Customer Reviews

Brubeck Time (Reis)

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The first studio recording of the original Brubeck quartet is a classic with a checkered audio history. Recorded in 1954 in mono, as Brubeck was beginning to stir excitement (and controversy) and achieve fame with a Time magazine cover, it's a brilliant, driven and swinging set, with dazzling performances that often explode like fireworks ("Stompin' for Milli," here with its original 10-second intro). Yet it contains some of the original quartet's most gently reflective moments ("Audrey"). Brubeck and Desmond are in peak form. Over the years, the tapes were rechanneled into hideous fake stereo LPs and not well treated when first transfered to CD (in the set "Interchange 54," which also included four bonus tracks from "Jazz: Red, Hot and Cool," a set from the quartet's live Basin Street performances of the period). To be frank but kind, the sound wasn't up to snuff. Thankfully, this 20-bit remix peels back the phony stereo garbage and accumulated sonic grit and puts us back in the studio with the guys. The sound is vivid, vital and full-bodied, even better than my original 1950s mono LP version, a bracing reminder of how good good mono can be. The photos and liner notes are top-notch and contain a poignant story about Desmond, actress Audrey Hepburn and the tune named for her I'd never heard before.

If I am reading the album notes correctly, this is Brubeck's first studio recording. The quartet's first recordings were the "live" college and nightclub affairs that brought Brubeck national attention to begin with. Brubeck and company were apparently concerned about attempting a quality performance without an audience. By evidence of what is heard here, their anxieties were misplaced.

I recently realized that I have a fondness for 1950's jazz. It seems every decade has its distinct "flavor" as far as jazz goes-which I suppose isn't all that surprising. It is easy to place any particular piece of "pop" music within its decade and so it is jazz is no different. In part I suspect my fondness of 1950's jazz and its popularity in general is that it is easily accessible and understandable. With the advent of "free form" or "abstract" jazz in the 1960's, jazz itself took a nosedive in record sales and audience attendance. Still, as a young teenager, you couldn't get me to listen to jazz of any era. So now, nearly 50 years after the fact, suddenly its starting to make sense to me. From what I can tell, I am hardly alone. Among those in my acquaintance, there seems to be renewed interest in pre-1965 Brubeck, pre-"Bitch's Brew" Miles and "before he began dropping LSD" Coltrane. This perhaps does not speak well of us in that we are so behind the times. But at the same time we approached adulthood the "next big thing" was the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Now whatever virtues there may have been in John McLaughlin and company, I think it is fair to say that exposure to those celebrations of noise turned off a whole generation to jazz for a long time. Never has there been such a serious misperception of the readiness of a generational audience to receive such an artistic genre. Our general proclivities may have been "progressive" but musically we were still in love with the strictures of harmony and melody. Most of us still couldn't tell you the difference between big band swing and be-bop-so how could we be prepared to appreciate the subtleties of twenty-six "changes" in a standard eight-bar?

As I have written before, 99% of all the listening public has never sat through two minutes of music theory. They only know what catches their ear. BRUBECK TIME still catches the ear after all these years. This is still five years before their monumental TIME OUT album; but the excitement and interplay in the quartet is captured in excellent detail even though it is only in monophonic sound. (This recording also can serve as "exhibit one" as to why many audiophiles had rejected early "stereo sound" in favor of high quality mono.) The drums and bass come through sharp and clear and the presence is never lost as it sometimes was on their earlier "live" offerings. Brubeck and Desmond dance around each other, fight for attention, and "call and response" though eight tunes that still have to rank with the best of the legendary duo. Brubeck ranges from soft touching of the keys to almost sledgehammer pounding while Desmond's sax imitates low groans, sweet piccolo tweets, and goofy loon honks.

The liner notes are also of interest-informative and never heavy-laden with technical detail. I was pleased to hear that "Audrey" was in fact for Audrey Hepburn and that unknown to Brubeck she "sang" "her" tune while tending her garden all the rest of her life. It's a lovely piece of music for a beautiful woman and it is just one little bit of detail that makes this album like a small fine-looking diamond from the past. The CD is well worth buying and an excellent place to start if you are just developing and interest in jazz.

Another superb ensemble performance from the early Brubeck quartet -- the 1950s were a great era for this team. While 'Brubeck Time' is overshadowed by the later 'Time Out' album, this set brings together some sensitive Paul Desmond alto sax ('Audrey') and the edgy and energetic keyboard of Brubeck ('Jeepers Creepers', 'Stompin for Mili'...), all in proper proportion. Just wonderful -- you never snooze, but it never becomes overwrought or forced.

