And he used to kid the other cowboys and said, I would have been a great pianist like my nephew Dave had I not lost this finger. And my uncle, who was also a rodeo roper, got his finger caught between the saddle horn and the rope, and it took his finger right off. My mother would not allow my dad to have me rope anything larger than a yearling because she didn't want my fingers to become hurt. Did you have really strong arms and hands from the work, and do you think that that helped you as a piano player?īRUBECK: It didn't hurt. And there were two cattle ranches in your life, the one your father owned and the larger one that he managed. GROSS: Let me get back to what we were talking about, which is life on the cattle ranch. I used to sing that, play my ukulele (laughter).īRUBECK: Some of my friends played guitar, cowboy songs. And I used to make my kids cry by singing, Joe, you take my saddle Bill, you take my bed Jim, you take my pistol after I am dead, and think of me, please, kindly when you look upon them all, for I'll not see my mother when the work's all done next fall.īRUBECK: Oh, yeah. So it's - it is documented.īRUBECK: All of them, yeah, when they were real cowboy songs like "Strawberry Roan" and "Little Joe, The Wrangler" - tunes that people don't sing anymore. It's hard for me to imagine you as a cowboy.īRUBECK: Well, I could send you pictures.īRUBECK: And there even are some - what we call movies in those days, some of the very first kind of home movies where I'm with my dad lassoing and branding and - big roundup. GROSS: You know, I'm used to seeing you behind the piano. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch. I didn't ever want to leave my dad or my dad's ranch. GROSS: Oh, in the hope that you'd be a help on the ranch.īRUBECK: Yeah, so I could - that - I had to go to college, according to my mother, like my brothers. Then I went off to college to study veterinary medicine. So my mother allowed me to stop taking lessons when I was 11, and we moved to a 45,000-acre cattle ranch, where I spent my last year in grammar school and my high school years. And that - he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him. It wasn't so bad for my brothers, but I kind of rebelled.īRUBECK: How, and why? I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattleman and a rodeo roper. GROSS: Was it hard to study with your mother?īRUBECK: Yeah. And half the community - the people interested in piano - studied with her. I had two older brothers, Henry and Howard, that also took lessons from my mother.
Your mother was a classical piano teacher. GROSS: Now, you grew up in Concord, Calif. TERRY GROSS, BYLINE: Dave Brubeck, welcome to FRESH AIR. Paul Desmond is featured on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright, bass, and Joe Morello, drums. They started with Brubeck's composition "Three To Get Ready" from the "Time Out" album, which illustrates how the Dave Brubeck Quartet approached counterpoint and eccentric rhythms.
And "Take Five," the album's hit single, was, in the words of our jazz critic, Kevin Whitehead, a musical symbol of Kennedy-era optimism. Brubeck's album "Time Out," released in 1961, was the first jazz album to sell a million copies. He died in 2012 on the eve of his 92nd birthday. This Sunday marks the centennial of his birth. Today, we celebrate the life and music of Dave Brubeck, the influential jazz pianist and composer.
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