In 2007 Dave Brubeck sat down with Ted Gioia for an oral history project at the request of the National Endowment Of The Arts in partnership with the Smithsonian Institute. The oral history project was transferred to transcript where clips of the history project and the transcript can be found.
I have detailed over parts in this section of the website the full transcript whereby Dave with the assistance of Iola and his manager Russell Gloyd gave a full and detailed account of life and career from 1920 to 2007. It makes a fascinating and interesting read.

Interviewees: Dave Brubeck with Russell Gloyd and 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.

Copyright: Smithsonian Institute©

Note by person who transcribed - 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.

Note by website owner: In several places throughout the transcript Ted Gioia makes reference to "correcting the transcript at a later date" but there are many instances where this has evidently not happened.



Part 1

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.

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 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 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.

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?
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. This just – they didn’t buy this thing. So they didn’t get to see anything. Practically destroyed the place. Then he ran theaters and hired many bands in Stockton, California, and other places.

Gioia: On your father’s side of the family, were there any musicians? I know your mother was a skilled pianist, but on your father’s side, was there much musical talent?

Brubeck: I think there had to be, because my dad was quite musical, just what he’d be singing and whistling. You had to have a certain ear. He whistled a lot of classical music, because that’s all he got to hear.

Gioia: Let me ask you about your ancestry, which seems to be a mix of German, Polish, Russian, English, maybe Native American as well. Were there any ethnic or anything like that in your early upbringing? Or did you have a very American childhood? Were there any old-country traditions or customs to your childhood?

Brubeck: When I lived in Concord, my dad was the head cattle buyer for one of the biggest meat companies, called Moffett Meat Company. Maybe you’ve heard of baby beef. That’s in Manteca, California, where you force-feed the animals on unusually beets. The animals are never out of the corral, and [ ] the usual life. I think we used to ship our range cattle – some of them – to Manteca. My dad bought the cattle up and down the coast of California, sometimes into Nevada or Oregon. Every year he went to the Hearst Ranch in San Simeon. Bought their cattle. Into King City. Bought a lot of - he knew all the big cattle owners in California. Then, during the Depression, my father took a job in Ione, California, on a 45,000 acre ranch, which was large enough to be in three counties: Sacramento, Amador, and San Joaquin. We moved from Concord up to that ranch, much to my mother’s absolute – it was like the end of her life to go away to a cattle ranch, lose all of her friends, and near San Francisco, so she knew a lot of people. She could go – she studied with Cowell at San Francisco State.

Gioia: Henry Cowell?

Brubeck: Yeah. She also went to summer sessions at Berkeley. So she – and she’d go to the opera and symphony. All that seemed to be something that would be gone. I remember driving in the car with my father and mother – a small coupe. I was in the middle. She was crying, leaving Concord. We went on the back roads through Clayton. There was a big cattle ranch there, where my dad worked. When my mother was in Europe, he would pick me up and take me there on the weekends. We drove on those back roads – Marsh Creek Road, through Clayton. You come out in Byron. Then you go across the islands, which they call the islands, because they are where all the produce of asparagus and things like that. Then we went through Stockton towards Lockeford and then Clements and then turned to Ione. She’s crying all the way. My father said, “Dammit, Bessie. Look out the window. Why are you crying? You can still see Mt. Diablo.” That was his reason for, don’t think this is such a move.

Gioia: You were born December 6, 1920 . . .

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: . . . in Concord. Were you born at home? At a hospital?

Brubeck: I was born at home. My mother realized that she was going to have a baby and went as fast as she could to Dr. Neff on [ ] a half a block away, and knocked on the door. I guess it was about four in the morning. Dr. Neff came to the door and said, “Bessie, go home and get in bed, and I’ll be right there.” So she went home, got in bed. She remembers the doctor taking his scalpel and just ripping off her nightgown, and the baby was born.

Gioia: So he had got there in time, but just at the very last minute.

