The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Dave Digs Disney (LP)
- LP
- 1 piece(s)
- 1957
- 8 tracks
- 50 min
- jazz
Dave Digs Disney
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3.3
Average of 3 reviews
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Analog Spark has truly outdone themselves with this AAA gem, masterfully nailing the 3D effect in the mono blend, with minimal tape background noise, and impressive highs and lows all the way through. It's a must-have for those who enjoy a more cheerful listening experience, as these renditions are incredibly inventive, featuring some ingenious references woven across the songs, along with fantastic 'conversations' between Desmond and Brubeck. The cost is absolutely worth it for "Heigh-Ho" alone. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Dave and his band deliver a delightful set of Disney melodies. When Paul Desmond joins in on "Alice in Wonderland", you can tell something special's in store. As usual, the musicianship is top-notch, so I won't dwell on it too much. It's recorded in MONO, but there's a cool 3D-like sound to it. The sound quality is really quite good. The drums, in particular, sound fantastic. Excellent vinyl pressing. Highly recommended.
I've always been a fan of Dave Brubeck, but this album has left me puzzled for nearly six decades. I can't help but question what Dave was thinking, if he was thinking at all, or if he even knew who Walt Disney truly was. Brubeck was a jazz musician, and I hope he had a jazzman's heart, along with the sensibilities of a jazzman and an artist—to challenge norms, to question authority, to see a bigger picture. In this case, Walt Disney was both racist and anti-Semitic (and I believe Mr. Brubeck was Jewish). In the 1930s, Disney attended pro-Nazi organizations, including the German American Bund. And if that wasn't enough, he hosted Nazi propagandist and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, giving her a personal tour of Disney Studios. He then testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, claiming communist plots were taking over Hollywood, turning in many of his friends, and supporting the Blacklist, which drove many to the brink of starvation. Let's just say he wasn't a kind man, with a fierce temper, especially towards anyone left-wing. While jazz inherently reacts to itself, Brubeck is reacting to Disney's music here. Instead of an exchange between players, band, and audience, Dave has chosen to reinterpret established musical pieces. The backstory is that Brubeck was walking through Disneyland with his kids in 1957, thinking the place was incredible. As always, Dave turns a few tables, with the music rising and falling with the emotion and movement of a day spent in Disneyland, though this is certainly through the eyes of an adult, not a child. Listeners will instantly recognize the basic structures as nostalgic songs that give way to the discovery of something new within the familiar. Overall, the collection of tunes is brilliantly controlled at a hurried pace, conveying a sense of pure enjoyment and peace within the improvisation, reflecting visitors to the park running from one event to another, unable to keep up with their own imagination. Time signatures are played and displayed counter to one another, which, psychologically speaking, shouldn't create enjoyable rhythms. Yet they do, where these unexpected rhythms turn magically on themselves and then to unexpected results. So when we find ourselves surprised at being alongside musical aspects (or things at the park) that may have been there all along, where we just didn’t notice them right off, or do in the midst of a sensory overload, it simply doesn’t matter on the first listen, the music has been designed like that theme park, far too much to take in on a single breath. To me, "Dave Digs Disney" can't be viewed simply in the context of the music, as the name Disney is the personification of who Walt Disney was, and I can't hear these songs without them being tainted with brushstrokes of that reality—that for all the joy Disney set about to bring into this world, he was a horrid little exploitive man. "Dave Digs Disney," for all I've said, is in many ways subversive, a statement of anti-jazz. Of course, I could just as easily say that this isn't just an album of Disney covers; it's a Dave Brubeck album of Disney covers. If anyone can transform Disney schmaltz into life-breathing, catchy straight-ahead jazz music, it's Dave. And while Brubeck succeeds on many levels, he falls short on many here as well. The music sounds entirely too crafted, where the songs come off as originals and not as something beholden to established visions and memories, possessing all of the elements necessary to place this record firmly in the class of a novelty album. That being said, this is Dave's second most popular album, bested only by "Time Out." It staggers me to say that this album is a pleasurable eclectic blend of sounds and styles, with playing that is gracious and tight, laced with technical skill and forethought, and in that same breath, be emotionally unhappy with the record, due entirely to it being overshadowed by Walt Disney's personality. Then there’s the other side of the coin. Dave and his Quartet had been playing Disney tunes since the early 50’s; they had an extensive catalog to draw from, they played this music so often, bouncing it off of each other so many times that it was almost an afterthought, though I don’t believe that Dave sincerely recognized what he was playing until he had first-hand experience walking through that white utopian theme park, a world, a shrine to the squares and the unhip, with Dave thinking he gleaned a coolness factor, attempting to turn this squaresville into the mosaic of robust adventurous interpretations that only enhanced that squaresville notion, forcing me to question the very nature of Dave Brubeck and where he stood when it came to the jazz centrist, which is another way of saying that jazzmen, good jazzmen were outsiders, free thinkers, visionaries, leaving me asking of myself, “Is this music, is the music of Dave Brubeck too middle class white for me? Or is this simply one of many pages in the history of jazz music that I should be embracing.” Whatever the answer to the above question is, for a number of personal reasons, I’m gonna let this album lay, refusing to be drawn into this world until I can sort it all out.
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