcome to my blog all about Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond and the musical lives they lived. I am a Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond fan in the fullest sense of the word, and have been for a couple of years. But I suppose you'd like to know who is behind this [...]
It's A Raggy Waltz 