Brubeck: Yeah. My dad came home from the slaughterhouse. He had built a slaughterhouse. He had a butcher shop, again with this rancher in Clayton: Keller. My first middle name was Keller. David Keller. I changed it, because my birth certificate showed Warren. Keller was a big rancher that I liked. That’s where I would go when I was a kid, on weekends. My mother was in Europe. He came home, and my mother had time to be praying, “Father don’t desert me now.” He said, “Bessie, I’m right here.” She said, “I don’t mean you.”

Gioia: Your middle names – you’re saying your birth certificate is David Warren Brubeck.

Brubeck: Then when I got my first social security, it came as – I put down Keller. Then I had to change that back to Warren.

Gioia: Was that because you thought your middle name was Keller?
Brubeck: I just decided it was, because . . .

Gioia: You had such an affinity with . . .

Brubeck: Harry Keller, the cowboy.

Gioia: Tell me more about Harry Keller.

Brubeck: He owned this huge ranch, from Clayton, all along Marsh Creek, but above Marsh Creek, all through the mountains. I’ve heard that it was the largest cattle ranch in Contra Costa County. My dad was Harry’s partner. They worked together.

Gioia: So Harry was like an uncle to you, although you weren’t . . .
Brubeck: Yeah. Very close.

Gioia: So when you filled out your social security form, you put down your middle name as David Keller Brubeck.

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: The Warren – was that named after your grandfather?

Brubeck: Yeah. And also because that’s what my folks had named me.

Gioia: And David – were you named after any – was there another David in the family?

Or was that just a name they liked?

Brubeck: I don’t know of any. There are now.

Gioia: There are now, sure. I’m sure there are many now. So as far as you know, you were the first Dave Brubeck in the family.

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: What was your home like in Concord? I know when you moved to Ione, you lived on a large ranch.

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: In Concord were you in a city? Or was that like a ranch too?

Brubeck: Part of our lot, at the back of the house, faced Main Street, behind the Presbyterian Church, where my mother was choir director 17 years. Then this house that I was born in was the Ivy House, from her father. She might have been born in the house, I’ve heard. She might have been born on a farm near the statue that’s between Walnut Creek and Pacheco. [ ] a statue.

Gioia: So there was a house that was in town.

Brubeck: Absolutely.

Gioia: Was that ranch separate?

Brubeck: The ranch? Oh, that was in a different little town, Clayton.

Gioia: Okay.

Brubeck: If you know where the Concord Pavilion is, my dad used to run cattle on that very land. Then on up that hill was another ranch that I went to a lot when I was a kid.

Gioia: But you didn’t live on the ranch. You lived in a home in town, and the ranch was out in Clayton.

Brubeck: Yeah. Right by the Pavilion. I often would think of that when I’d go to play a concert. This is the road I learn to drive – or almost learned to drive a car on. I ran through an orchard, my dad hollering, “Step on the other one!” I put my foot on the clutch instead of the brake. Went tearing through there.

Gioia: Your mother was a pianist. Were there other musicians in her family?

Brubeck: No. Not that I know of. That family you mentioned being Polish, trying to trace them, we’ve heard that they were in White Russia – her mother. Betsy. Her mother. Then into Poland, and from Poland to Germany, and from Germany she got a way to get to California as a nanny or a servant to the Gangerer – I don’t know how to spell it.

Capital G – Iola would know. Then she married Henry Ivy.

Gioia: When you were in first grade, I believe you were . . .

Brubeck: There were some organists on that side of the family.

Gioia: Church organs?

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: When you, I believe, were in first grade, your mother went to England to study music.

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: Can you tell me about that, what impact that had on your home.

Brubeck: Looking back on it, I would say it wasn’t good. At the time I was quite unhappy, because we were put in a family to keep us – Howard and I. Henry went with my mother to England. My dad at the time was living on the ranch in Clayton, the Keller ranch.

Gioia: So you were put with a family in the town of Concord that looked after . . .

Brubeck: Yeah, the Humphrey family was their name.

Gioia: Your mother had hopes to use this to help her teach piano? Or did she want to perform more? What were her ambitions in music?

