DAVE BRUBECK NEA Jazz Master (1999) Interviewees
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1 Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. DAVE BRUBECK NEA Jazz Master (1999) Interviewees: Dave Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) with Russell Gloyd and (August only) Iola Brubeck Interviewers: Ted Gioia with recording engineer Ken Kimery Date: August 6-7, 2007 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Description: Transcript, 90 pp. Track markers were accidentally embedded into the original recording in such a way as to lose a few words at the breaks. Square brackets and five spaces – [ ] – indicate these small gaps in the transcription. Brubeck: There’s two cats in this house, and I don’t mean jazz musicians. But I haven’t heard them or seen them, so they probably are hiding. Gioia: They’re checking us out. Brubeck: This is a new house that – Chris had a house on the other side of town and got a pretty good deal and was able to have room for the first time in his life for a studio. He’s been writing so much – always new things. Gioia: It’s important to have the right setting. [microphone adjustment] Kimery: When you’re ready. Gioia: This is Ted Gioia. We are at Chris Brubeck’s house in Wilton, Connecticut, conducting an oral history with Dave Brubeck as part of the Smithsonian’s program of conducting oral histories with NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] Jazz Masters. 1 2 Today is August 6, 2007. Our plan is to conduct the oral history over a two-day period, today and tomorrow, August 7. Dave, I have a number of questions here, taking you through your life history, and would like to start by talking to you about your grandparents. First of all, I’d like to know about your paternal grandparents, Louis Warren Brubeck and Louisa Grass Brubeck. What can you tell me about them? What recollections do you have of them? Brubeck: My grandparent Warren Brubeck – like my middle name – when his mother died in Indiana, his father gave the three sons $100, is one story. The other story is a saddle horse to each of them and told them they were on their own. Two came West, and one went down to Kentucky. My grandfather, Louis Warren, came to Reno, Nevada. One story is that he rode his horse. Another is he walked. So you don’t know exactly. He decided to make his living. He would build a hotel at the end of a narrow-gauge railroad which was going to a place called Amadie. That’s a high-desert area just over into California from Nevada, near Pyramid Lake and on Honey Lake. Honey Lake at that time was 120 miles long and today is dried up. It was bigger than Lake Tahoe. It’s hard to imagine a lake that size disappearing, but it attracted farmers and people to that area, and I imagine they would have irrigated their farms out of the lake. Then the narrow-gauge railroad stopped at Amadie, and my grandfather built a hotel there. In the hotel came the [ ] the drivers of the 20-mule teams that would go on to Oregon with produce from the rest of the United States now could cross, but they couldn’t go all the way up into Oregon with the train. So there were two Oregon trails. These drovers – drivers – would stay all night in the hotel in the upper third floor, which was a series of cots and beds. They got three meals a day and could stay. That was 50 cents for the night and the meals. There was a restaurant downstairs and a few waitresses, which caused my grandfather some trouble. One of the waitresses was being approached by one of the cattlemen, or maybe the lumbermen, or drivers. She didn’t want him around. He came to get her out of the restaurant. My grandfather stood by the door. This guy shot at him and just missed him, but there was a trial then. The record of that trial is available. It’s some pretty wild reading. The judge said to one of the cattleman that was giving his idea of what happened that night, being questioned, “Did you see any roughhousing at the hotel?” He said, “No, just a little chair action off the balcony.” This is all in the trial. My grandfather was accused of running – misproperly running a saloon and hotel and forced to leave there. Then he went down to the Oakland area of California. He bought a ranch right at the foot of Mt. Diablo in Ignacio Valley. My father, Pete Brubeck – Howard Peter – was either 14 or 16 and left to bring the horses and cattle to Concord, California. Gioia: About what year would this have been when your grandfather moved to California, roughly? Brubeck: I’ve got to guess. 2 3 Gioia: Yeah, just a guess. Brubeck: 1896, around in there. But there is a man that has written up all this who lives in Litchfield, which is a town nearby. Iola would have his name. He just loves to write down the history of this part of California. It’s a pretty wild history. So my dad came to Concord with a couple of carloads of animals, landed at the railroad station, and unloaded the two cars. He needed some cowboys to help him drive the cattle from Concord out to the new ranch. So he went to my other [ ] on my mother’s side, who was Henry Ivy. Owned a livery stable in Concord. He thought that would be a good place to hire some men to help him. So he went there and said to him, “Give me some men.” It all worked out. He got the cattle out, with their help, to the new ranch. If you’ve ever been to Mt. Diablo, that ranch was located right where you turn to go up the hill on the Walnut Creek - Ignacio Valley side. It was right where that turn out of the valley starts up a steep hill. When you get to the top of Mt. Diablo there, you can see clear up – at that time when there was no fog or smog – you could see up the valley to almost Oregon, and you could see to San Francisco, and you could see to Stockton, Sacramento. Diablo was the place you could really see most of Northern California from. My mother was born at the foot of Mt. Diablo. I was born at the foot of Mt. Diablo. When my grandfather on her side went home that night, he said to my mother, “I met a real young man at the livery stable today, and I’d like to invite him sometime to dinner.” My mother was quite popular, quite beautiful, but my father didn’t take to having any other suitors around and quickly dispensed with them. He proposed marriage, and Grandfather Ivy said, “Bessie, if you marry this young man, you’ll never want for a sack of flour.” That was his approval. Gioia: Were your grandparents alive when you were a young boy? Did you have many recollections of them? Brubeck: Hardly any. I did see Grandpa Louis once. I was not allowed to go to his funeral. I was probably five. I remember my cousin and I just sitting alone in our house. The funeral was next door in the Presbyterian church in Concord. Gioia: You were seen as too young to go the funeral, because you were five years old. I can see that. Brubeck: Yeah. The Grass family was in Santa Cruz. There are some there still, Grasses. I visit there. I can’t remember. There’s even a real-estate office with my cousin’s son, who’s a Brubeck, married to a Chinese woman that runs the real-estate office. I think it’s Wong. Gioia: Let me ask you about your father. He was one of eight children. Did you have much interaction with your uncles and aunts? Were any of them musicians? 3 4 Brubeck: I had a lot of action with the cattlemen. Leslie Brubeck lived to be 100 in Sacramento a few years ago. That was the youngest son. His daughter married a quite well-known attorney in Sacramento, called San. Most people know her. Phil Brubeck took a turn in other directions. Became interested in show business and making pictures. He probably was the first person to photograph – make a movie of Indians – native Americans and cowboys. Gioia: This is your uncle? Brubeck: Phil, in Brown Valley, near Fort? – right up the coast – Fort? [voice off mic]: Fort Bragg? Brubeck: Fort Bragg. After he filmed the Indians and the cowboys, he wanted to show the picture to the Indians. They told them that they’d come to the barn where he’d set up a movie screen and a projector, he’d show them the film. He said no-one was coming, but pretty quick he saw a cloud of dust, and the whole tribe was on their way. When he turned on the light for the projector, he then discovered that the barn was full of bats diving at the screen. Finally, he turned on the projector. One of the first scenes, the chief was shown in life – large life – on the screen, screaming and hollering and ki-yi-ing and all the native Americans leaving, stampeding out of there, because the chief had died between the time they filmed it and the time he showed it.