Premiere: Listen To An Alternative Take Of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Blue Rondo À La Turk’

  I  
Image

Unreleased recordings of the Dave Brubeck Quartet—saxophonist Paul Desmond (left), pianist Dave Brubeck, drummer Joe Morello and bassist Eugene Wright—are set for release on Dec. 4.

(Photo: Courtesy Brubeck Editions)

​First released on Dec. 14, 1959, The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out achieved prominence in popular culture in a way few jazz records ever have.

It has remained sonically stamped on American life, offering up compositions like the title track and “Cathy’s Waltz” that still are recognizable to people with only a passing interest in jazz. But the album also gave the world Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo À La Turk.” A previously unreleased version of the song—along with six other tunes and some in-studio banter—is set for release as Time OutTakes.

A recently discovered version of “Blue Rondo À La Turk” premieres below.

“This ‘new’ track was probably passed on simply because of length; Dave Brubeck explored his music very deeply during his blues solos—10 choruses to be exact. (The other version, from the third session on Aug. 18, came out as the flip side of ‘Take Five’ and had only four choruses of piano),” Chris Brubeck, a multi-instrumentalist and Dave Brubeck’s son, wrote in an email to DownBeat. “On this Time OutTakes track, elements of the core musical themes are restated, inverted, made polytonal and thoroughly integrated into these creative blues explorations. Here, [saxophonist] Paul [Desmond] and Dave make reference to Turkish-sounding scales that extend and unify the main idea, so the solos are more interesting and better serve the composition.”

The younger Brubeck added that the tune came to be following a 1958 U.S. State Department tour when his father took in a performance of Turkish street musicians and was supposedly inspired to write a piece with a 9/8 time signature.

Along with Brubeck, who would have turned 100 this year, and Desmond, the upcoming album features work by bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello, all members of Brubeck’s classic quartet.

The album, due out Dec. 4, ranks as the first release from Brubeck Editions, an imprint overseen by the Brubeck family. DB



  • Zakir_Hussain_2011_Symphony_Center_copy.jpg

    “Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.

  • ART7087_Mike_Stern_by_Sandrine_Lee_72dpi_RGB_PR8391_copy.jpg

    “I love doing ballads,” Mike Stern says. “It’s just a part of me, some part of emotionally how I feel sometimes.”

  • John_and_Gerald_Clayton_by_Paul_Wellman_copy.jpg

    Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.

  • KennedyCenter.jpg

    Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

  • Jernberg_Photo_Jon_Edergren_2_copy.jpg

    “With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.


On Sale Now
February 2025
Sullivan Fortner
Look Inside
Subscribe
Print | Digital | iPad