Brubeck: I think that her ambitions were to be a concert pianist. To understand my mother, she was absolutely driven all her life to raise up above her situation. She was in a town, Concord, that didn’t have a high school. So she took one of the wagons and a horse from her father, and went to all the farms and orchards and said, “Would you pledge money to build a high school?” So she’s the one that was driven to have an education, even if she had to go out and create a high school. She graduated from Concord High School.

Gioia: So she was responsible for establishing Concord High School.

Brubeck: Absolutely.

Gioia: And then she graduated from it.

Brubeck: She graduated in the first class. So when I say she’s driven, you can’t imagine how she wanted to rise from her situation and be educated, and she managed it.

Gioia: Was her personality different from your father’s? Was she more ambitious and driven than your father? Or were they both . . . ?

Brubeck: In their own ways, they were both successful.

Gioia: Self-made people.

Brubeck: Yeah. Then King’s Conservatory in San Jose is where she went from high school. We ran across a recommendation from the dean that she go on in music.

Eventually, after having three children and in the ’20s, for some reason she had an insurance policy with Goldman and Sachs. She cashed that in. With that money, which was her money, she was able to go to Europe and study. My father thought it was ridiculous to cash that in. Later on in life, she’d say, “If I hadn’t done that, we’d have lost it all, because Goldman and Sachs took a dive with everybody else. So I was able to do something with that money.” She studied with Dame Meyerhess. Dame Meyerhess saw my mother looking out the window in London at some kids playing. She said, “You’re so interested in them. Do you have children?” She said, “Yes. I have three sons.” She said, “If I were you, I’d go home to my sons. This is a lonely life, to be a concert pianist.”

Gioia: Was she your first piano teacher? Did you learn piano from your mother?
Brubeck: Absolutely. She couldn’t teach me, but she could. She taught me basic harmony. She tried to teach me to read music, which no-one could. Then she would write down things I played when I was very young.

Gioia: Would this have been before she went to England, she started you?

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: So a very early age.

Brubeck: Very early age.

Gioia: Were there other instruments at the house other than a piano? Were there other instruments that you tried to play, or other instruments at the home?
Brubeck: At nine I got my first cello – a half-size. I studied with a girl named Lucille Keller, from the same family, who was a good cellist. I guess a brother of hers [ ] in that family, they lived in town, in Concord.

Gioia: So you had a stint playing cello, but obviously that was not your passion, the cello.

Brubeck: Well, if I had been good, it would have been. I did study it again when I was in Ione. My mother insisted that I go to Sutter Creek. The judge up there played cello. Then, even when I was in high school, I drove down to the College of Pacific and studied with Mrs. Brown, who was the wife of Horace Brown, a teacher at the conservatory who was great to me and taught me counterpoint. So I should have been a lot better cellist, but I just wasn’t so good. My brother Henry was a jazz drummer and a legit violinist. Howard was a protege on piano and could go from Concord to contests in San Francisco and do very well.

Gioia: Was there a lot of music-making around the home with you and your siblings?Did you get together and play music together or sing together and things like that?

Brubeck: We had a string trio – cello, violin, piano – which was very uncomfortable for me, because both of them could read anything, and I couldn’t.
Gioia: Who played piano then on that?

Brubeck: Howard.

Gioia: So you played cello on that.

Brubeck: And Henry, violin.

Gioia: Would that – what kind . . .

Brubeck: You couldn’t play a radio, because she wouldn’t allow a radio in the house.

Gioia: Why not?

Brubeck: If you want music, make your own.

Gioia: This string trio: what kind of music did you play? Classical music? Or did you play dance music.

Brubeck: Classical.

Gioia: Classical. So you must – you minimize your reading skills, but you had enough reading skills obviously to play some of this. You weren’t doing this by ear, were you?

Brubeck: Yeah. Looking at the music, faking it, and then my brother hitting me with the violin bow when I hit the wrong note. I’d be playing like this and put up my arm, because I knew that bow was coming.

Gioia: Your family moved around the time you were 12 years old. That was in the middle of the Great Depression. Was it because of the Depression that this move took place?

