Dave Brubeck: Take 85



less Dave Brubeck reacts to a Bobby Militello sax solo at Villa Montalvo during a performance on Aug. 26, 2005. San Francisco photographer Kim Komenich joined jazz legend Dave Brubeck, 85 at the time, and his wife Iola and his quartet (Bobby Militello sax, Michael Moore, bass and Randy Jones, drums) on a two-day tour through the Central Valley, where he was raised. Brubeck's gigs include Villa Montalvo in Saratoga on Aug. 26th, and Outdoor Grove in Sacramento on Aug. 27. Dave Brubeck reacts to a Bobby Militello sax solo at Villa Montalvo during a performance on Aug. 26, 2005. San Francisco photographer Kim Komenich joined jazz legend Dave Brubeck, 85 at the time, and his wife ... more Photo: Kim Komenich, SFC Photo: Kim Komenich, SFC Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Dave Brubeck: Take 85 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

In the Saratoga hills on a Friday night this summer, Dave Brubeck stepped onstage, cracked open a gospel tune and built it toward a sharply pounding climax.

For the Bay Area-born jazz pianist, climax is just about everything. Tuesday he'll celebrate another kind -- his 85th birthday - with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall. His wife and kids will be there, but his thoughts, he said at Villa Montalvo's outdoor theater, will be planted in his birthplace of Concord.

"It'll always be my home," he said.

The youngest of six children, Brubeck nearly became a cattle rancher like his father, but things changed when Dave heard Art Tatum on the radio.

While Tatum, Louis Armstrong and others were inventing jazz, Brubeck was hoping to learn it. Now, some 70 years later, he's the most successful popularizer in postwar jazz history. In 1959 he became the first million-seller in jazz, sending "Take Five" into chart-topping orbit; one of his 1962 albums was the fastest-selling in jazz history; and, among other summits, he is the first to have three jazz discs on best-seller charts at the same time.

Some in Northern California can't get enough. The Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific in Stockton hosts performances daily; the San Francisco Ballet performed his "Elemental Brubeck" in July; and the Bay Area's Pacific Mozart Ensemble will offer his "Credo" in April.

"Most of the world knows Dave Brubeck as a jazz performer, but he's also written a significant body of liturgical music," said Pacific Mozart Ensemble Artistic Director Richard Grant.

Onstage at Villa Montalvo, Brubeck tore into several uptempo tunes, his emphasis on thundering block chords and mixed meters, while alto saxophonist Bobby Militello played cathedrals of fire on the horn, which stood far apart from Paul Desmond's quieter touch in the '50s.

"It's been a wild 10 days," Brubeck, who lives in Connecticut, told the crowd of about 1,100 people about his band's cross-country tour. A few tunes later, he introduced "Koto Song," that tiptoeing 1964 ballad that's perhaps the greatest of the mid-'60s, and explained after the show, "I'm playing strictly Japanese folk music."

"Take Five," his signature finale, sent hysteria into the crowd, even though drummer Randy Jones fell flat. But Militello was his hard-hitting self, playing a crisply throbbing solo.

After the show, Brubeck and his wife, Iola, drove back to the Los Gatos Hotel.

"They're inseparable," drummer Jones said of the couple.

"They've had a loving relationship for, God, 60 years now!" added Chris Brubeck, one of their six children, by phone from Connecticut.

The next morning, the couple boarded a van with tour manager Russell Gloyd. In New Balance sneakers and thick glasses with Playboy bunnies on the rims, Brubeck looked ready to roll. He placed a cardboard box under his right elbow for support and sipped a little water, asking his wife, "You have everything?" She turned from the passenger seat, her body in a twist, and answered yes.

The ride to Sacramento for an 8 p.m. set amounted to a journey through childhood for Brubeck, who performs about 80 nights a year. You try that.

"Let's ride," he said, the sun poking through the windows as he spoke of the Bay Area's "gorgeous scenery." He recalled moving at age 11 to a big farm in the small town of Ione, in Amador County. "It was a real change in worlds," he said. "My mother had built a studio in Concord and she hated leaving that area."

But Brubeck's passion for his new town had grown quickly. After sipping more water, he glanced at the trees and said to his wife, "Northern California is still so beautiful, especially when you get into the foothills of Mt. Diablo."

After cruising at about 80 mph, the van pulled to a stop by a cemetery in Pacheco, the city 3 miles west of Concord where Brubeck's parents and grandparents are buried. "Wait a minute," he corrected himself. "I'm not sure this is the right one." He didn't recognize the entrance, and the gates were locked.

The driver asked him to hop the fence for a better look. "Stop it, Russell!" Brubeck said with a laugh. "I don't want to spend the night in Pacheco jail."

Re-entering the van after braving the 103-degree heat, Brubeck seemed to hold back tears after failing to spot his relatives' headstones. The conversation turned to San Francisco's Blackhawk jazz club, his service in World War II and his trips through the American South.

"Playing in the South was eye-opening," he said. One of his most memorable experiences took place in 1958, when he appeared at a college in Georgia to perform. Minutes before show time, the dean told him the black bassist "can't go on." So Brubeck shot back: Either the bassist performs or the show's off.

At a North Carolina college that summer, the same thing happened: A dean told Brubeck five minutes before show time, "You can't play with a mixed group."

"After that," Brubeck said, "police would meet us at the airports and escort us to the universities." Refusal to accept the colleges' terms led to 23 cancellations of his 25 shows that summer, costing an estimated $40,000. But Brubeck held strong.

"Jazz is the voice of freedom," he said. Another cancellation was at Louisiana State University, whose president told The Chronicle in 1960, "We have no integration down here."

Also that year, Brubeck's agent received a cancellation letter from Memphis State University: "This is to inform you that a mixed group is unacceptable at Memphis State."

"The trouble is not with the students," Brubeck told The Chronicle at the time. "It's with the state college officials who do not want to be cut off from state funds over this matter."

Despite cancellations, Brubeck's insistence on integration became a calling card: Atlanta's top black club-owners invited the band onstage.

In 1976, he rejected another hefty paycheck -- $17,000 to play South Africa -- because the contract required an all-white band. "We couldn't consider it," he said.

"The promoter kept asking me to play," he added, "but only with white musicians." Eventually Brubeck persuaded him to allow an interracial group, but police showed up at the theater with dogs on leashes.

Brubeck's wife, turning in the front seat, recalled a threat she'd received in Johannesburg that night. "I got a call during sound check. The guy said Dave was going to be shot during the show," she said.

But the performance went smoothly, and to this day, the couple fight prejudice in jazz. In 1961 they co-wrote "The Real Ambassadors," an anti-racism composition that premiered with Louis Armstrong at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and Brubeck's 1969 "The Gates of Justice" met with bellowing applause.

When they arrived in Sacramento several hours before show time, Brubeck walked outside and stretched his legs. "Let's unpack our things," he said.

"The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Dave is, he's always looking ahead," said jazz critic Nat Hentoff from New York. "The range of his compositions, at this age as well, continues to be pivotal."

Some 15 hours earlier, about 130 miles back in Saratoga, Brubeck and his band mates had stood onstage, glanced at the audience, and taken another bow.

"Maybe we'll see you again," he said.