Persona Dave Brubeck's Long Monterey Groove When Brubeck comes to town, the Festival's first official Jazz Legend looks forward to two things: lots of fun hearing other jazz greats, getting a look at up-and-coming stars, and eating abalone.

By Dan Shafer

As the Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF) celebrates 50 consecutive years of bringing the sweep and power of jazz to the Monterey Peninsula, its first officially declared Jazz Legend, Dave Brubeck, comes into town to mark 51 years of personal involvement with this longest-running jazz festival in America.

If it weren't for Brubeck, a true giant of the genre and one of the best-known pianists ever, MJF might never have had a first, let alone a 50th year.

In 1957, as MJF founder Jimmy Lyons began plans for the first festival, he ran into some wary local political leaders. They were worried that opening up sleepy coast side Monterey to a horde of crazy musicians and their fans playing this new-fangled jazz might not be the healthiest of all possible community events.

Lyons considered their concerns for a while and then challenged them. If he could bring a typical jazz group into town and show them the respectability and quality of the music he was trying to promote, would they listen with open minds?

They agreed and a date was set at the Monterey County Fairgrounds. Lyons, who'd been a jazz DJ for a number of years, had become a fan of a young jazz keyboard artist from the East Bay. He thought Brubeck and his young quartet, then based in San Francisco and beginning to draw significant attention nationally, would be great ambassadors of the jazz world to the Monterey leaders.

He was right. The rest is history.

Fifty years later, as Brubeck approaches his 87th birthday, he remembers the event well. Looking back, he said, "I don't remember being particularly nervous, but I did of course understand the importance of the event coming off well, so I wanted to be sure we played well and represented Jimmy's interests positively."

Brubeck brought with him Paul Desmond (alto sax), Norman Bates (bass), and Joe Morello (drums). The four of them were on the leading edge of jazz. The group had been touring the world as the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

The Monterey leaders approved Lyons' festival, the event went off without a hitch and marked the first of 14 appearances by Brubeck at the Monterey gathering.

That trip to Monterey to help Lyons sell MJF wasn't Brubeck's first exposure to the Peninsula. When he was growing up in his birthplace home in Concord, his parents would often bring him and his siblings to Santa Cruz and Capitola as well as the Carmel area for vacations and long weekends. During his college years when he was studying Biology at the College of the Pacific, he would make field trips to Pacific Grove.

Today when Brubeck blows into Monterey, he does his level best to get out to Fisherman's Wharf for dining on the pier. "We try to eat out there every chance we get," he said.

One of the main reasons Brubeck enjoys going to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner is the chance to locate and sample his favorite local dish, abalone. "It's always pretty crowded out there and some years there don't seem to be any abalone, but when I can find it, that's what I want to eat."

Brubeck also has nostalgic memories of Cannery Row.

MJF Memories
During a telephone interview with 65 Degrees for this article, Brubeck reminisced about the early days of the Monterey Jazz Festival and his involvement in it as well as highlights of his more than 50 years as part of the pageantry and the performance that mark this event.

"At the first festival," Brubeck recalled, "Jimmy collected a really fine group of musicians. Dizzy Gillespie was there of course, as was Stan Getz. Shelly Manne and His Men were part of the program, along with Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, John Lewis, Gerry Mulligan, Harry James, Billy Holiday, and Max Roach.

"I personally had a great time at that first festival," Brubeck said. A lot of my family showed up including my brother Howard. My quartet performed a work he had composed, backed by the Monterey Symphony. That was a great piece and it was a lot of fun to work outdoors with an entire orchestra."

One of Brubeck's clearest and most important MJF memories is from his involvement in the 1962 inaugural public performance of a piece of musical theater called "The Real Ambassadors." Brubeck composed the work in 1960 and it starred Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae, plus the jazz vocal group of Lambert, Hendricks, and Bavan. Brubeck's wife, Iola, a well-known lyricist in her own right and frequent collaborator with him on larger musical projects, narrated the story line from another stage because the main stage was packed with the Louis Armstrong band and Brubeck's quartet.

During rehearsals for that show, Brubeck recalls, Armstrong came over to him and said, "Hey, Pops," (he called everyone "Pops," said Brubeck), "How do you want me to come onto the stage?"

"Well," I said, "I have a top hat and an attachÈ case that I brought just for you since you are the real ambassador around here. I'd like you to come onto the stage carrying the attachÈ case and wearing the top hat."

"Louie looked at me," Brubeck remembers, "and said, 'Pop, that just isn't going to happen.'" So I told him that if he didn't want to do it, that was fine with me.