Brubeck: If my dad figured that out, it was a brilliant move, because on the cattle ranch, right through the Depression, he got $250 a month, a house to live in, a car to drive. That’s a slight exaggeration. He eventually bought his own car, but the companies supplied pickups and trucks and all that that you need to run a large cattle ranch. So, food – everything was free. This was through the Depression.
Gioia: So at a time when a lot of people were struggling, your father had taken a position that gave you quite a bit of economic security.

Brubeck: You bet.

Gioia: Did the Depression impact your life in any way? Could you see things in the community? Or were you pretty insulated from it where you grew up?
Brubeck: You were very aware of it. There were [ ] Concord. There would be – the slang word for hoboes or bums, come to your home and ask for food. My mother would tell them, “Chop a little wood out there, and I’ll bring you some food.” My father’s rule was, you can do this, but never allow some stranger to come into the house. So you were always aware of that. You were aware of your neighbors losing their jobs. It was a daily thing. Across the street, when the man of the house would come home, his wife would be coming to the front door and saying, “Cedric, did you lose your job yet?” That happened every day, hat she’d come out there and say that. That was the opening. It was on everybody’s mind. Where were you going to buy food? Could you charge? My wife’s family was very much more aware of the

Gioia: Dave, my thought is to go another 15 minutes and take a break. If at any point you want to take a break, let me know. Can we go a little bit more?
Brubeck: Sure.

Gioia: Okay. Let’s go another 10, 15 minutes. Then we’ll take a break.
You once told me that when you were a youngster, you knew Gil Evans. Could you tell me more about that?

Brubeck: Oh, I wasn’t a youngster. My brother Henry, the drummer, played with Gil.Gil had a band out of Stockton. There were so many good musicians in the conservatory. You weren’t allowed to play jazz, but you worked as a jazz musician. Many of the California towns, and the towns right across the country, had dance bands. Almost every town had one or two or three bands that worked, played dances. Gil had this band in Stockton that used Stockton musicians. He took that band on the road to Los Angeles. He hated to front the band, and he loved writing for the band and composing. Skinnay Ennis bought the band from him, fronted it, and allowed Gil to continue as the leader, rehearser, composer, and arranger. At that point, the reason that I met Gil was that Miles Davis recorded – he wanted Gil to write The Duke – an arrangement, which he did.
Gioia: For Miles Ahead.

Brubeck: Yeah. Teo Macero and Miles invited me to the session at Columbia where they’d be editing that day. I was told they’d be working on The Duke. When I came into the control room, I was introduced to Gil. He said, “? Did you have a brother?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “He played drums with me. He was a great drummer.” That’s how I met Gil.

Then I [ ] after that. After he died, I was invited to his house by his wife, after I was here in Connecticut.

Gioia: The two of you grew up not too far from each other, and your brother played with him. Now I understand.

Brubeck: Yes. That’s how it happened.

Gioia: Let’s do one more question before we take a break. I’d like you to tell me about your education early on – the schools you went to up until college. Then we’ll talk about that.

Brubeck: I started in kindergarten at Willow Grammar School in Concord. I guess it was called Willow Pass Grammar School. I can remember the kindergarten. The teacher there was Miss Burns. She and I were in love. Just great.
Gioia: How long were you there? Until what grade?

Brubeck: Until seventh.

Gioia: What kind of student were you? If I talked to your teachers, what would they have told me? That you were the class clown? Or you were quiet?

Brubeck: I didn’t get in trouble.

Gioia: You were a good student. You were well behaved.

Brubeck: When I think of student, it’s all very uncomfortable, because I was put in the slow group, away from my friends, maybe second grade. I always felt that in some ways I’m probably the smartest guy here, but this was a blow to me. I couldn’t understand why I was put back – or put into the slow group. I wasn’t being put back. Looking back on it, I had what might be called learning disability, but nobody knew that term in those days. I had to go through that on my own, partly when my mother was in England. I remember trouble in school. Not trouble. Just – because the music teacher knew that I was musical. I was good in math. My trouble was maybe in spelling.

Gioia: Maybe a little dyslexia. It might be related to the issues with reading music.

Brubeck: I think so, because I was born cross-eyed.

Gioia: So was I. We had talked about this once. I do know I have a tendency to dyslexia as well. So it might be something similar.

