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Dave Brubeck Quartet 1953, Storyville, Boston
Label: Wolfgang's Vault
Year: 1953
Released on LP: No
Released on CD: No
Tracks
1. Band Intro by John McLennan
2. Love Walked In
3. I'll Never Smile Again.
4. The Way You Look Tonight
5. These Foolish Things
6. Perdido
Personnel
Dave Brubeck (piano)Paul Desmond (alto sax)
Ron Crotty (bass)
Lloyd Davis (drums)
Notes
Recorded, February 7 1953.
As of December 2013, Wolfgang's Vault had the track listing incorrect . "Love Walked In " is not 9:31 in duration. "I'll Never Smile Again" is omitted.
The MC is John McLennan not John McCallen.
Reviews
Notes from Wolfgangs Vault - copyright
In 1950, the 25-year-old jazz-loving entrepreneur and Boston native George Wein opened a nightclub in the Copley Square Hotel. He called it Storyville. Named for the historic section in New Orleans where prostitution was confined by city ordinance, it was also reputedly the birthplace of jazz (pioneers like Jelly Roll Morton played piano in the bordellos of Storyville as a teenager). Wein's Storyville was an instant success. The room was inaugurated in late September 1950 by the Bob Wilber Septet and the place was packed every night since.
The following year, Wein relocated to a larger room in the Hotel Buckminster on Kenmore Square near the Boston Red Sox's home, Fenway Park. Wein once again hired clarinettist Wilber to inaugurate the new room in the first week of February 1951.
During that year, Wein booked such stars as boogie woogie piano pioneer Meade Lux Lewis, jazz piano virtuoso Art Tatum, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, iconic jazz singer Billie Holiday, pianists George Shearing and Erroll Garner and legendary soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet.
By 1952, he was booking stars like Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan and by 1953 the club was operating in the black. Dave Brubeck had first appeared at Storyville in September 1952 when he was still an up-and-coming pianist-composer-bandleader. His fee for the quartet then was $800 for the week. The quartet recorded live at Storyville on October 22, 1952 (released the following year on the Fantasy label as Jazz at Storyville). Brubeck's quartet, featuring Paul Desmond on alto sax, Ron Crotty on bass and Lloyd Davis on drums, returned to play Storyville in 1953, a year before Wein began the Newport Jazz Festival. Wein commented on the Brubeck quartet's distinctive interplay in his autobiography, "Myself Among Others: A Life in Music": "When the group started to play, their sound created a musical alchemy that everyone could feel."
Desmond's lyrical, melodious alto (once described as "the sound of a dry martini") dominates the Storyville set. They open with a swinging rendition of the buoyant George and Ira Gershwin number, "Love Walked In" that has Desmond improvising freely. Bassist Crotty and drummer Davis lay down a reliably swinging foundation for Desmond's melodic solo and also Brubeck's more harmonically adventurous chordal solo that follows. The two also engage in some elegant call-and-response mid-song and at the stage that actually sounds more like chamber-like counterpoint than jazz. Next up is an inventive interpretation of the Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields show tune "The Way You Look Tonight" that involves Desmond flying through scales over chords, a la Parker, while Brubeck holds to the harmony in half-time.
Desmond quotes nonchalantly from Charlie Parker's "Anthropology" and the Swing era staple "Just You Just Me" in the course of his freewheeling, buttery-toned solo.
Brubeck's solo is another a two-fisted display of rhythmic chordal work on the keyboard, with some clever harmonic extrapolations along the way. And once again the two kindred spirits exhibit rare chemistry with their fugue-like interplay along the way. Slowing things down, Brubeck displays an uncanny sensitivity and an elegant touch behind Desmond's lyrical alto work on a soothing rendition of the romantic standard "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)."
Brubeck again explores myriad chord voicing’s and clever reharmonizations on his thoughtful, poignant solo while Desmond conjures up swirling filigrees with his dry martini alto sound. They conclude their set with a spirited reinvention of Duke Ellington's "Perdido," which again incorporates Brubeck's clever arranging skills and highlights Desmond's flowing tones on alto.
This Storyville appearance came a year before Brubeck would make the cover of Time magazine, and six years before the quartet's groundbreaking, best-selling album Time Out would make him a bona fide jazz superstar.