Jazz at Oberlin

1953 live album by Dave Brubeck Quartet

Jazz at Oberlin

Live album by

Dave Brubeck Quartet

Released| 1953
Recorded| March 2, 1953
Oberlin College, Oberlin
Genre| Jazz
Length| 37:47
Label| Fantasy
F 3245 (album) OJCCD-046-2 (CD)
Dave Brubeck Quartet chronology
| The Dave Brubeck Quartet
(1952)  | Jazz at Oberlin
(1953)  | Jazz at the College of the Pacific
(1953)

|
|

Professional ratingsReview scores

Source| Rating
Allmusic| [1]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings|  [2]

Jazz at Oberlin is a live album by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. It was recorded in the Finney Chapel at Oberlin College in March 1953, and released on Fantasy Records as F 3245. The Fantasy Records album back cover states that drummer Lloyd Davis had a 103-degree fever during the performance.

Critic Nat Hentoff wrote in Down Beat magazine that the album ranks with the College of the Pacific and Storyville sets "as the best of Brubeck on record",[3] and jazz critic Gary Giddins has written that it would "make many short lists of the decade's outstanding albums".[4]

The concert is credited with making jazz a legitimate field of musical study at Oberlin, and furthermore initiating it as a subject of serious intellectual attention; Wendell Logan, the chair of Oberlin's Jazz Studies Department, described it as "the watershed event that signaled the change of performance space for jazz from the nightclub to the concert hall".[4]

In addition, it was one of the early works in the cool jazz stream of jazz; The Guardian's John Fordham wrote in 2010 that it "indicated new directions for jazz that didn't slavishly mirror bebop, and even hinted at free-jazz piano techniques still years away from realisation"; he further observed that it "marked Brubeck's eager adoption by America's (predominantly white) youth – a welcome that soon extended around the world ... for a rhythmically intricate instrumental jazz".[5]

The album was given 24-bit remastering and reissued in 2010[6] as part of the Concord label's Original Jazz Classics (OJC) Remasters series.[7] Fordham remarked on "The enthusiasm of the college audience, audible throughout the album".[5]

## Track listing

[edit]

1. "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" (Holt Marvell, Jack Strachey, Harry Link) 6:25
2. "Perdido" (Juan Tizol, Hans Lengsfelder, Ervin Drake) 8:03
3. "Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish) 6:32
4. "The Way You Look Tonight" (Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields) 7:43
5. "How High the Moon" (Nancy Hamilton, Morgan Lewis) 9:04

(Times are as given on the CD; the album numbers differ slightly.)

The 10" LP and reel-to-reel version of the album did not include "How high the moon" and reordered the remaining tracks in a different way. Also, it includes the full version of "The Way You Look Tonight" with Paul Demond's full solo.

Side A

1. "Perdido" (Juan Tizol, Hans Lengsfelder, Ervin Drake)
2. "Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish)

Side B

1. "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" (Holt Marvell, Jack Strachey, Harry Link)
2. "The Way You Look Tonight" (Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields)

## Personnel

[edit]

* Dave Brubeck \- piano
* Paul Desmond \- alto saxophone
* Lloyd Davis \- drums
* Ron Crotty \- bass

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Allmusic review
2. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 188\. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
3. ^ 'College of the Pacific' CD back cover excerpt
4. ^ a b "Legendary Brubeck Album Jazz at Oberlin was Recorded Fifty Years Ago—March 2, 1953". 2003-03-02. Archived from the original on 2017-02-28. Retrieved 2021-02-13.
5. ^ a b Fordham, John (2010-01-11). "50 great moments in jazz: Dave Brubeck's Jazz at Oberlin". The Guardian. Retrieved 2021-02-13.
6. ^ "The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Jazz At Oberlin". Retrieved 26 March 2023.
7. ^ "Jazz At Oberlin [Original Jazz Classics Remasters] \- Concord - Label Group". Concord. Retrieved 26 March 2023.

## External links

[edit]

* Legendary Brubeck Album Jazz at Oberlin was Recorded Fifty Years Ago
* 50 Great Moments in Jazz: Dave Brubeck's 'Jazz at Oberlin'

* v
* t
* e

Dave Brubeck

Solo albums|

* Brubeck Plays Brubeck (1956)
* Plays and Plays and... (1957)
* Just You, Just Me (1994)
* A Dave Brubeck Christmas (1996)
* One Alone (2000)

As leader|

* Dave Brubeck Octet (1950)
* Dave Brubeck and Jay & Kai at Newport (1956)
* Brubeck à la mode (1960)
* Take Five Live (with Carmen McRae, 1961)
* The Real Ambassadors (with Louis Armstrong, 1962)
* Jazz Impressions of New York (1964)
* Time In (1966)
* Bravo! Brubeck! (1967)
* Jackpot! (1968)
* Two Generations of Brubeck (1973)
* Brother, the Great Spirit Made Us All (1974)
* 1975: The Duets (with Paul Desmond, 1975)
* All the Things We Are (1976)
* In Their Own Sweet Way (1995)
* Young Lions & Old Tigers (1995)
* To Hope! A Celebration (1996)
* The 40th Anniversary Tour of the U.K. (1998)

Dave Brubeck
Quartet|

* The Dave Brubeck Quartet (1952)
* Jazz at Oberlin (1953)
* Jazz at the College of the Pacific (1953)
* Jazz Goes to College (1954)
* Brubeck Time (1955)
* Jazz: Red Hot and Cool (1955)
* Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. (1956)
* Dave Digs Disney (1957)
* The Dave Brubeck Quartet in Europe (1958)
* Jazz Impressions of Eurasia (1958)
* Newport 1958 (1958)
* Gone with the Wind (1959)
* Time Out (1959)
* Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein (1960)
* Brubeck and Rushing (with Jimmy Rushing, 1960)
* Tonight Only! (with Carmen McRae, 1960)
* Brandenburg Gate: Revisited (1961)
* Time Further Out (1961)
* Brubeck in Amsterdam (1962)
* Countdown—Time in Outer Space (1962)
* Bossa Nova U.S.A. (1963)
* At Carnegie Hall (1963)
* Jazz Impressions of Japan (1964)
* Time Changes (1964)
* Dave Brubeck in Berlin (1964)
* Angel Eyes (1965)
* My Favorite Things (1965)
* Anything Goes! (1966)
* Buried Treasures (1967)
* The Last Time We Saw Paris (1967)
* 25th Anniversary Reunion (1977)
* Tritonis (1980)
* Paper Moon (1982)
* The Great Concerts (1988)
* So What's New? (1998)
* The Crossing (2000)
* Park Avenue South (2002)
* London Flat, London Sharp (2005)

With Gerry
Mulligan|

* Live at the Berlin Philharmonie (1970)
* The Last Set at Newport (1971)
* We're All Together Again for the First Time (1973)

Compositions|

* "In Your Own Sweet Way"
* "Blue Rondo à la Turk"
* "Unsquare Dance"

Other works|

* The Real Ambassadors

Related articles|

* Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way
* 5079 Brubeck

Authority control databases |

* MusicBrainz release group

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