Life on the ranch
"...You could be bored unless you have an imagination. So I'd always be thinking musically when I had jobs to pump water or ride horseback. I'd lie there under the gasoline motor that was vibrating and I'm singing rhythms against that."
-Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck grew up on a ranch hearing sounds of farm life, such as the beats of horses' hooves. This influenced his creative musical style.
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David Warren Brubeck was born on December 6, 1920, in Concord, California, with two brothers, his father, a cattle rancher, and his mother, a music teacher. Brubeck learned piano from his mother. When he was 11, Brubeck quit piano to focus on rodeo roping. However, his mother did not let him rope anything larger than a yearling, because she did not want his fingers to get hurt.
~Summarized from NY Times Obituary |
Dave Brubeck's childhood inspired him to use polytonality and other creative techniques in his music.
"As far as the polyrhythms are concerned a lot of that came from riding. When you’re on a ranch like that, you’re alone a lot and you’re sent for miles and miles on horseback. You either go crazy, or you start thinking. When I was riding around those hills, the sense of space and the sounds a horse’s hooves made affected me. Someone once asked me how it worked and the easiest way to explain is just for me to beat out those rhythms."
-Dave Brubeck
"To those with a less musical ear, the clip-clop of horse's hooves, the vibration of a gasoline engine and squeak of a water pump are just the simple noises of farm life. But to the young Dave Brubeck, they were not just the sounds that broke up the monotony of growing up on a ranch -- they were the rhythmic building blocks that would form the foundation for some of his most famous jazz tunes."
-Rediscovering Dave Brubeck
Early Years as a musician
Born cross-eyed, Brubeck could not sight read, so he learned most of his music by ear. He started taking lessons at the University of the Pacific. When the dean of the conservatory discovered Brubeck could not sight read, he threatened to not graduate Brubeck. The teachers convinced the dean to allow him to graduate, only if he promised never to teach and embarrass the conservatory. There, Brubeck met Iola Whitlock, who became his wife in 1942.
~Summarized from NY Times Obituary
~Summarized from NY Times Obituary
"He said, 'Brubeck, your mind is not here with these frogs in the formaldehyde. Your mind is across the lawn, at the conservatory. Will you please go over there next year?'" |
"I couldn't read, and that caused a lot of trouble in the conservatory. So I hid it until I was a senior by not taking piano. I'd take- the other instruments, like cello and clarinet. So I was just playing scales... and doing the subjects I had to pass in." |
"So that's the way I graduated, and that's the way I've gotten through life is having to substitute other things for not being able to read well. But I can write, which is something very few people understand." |