The Volokh Conspiracy

Skip,

I was interpreting his remark in light of the resentment I understand many black musicians felt towards Brubeck that he didn't deserve his success -- see, e.g., here. I've never heard it, but I was assuming that the album with an orchestra was an attempt to reach a white crossover audience, which was pretty far removed from the very soulful "dirty" blues style that I associate with Adderley. I figured that he was basically poking fun at the musical tastes of the white audience -- saying, in effect, that they liked the light stuff like Brubeck and his orchestral album but not the kind of blues that Adderly really liked to play.

That was my guess, at least. Of course, the line between poking fun and registering mild astonishment may be hard to draw.

I've heard a number of good musicians from those days complaining about how Brubeck's music sold so much, while noting that "real jazz" was sitting on the shelves (or never made it to the shelves at all). Hell, I still hear that today.

Part of that was the inaccessibility of a lot of the composition and solo work by the more avant-garde players. It just doesn't sound good to a non-jazz ear, and a lot of folks aren't interested in working their way up to something extraordinary, like Miles Davis in his more extreme years, or "A Love Supreme" by Coltrane. Heck, even the first solo in the piece above is often too much for a "new" jazz listener.

Brubeck managed to accurately walk a thin line between the experimental jazz of the times and plain old popular music.

It's still fun to listen to some young smartass non-jazz musician fall completely apart trying to play something "simple" like "Take Five" or some of the other works off of "Time Out."

@?!: I don't know what he "lived," but Zawinul wrote "Mercy, Mercy," which is my favorite Adderley piece.

As to Brubeck, yeah, he drew the country club set, and continued to do so over the years. I could have lived without his music, but damn, I loved to listen to Morello and Mulligan...

As it happens the Adderley piece in this clip was a big hit, as were several of its predecessors (e.g. "This Here" and "Dat Dere" -- both composed by pianist Bobby Timmons, brother Nat's "Work Song") and its successors
(e.g the aforementioned "Mercy Mercy Mercy"), and I can guarantee you that a substantial portion of the people who bought those albums and the cut-down singles versions of those pieces, and who played those single versions on juke boxes, were white listeners. I was around at the time, and Adderley's music had a very broad following. Now if you're talking about funky jazz organ players of that time (e.g. Brother Jack McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes), the majority of their fans were African-American, and many, but certainly not all, white jazz fans would have found their music too shall we say "functional" for their tastes, but by no means was this true of Adderley's music.

BTW, I don't agree that Adderley was dissing Brubeck and "Take Five" here. For one thing, no jazz alto saxophonist worth his salt could have had anything but the highest respect for Paul Desmond, who of course wrote "Take Five." Second, "Take Five" was by no means conceived as a dumbed-down, crossover piece of music -- it just, being catchy, caught on. The same, of course was true of Adderley's big hits. Finally, Adderley's wry tone of voice/facial expression when he brings up "Take Five" seem to me to be nothing more than a postscript to his previous remark about the inexplicable nature of the record industry and what does and does not become popular, not a sneer at "Take Five." I'm reminded of a remark that is, in fact, attributed to Paul Desmond: "Where do you go to sell out?"

Two further points: What makes you think that "Take Five" wasn't a hit with both white and black jazz fans? It was; though admittedly those fans tended to be of the more casual sort. Brubeck himself did come in for a fair amount of disparagement from black jazz musicians of the time -- because he was felt to be an uncommonly heavy-handed player rhythmically as well as someone who rose to the heights of popularity thanks to a combination of heavy publicity plus his music's appeal to a white, college- and high-school audience. Finally, claims were made by members of Max Roach's group of the early 1960s that "Take Five" had been stolen by Desmond from a piece in 5/4 that the Roach group played. I know that piece, Tommy Turrentine and Julian Priester's "Long As You're Living," and it's a gem; but aside from the 5/4 meter and the fact that both pieces have an insistent bass pattern, it bears not much resemblance to "Take Five," certainly not in terms of melody. For a discussion of this issue, see p. 208 of Doug Ramsey's biography of Desmond, "Take Five."

Larry K,

Wait, I think I just clued in — are you Larry Kart, author of Jazz in Search of Itself? Welcome to the VC comment threads — it's very cool to have you.

Hey, that's awesome. Thanks for reading, and in particular for commenting on this thread. I just ordered a copy of your book (used, sorry!), and I look forward to reading it.