Song selection here is also very effective, standards that the quartet reintroduces as old friends that are more interesting than you had ever thought. Paul Desmond's lines on 'Why Do I Love You' are worth more than a few repeated listenings. 'A Fine Romance' features some great interplay between Desmond and Brubeck.

Sound quality is 1954 -- clean, but monophonic. Columbia's mono recordings hold their own even today. Maybe the music is so good that state-of-the-art-1954 is enough to let us appreciate what we're hearing.

As an aside, Columbia's liner notes and packaging continue to be several notches better than Verve, Riverside and some other labels. Not a deal breaker, but if you enjoy learning more about the album and the people who conceived it liner notes such as these are vastly superior to most of what's available.

The first studio recording of the original Brubeck quartet is a classic with a checkered audio history. Recorded in 1954 in mono, as Brubeck was beginning to stir excitement (and controversy) and achieve fame with a Time magazine cover, it's a brilliant, driven and swinging set, with dazzling performances that often explode like fireworks ("Stompin' for Mili," here with its original 10-second intro). Yet it contains some of the original quartet's most gently reflective moments ("Audrey"). Brubeck and Desmond are in peak form. Over the years, the tapes were rechanneled into hideous fake stereo LPs and not well treated when first transfered to CD (in the set "Interchange 54," which also included four bonus tracks from "Jazz: Red, Hot and Cool," a set from the quartet's live Basin Street performances of the period). To be frank but kind, the sound wasn't up to snuff. Thankfully, this 20-bit remix peels back the phony stereo garbage and accumulated sonic grit and puts us back in the studio with the guys. The sound is vivid, vital and full-bodied, even better than my original 1950s mono LP version, a bracing reminder of how good good mono can be. The photos and liner notes are top-notch and contain a poignant story about Desmond, actress Audrey Hepburn and the tune named for her I'd never heard before.

I love to listen to the two original Dave Brubeck Quartets. These are the guys I met several times and caught their live performances from New York, to Chicago, to LA. "Brubeck Time", like "Jazz Goes to College" are essential Brubeck for everyone. Dave's light and heavy caresses on the piano, Paul's liquidly satin horn, Joe Dodge's finessing of the drums and Bob Bate's unintrusive bass are what makes this album cool treat. And at such a price! Get it before it gets away.

[Look for this album along with "Jazz: Red, Hot and Blue" on a compilation, "Interchanges '54," that's priced lower than either of the individual titles and, if anything, recorded better.]

This is yet another example of the daring, excitement, and sizzling heat of which the Brubeck Quartet was capable before the "Time Out" and subsequent albums. While it's common to recommend the live dates--"Jazz Goes to College," "At Oberlin," "At the College of the Pacific"--ahead of the studio albums, "Brubeck Time" deserves inclusion among the group's most inspired efforts. Especially beginning with "Why Do I Love You," Paul plays with dazzling authority, non-stop melodic inventiveness (with quotes ranging from Gershwin to Stravinsky), and technical command fully up to the implementation of the conceptions of his fertile imagination. He fully justifies his placement in the mid-50s alongside Charlie Parker as one of the two dominating players of the horn and makes you question the exclusion of his name from the album title as well as the group's designation.

Brubeck makes a point of creating new "problems" in each solo, then working his way out of them in unexpected ways. The percussive attack and "pounding," rhythmic style are there but never in a formulaic, or crowd-pleasing sense. "Jeepers Creepers" features a arrangement on which the key changes are so frequent and subtle even the attentive listener is challenged to spot them as the melody somehow remains intact through all the modulations. One of the Quartet's better outings, rising to the top among their studio recordings and deserving a spot ahead of "Time Out" (which is far from inferior Brubeck) and any of the 1960s recordings by the group.

Digital purists who shy away from older analog recordings will fail to find the many huge, hidden, Ali-Baba caves of musical treasure. The sound on this monaural recording is very clear and non-distored, and is pleasurable to hear. I think the lack of stereo is actually a plus, given the stupid-minded antique stereo-balancing of subsequent Brubeck Quartet recordings. I love this music: Some of my favorite Brubeck and Desmond tracks are here!

Brubeck Time was the group's first studio album, and it remains one of their five best recordings out of a total of over 100 albums. It's a classic of cool jazz. Their first two albums were live events, "Jazz Goes to College" and "Jazz at the College of the Pacific." Brubeck changed the biased attitude that denigrated jazz among the intellectual academic elite by winning over college audiances with the group's appearances at colleges around the country. Brubeck proved that jazz can be as meaningful as classical music, and that it can be highly artistic, beautiful and sophisticated. Ellington did much to change the negative image of jazz, but for those in academia who had not yet been won over, Brubeck was the right man at the right time. This is essential Brubeck.