When the performance opened for the MJF audience and it was Armstrong's turn to come on stage, Brubeck looked up and saw Armstrong strutting with the top hat at a jaunty angle, swinging the attachÈ case. "As he walked past the piano where I was sitting," Brubeck laughs, "he looked at me and said, 'Am I hammin' it up enough for you, Pops?'"

The group reprised Real Ambassadors again in 2002, 40 years after the MJF debut of the piece.

Another fond memory of Brubeck's is of more recent vintage. At MJF49 in 2006, he performed his commissioned Cannery Row Suite on the Arena Stage. He and Iola had spent a lot of time scoring, writing, and preparing the piece for performance.

Under the baton of Brubeck's conductor, producer, and manager Russell Gloyd, Brubeck played together with famed jazz soloists Kurt Elling and Roberta Gambarini. The two, who were on other parts of the MJF bill, joined with his quartet (now consisting of Randy Jones, Bobby Militello and Michael Moore), Brubeck's son Chris on trombone and vocals, along with his group Triple Play, plus a vocal group from Brubeck's alma mater, Stockton-based University of the Pacific.

"We only had time for one rehearsal before the show went on," Brubeck recalled. "Elling had flown into Monterey the day before the rehearsal from China and was exhausted. Everyone had to be absolutely concentrating to make this one come off with just one rehearsal." Cannery Row Suite was a complex and lengthy piece with a great deal of interplay and improvisation among the various performers.

Brubeck was particularly moved by the fact that John Steinbeck's son, Tom, read the first paragraph of Cannery Row as well as a very emotional concluding text. "We couldn't believe he'd be so enthusiastic about performing with us on that piece," Brubeck said.

Although he admits there have been a number of funny incidents over the years, "they are pretty hard to talk about for the most part because they'd embarrass someone." He did share one memory with the provision that the subject of the story remain anonymous. "Just before we went onstage one year at Monterey," he said, "one of my musicians came to me and told me he'd just lost his memory. It happened out of the blue and it was pretty scary for him and us.

He said, 'Dave, I can't even remember how Mary Had a Little Lamb goes. How am I going to play out there?' But I told him the rest of the quartet would take most of the load and he could just improvise. I told him that even though he might not remember specific arrangements, he'd still be able to play around the theme on his own."

Brubeck featured the band a bit more than usual and then came to a blues piece on which this musician was the main soloist. "I called that tune and after the group had played the introductory parts, I tossed it to him and said, 'Play.' He started playing the blues like never before and the audience was standing on its feet screaming in response to the passion he was showing. He was in another world."

Looking backstage at one point, Brubeck saw his wife Iola and their friend Clint Eastwood who were standing amazed because they had known about the musician's memory loss. Clint turned to Iola and said, "He sure hasn't lost his memory for improvisation." In April this year, MJF honored Brubeck as the first recipient of its freshly minted MJF Legends Award. At a special gala to mark the official beginning of this year's festival festivities, MJF Director Tim Jackson announced the award and celebrated Brubeck's long and important involvement with the festival.

Brubeck's life is busy even as he approaches his 87th birthday in December. He continues to perform at more than a dozen festivals each year. He recently completed work on a new piano-solo album called Indian Summer that was released just before we went to press. And he stays on the leading edge of performance art. Most recently, he played with the BBC Big Band under Gloyd's direction. The catch was, Brubeck was in a New York City studio playing with the band which was in London. His piano artistry was beamed via live satellite connection to the concert hall in London where Gloyd had to conduct the band to accompany Brubeck with a 2.5-second delay in the satellite transmission.

"Just before we were to go on," Brubeck said, "we got the word that we had lost the satellite link. That gap lasted only 15 minutes before they restored it, but it was the longest 15 minutes of my career. There I was in front of a microphone in New York and there was Russell in front of a radio microphone, a band, and an audience in London. We couldn't talk to one another or get any idea when or if things would be working again. But when it finally started, Gloyd pulled off the delay and conducted what I'm told was a brilliant show."

In light of Brubeck's glittering and eclectic career, none of this is surprising. He has, after all, been a leading pianist across a broad gamut of musical genres for more than six decades. He's composed classical as well as jazz music, and (thanks to his off-beat time-signature work in the late 50s and 60s) is one of the best-known and most beloved musicians of all time. And this year, for the 14th time, Monterey gets to play host to him for just a few days as we all pause and take a deep breath of joy from the overflowing fountain that is Dave Brubeck.