Jazz at Oberlin
| Jazz at Oberlin | ||||
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| Live album by Dave Brubeck Quartet | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Fantasy Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP / CD |
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Title (number) |
5/9 |
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running time |
37:23 (LP) |
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Studio (s) |
Recorded live at Oberlin College , Oberlin, Ohio |
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Jazz at Oberlin is a jazz album by the Dave Brubeck Quartet , recorded at a live concert at Trinity Chapel at Oberlin College , Oberlin , Ohio on March 2, 1953, and released on Fantasy Records .
The album
The Dave Brubeck Quartet in the early 1950s
At the time of the live recordings, pianist Dave Brubeck was still at the beginning of his career; After octet recordings in 1948/49 and trio recordings in 1948/50 with Cal Tjader , he first presented his quartet with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond in 1952 , which was to last until 1967. The extended solos based on familiar standards such as Hoagy Carmichael's “ Stardust ” or Juan Tizol's “Perdido” were exceptional at this time . The music critic Phil Elwood, who accompanied the early phase of the Dave Brubeck Quartet in the Bay Area, certified Brubeck's extraordinary technical skills and a great knowledge of European classical music, with which he made enthusiasts a large number of musically conservative academics; while he alluded to Brubeck's early tendency to perform in colleges. The quartet had already performed in 1952 in San Francisco and New York and in February 1953 in Boston’s Storyville and the Surf Club in Hollywood .
The concert at Oberlin College
March 2, 1953, a Monday, was an unusual evening for Oberlin College, a school with a nationally known music program; At that time there were no jazz courses in Oberlin's curriculum and there was also little interest in jazz. A few jazz enthusiasts at the school tried to break Oberlin's preference for classical music; the student James Newman had belonged to Brubeck in San Francisco . He later said, “We bought his records and then we listened to them on the jukebox in the student recreation area.” Newman and several other students decided to put on a jazz concert in Oberlin. They booked the Brubeck Quartet and borrowed money for it; a piano teacher was involved as a sponsor. Newman and friends went to Cleveland to promote the concert and put up posters. The concert initially had all the prerequisites for a disaster: Brubeck and his band played in front of an audience indifferent to jazz; drummer Lloyd Davis had the flu and a fever and the large grand piano in Finney Chapel was locked so the organizers had to switch to a replacement instrument. Brubeck later said: “I was given a small, beat-up, barely playable old grand.” Despite the problems, a large number of people came to the concert in Finney Hall. Many of the classically trained students at the Oberlin Conservatory heard the echoes of Bach , Beethoven and Chopin , which Brubeck's band had adopted for their improvisations. The students were quickly taken by the dry humor of the musicians.
Brubeck later said of the 1953 concert in Oberlin that “it was the best thing we ever did.” It was speculated that the band was in Oberlin in view of the lack of enthusiasm for jazz and all the other problems in the concert were freer and more relaxed in their improvisations, much more relaxed than in their previous recordings.
When the concert at Oberlin College ended after about two hours, the audience got up and called for encores. One of the effects of the concert success was that the students founded the Oberlin College Jazz Club and three more jazz concerts were held at the college the following year, at which the Brubeck Quartet also performed again. They also organized concerts with Count Basie , Chet Baker and Teddy Charles' band with bassist Charles Mingus . The college radio station WOBC recorded the concert, the tapes were later released on the Fantasy Records label. James Newman, the concert's co-organizer, wrote the liner notes for the original album. The recordings of Brubeck's 1953 Jazz at Oberlin concert were among the most successful jazz albums of the 1950s. Brubeck later said of this LP, "it helped his quartet to break through." The recordings contributed to the great popularity of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, especially among American college students; they also helped jazz to be respected as an art form in the United States and resulted in more jazz musicians performing at college concerts.
The Oberlin College Jazz Club has since disappeared again; it was not until 1972 that jazz was included in the curriculum at Oberlin College. Musicians like Gary Bartz , Marcus Belgrave , Kenny Davis , Peter Dominguez , Robin Eubanks , Bob Ferrazza , Billy Hart and Dan Wall now teach at the Jazz Department in Oberlin, which was founded by Wendell Logan .
The titles
- Dave Brubeck Quartet - Jazz at Oberlin (Fantasy 3-245 / OJC 046)
- The Way You Look Tonight (Jerome Kern / Dorothy Fields) 7:39
- How High the Moon (Lewis / Hamilton) 9:11
- These Foolish Things (Marvell, Strachey, Link) 6:27
- Perdido ( Juan Tizol , Lengfelder, Drake) 7:46
- Stardust ( Hoagy Carmichael ) 6:20
Rating of the album
Richard Cook and Brian Morton rated the concert recording in the Penguin Guide to Jazz with the highest rating of four stars and counted it among the best live recordings of the quartet. Scott Yanow in the All Music Guide counts Jazz at Oberlin among the classic recordings of the early Dave Brubeck and particularly emphasizes the interplay between the pianist and the alto Paul Desmond on the title “Perdido”, “which borders on a miracle.” Also worth remembering her performances in " The Way You Look Tonight ", "How High the Moon" and "Stardust". Brubeck's piano playing in “ These Foolish Things ” is so percussive and atonal that one feels reminded of Cecil Taylor ; Bassist Ron Crotty and drummer Lloyd Davis would give the quartet calm and steady support for the free and demanding playing of Brubeck and Desmond.
Editorial notes
The individual tracks of the later Jazz at Oberlin album were initially released in the form of EPs (Fantasy EP 4007, 4062, 4013), then as LP (Fantasy 3-11, LP 3245), as CD FCD 60-013.
The single albums Jazz at Oberlin and the nine months later recorded Jazz at College of the Pacific (Fantasy 3-233) were coupled to the CD The Dave Brubeck Quartet featuring Paul Desmond - In Concert in 1986 . However, the tracks “How High the Moon” (from the Oberlin concert) and the tracks “Too Marvelous for Words”, “Let's Fall in Love” and “Why Do I Love” (from the Jazz at College of the Pacific ) were omitted .
literature
- Ian Carr , Digby Fairweather , Brian Priestley : Rough Guide Jazz. The ultimate guide to jazz. 1800 bands and artists from the beginning until today. 2nd, expanded and updated edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-01892-X .
- Richard Cook , Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
- Orrin Keepnews , liner notes from the compilation The Dave Brubeck Quartet featuring Paul Desmond - In Concert .
Web links
Notes and individual references
- ↑ http://www.jazzdisco.org/dave-brubeck/discography/
- ↑ James Newman in the liner notes: In spite of early doubt, apprehension and lack of encouragement, the concert was a huge success, the Quartet holding completely under its control for almost two hours a large and varied audience, many of which were Conservatory students almost entirely uneducated in jazz.
- ↑ Information about the Oberlin concert at Cleveland University
- ↑ Cf. Downbeat 10/2008 and Oberlin 2003 ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Yanow, review by Allmusic
