Track Listing

1. You Stepped out of a Dream
2. Lullaby in Rhythm
3. Singing in the Rain
4. I'll Remember April
5. Body and Soul
6. Let's Fall in Love
7. Laura
8. (Back Home Again In) Indiana
9. Blue Moon
10. Tea for Two
11. Undecided
12. That Old Black Magic
13. September Song
14. Sweet Georgia Brown
15. Spring Is Here
16. 'S Wonderful
17. Perfidia
18. Avalon
19. I Didn't Know What Time It Was
20. Always
21. How High the Moon
22. Squeeze Me
23. Heart and Soul
24. Too Marvelous for Words

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94957 in Music
• Released on: 1990-07-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.com essential recording
The sum total of three 10-inch trio records recorded between 1949 and 1951, this provocative collection finds a restless pianist who is simply fascinated by contrasts in tone, color, and emotion. In many ways, Dave Brubeck is a scientist here, experimenting with polytones, unorthodox harmonies, twisted rhythms, and odd melodic variations that perhaps only made sense to him. Why pound jarringly through a tender ballad like "Laura"? Because it accentuates the utter beauty of its melody. Why begin the buoyant "Indiana" as a fragile poem? Because it accentuates the jaunty playfulness of its melody. Brubeck swings like mad one minute and is stiff as a board the next, not only toying with the listener, but with the time-tested standards that he molds into highly original performances. A young Cal Tjader proves a worthy collaborator, bouncing between drums, bongos, and vibes and not only keeping up, but propelling the music ever forward. --Marc Greilsamer

Customer Reviews

Tjaderized Brubeck
This release is the best way to aquire the nearly impossible to find 10-inch records released in the late forties/early fifties. If you are a fan of Brubecks more cookin' works (as opposed to his more ballad oriented stuff), this is the place to start. Cal Tjader's drums and liberal use of bongos and vibes work well against Brubeck's piano. Much different from his later 50s and 60s stuff, and with lower fidelity due to the age of the recordings. Great stuff!!

A Precious Classic
This is the only example that I know of from the pre-Oberlin College days. My tape of the old LP [I think it was a 10"] was ruined about 20 years ago. If you treasure your Brubeck collection and already have his solo piano album, this should be next!

The sound quality shows the effect of transcribing from vinyl, but the music is golden.

Arnold Schoenberg meets Jazz
David Brubeck remains one of the very last of the great jazz masters: a final link to the days of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. His original Dave Brubeck Quartet (featuring Paul Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello) was classic. But sometime before the famous quartet, was this Dave Brubeck Trio that features bassist Ron Crotty and percussionist Cal Tjader (who later went on to play with George Shearing and then explore the worlds of Latin Jazz and Exotica).

This trio is something rather unique. It's West-Coast jazz, with an influence from Arnold Schoenberg who pioneered atonality (Second School of Vienna) in classical music before the rise of Nazism in Europe and his subsequent resettlement in California where he influenced the likes of jazz musicians such as Cecil Taylor and Dave Brubeck.

Brubeck's trio takes such standards as "I'm in the Mood for Love" and "Laura" and puts them through an atonal filter that retains the integrity of the song and the feeling of jazz. It's innovative and cool.