Jazz Goes to Junior College (Columbia, 1957)
Original liner notes by George Avakian
The 1950’s saw the emergence of a new kind of audience for jazz — one which existed all along, but had never before been brought together in its native habitat.
This was the college jazz audience; more precisely, the audiences which were already present on college campuses throughout the country, but who had not been given the chance to assemble to hear jazz on the home grounds. Campus concerts prior to the early fifties consisted of classical music series sponsored by the schools; beginning in 1952, student organizations, or small groups of students acting with the faculty permission but independently of an official university group, began to engage jazz artists in individual concerts. From the beginning, these concerts were a success, and today virtually all colleges have at least one jazz concert a year in the campus auditorium or gymnasium.
Jazz Goes to Junior College, album cover, 1957.
The pioneer combo that broke this field wide open was the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Working mostly in the Middle West, with a certain degree of concertizing on the West Coast as well, Dave almost singlehandedly opened up this market, and by 1953 enjoyed what amounted to a personal college circuit. Many other jazz artists have followed in his wake, but none so intensively as Dave. It is reasonable and fitting that his Jazz Goes to College album (CL566) is still his biggest all-time seller, and is in fact the most popular album the modern jazz field has ever known.
Dave, who has five children of his own, is keenly interested in youth programs of all kinds, and has played innumerable concerts for high school audiences, and even for grade schools. It is fitting, then, that the luck of getting good performances at various concerts which Columbia recorded during Dave's 1957 tours broke in such a way that the five outstanding Brubeck Quartet interpretations in this set came from two concert at junior colleges—Fullerton and Long Beach junior colleges, to be specific. These schools, located near Los Angeles, are only two of the many junior colleges at which Dave has played.
Dave finds it particularly satisfying that young audiences enjoy his music.
"We like playing in clubs”, [Dave] says, “and the audiences are certainly appreciative there too. But youngsters can't come to night clubs where liquor is served, unless their parents bring them, and understandably enough most parents don't want to do that. It's better in every way for us to go to the kids, and play in their own schools under concert conditions, which are much better for the audiences and usually much better for us, too. What's more, we feel as though we're really doing something to help the students learn about the jazz heritage which is theirs to enjoy. It's a good feeling, too, to realize that their teachers also recognize the good things in jazz, so that they welcome the appearance of a jazz group on the campus and don't think of jazz—as so many of the past generations of educators did—as something to be ignored or considered undignified or downright bad.”
The Brubeck Quartet, as constituted in this album, is made up of Dave at the piano, Paul Desmond on alto sax, Norman Bates on bass, and its newest member, Joe Morello, on drums. (That's Dave's voice introducing them on the first number in this album.) While the group's approach to improvisation appears on the surface to be forbiddingly difficult—it frequently employs many of the elements of classical composition, as those familiar with its previous Columbia albums well know—in practice it is not only the most popular modern jazz group of the day, but also one of the easiest and pleasantest to listen to. Melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically, there is always something doing in this foursome, and its spinning improvisations have long been recognized as a source of seemingly endless delight.
The oldest material in this set —the blues—is the newest to Brubeck fans, in that the sprightly “Bru's Blues” is an approach to the traditional 12-bar pattern which the Quartet has undertaken only recently, and this performance of “St. Louis Blues” happens to be only the second time the group had ever played this venerable favourite. With no preparation beforehand Dave had “called” the tune for the first time the night before this concert, and it had gone off so well that he tried it again at Long Beach. This is the way it was played that second time, and it certainly proved to be worth preserving on records.
“The Masquerade Is Over” has been in the “book” for several years, but has not been recorded until now. It is a tune which is all but forgotten by the present generation, but as often happens, it lends itself to improvisation and although it is seldom played by anyone else these days, it has always been a favourite of the Quartet's. “These Foolish Things” is an even more popular Brubeck item. Dave and Paul have played some great versions of this fine pop tune of the thirties, but this particular “take” struck us all in being particularly outstanding.
"One Moment Worth Years" will be remembered by those who have Dave's only solo piano album to date (Brubeck Plays Brubeck, CL878). This Quartet version reemphasizes the piano to such a degree that it is virtually a piano solo, and as such it makes for an interesting comparison with the familiar original. Dave's vastly different treatment makes a virtually new piece out of it.
These performances all contain one underlying quality which runs throughout the album—the long-lined logical flow of melody which has often characterized the improvisations of the Quartet, but has seldom been so strongly apparent as in the present collection.