Brubeck: Yeah, but did you know it when you were a kid?

Gioia: No, I didn’t.

Brubeck: That’s what is puzzling. Because, like, in the Army, I had to take an IQ test. I wasn’t anxious to do well in it, but I was high enough to become an officer with what they considered a good enough score to go to officer’s training. It must have been that I was high in some areas and low in others. Geography I was very good in.

Gioia: What about high school? Where did you go to high school?

Brubeck: I went to high school [ ] I finished eighth grade in Ione. I did well there. The high school for all four grades only totaled 84 students, so you know it was a small high school.

Gioia: Why don’t we take a break right now? Excellent. This is going well.
One day a man named Johnny Osterbar, who I believe picked up laundry at the ranch, invited you to play at a Saturday night engagement at Clements Dance Hall, which I think was in Lodi? What can you tell me about this event and about you becoming a professional performing musician?

Brubeck: I think I was around 14. Osterbar came from Lodi to pick up the laundry at the ranch and heard me practicing. I wasn’t practicing. I was playing. Knocked on the door that led to our front room and said he liked what he was hearing. Would I like to play with his band. I said yeah. We worked at an outdoor dance floor – it wasn’t a hall – with light bulbs just hanging from wires. It was the only decoration. It was the Mokelumne River, right outside of Clements, where you go to Ione. What I remember mostly about that job was a neighbor named . . .

Gioia: If you can’t remember, just go on, and we’ll fill that in later.

Brubeck: . . . Loren Beimert. If you look him up, you’ll see he was president of the Cattlemen’s Association out of Sacramento, for the state. He had a large – his father had a large sheep ranch that adjoined us outside of Clements, on the way to Ione. Thousands of head of sheep. He came to the dance and heard us play and asked John Osterbar, “Can I sing with your band?” John said, “I’ve never heard you sing, but give it a try.” So he went out to his car and brought in a microphone and – what you would plug the microphone into. I should know that term.

Gioia: An amplifier of some sort?

Brubeck: Amplifier. He set up his equipment, and he sang quite well. That worked out. He used to then sing later with us, when I went to the Bill Lammi band. But he was a real character. I remember he bought an airplane and didn’t take [ ]. Somebody showed him how it worked, and he was dive bombing his father on the ranch. Then his father got so mad. That’s the kind of character he was. He was alone with his father. A wonderful place in the Sierras. A meadow that’s now a snow – where you can come and rent cabins and ski. A ski resort.
Gioia: The music that you were making then. This was for dances. Would this have been a jazz-type music?

Brubeck: It would be – what most people played in those days were called stock arrangements. I played those with Bill Lammi later in Ione. Later with the bands in Stockton and Modesto. You usually had stock arrangements. Once in a while you’d have something – a special arrangement. Very, very rare.
Gioia: You were – would you be making money? Were you paid for these? Do you remember – do you have any recollections of how much you might make at these gigs – these first gigs?

Brubeck: Yeah. The first gigs could have been as low as a few dollars. When I got to Stockton to go to school as a freshmen – I’m then 17 and a stranger to all the musicians. I didn’t know anyone. I was a pre-med major. I used to try and hang out with guys who’d fluff me off. “Where are you from?” Ione. They’d just kind of turn their back and walk away.

The head of the Stockton musicians union heard me play at a sorority house, where the – my roommate when I was a freshman was going with a girl at this sorority house, so I’d often go there and play. I got to know those sorority girls. They invited this head of the union, who was a junior or senior in the conservatory. “Come over and hear this kid.” So he came over. He liked what I was doing. He said, “I’m working at a nightclub, but I have a chance to go to a better job. Would you be interested in taking that job?” I thought, wow, that would be great, but I’m not in the union. He said, “I’m the president of the union. I’ll just get you in.” His name was Herman Shapiro, later known as Herman Saunders in Los Angeles. He changed his name. He did the music for a lot of big t.v. serials that ran every week. He recently passed away, but we followed each other for our careers. That’s the way I got into the union, because I wasn’t old enough to get into the union. Then I’m thrown into bands with some of these guys that are fluffing me off, and I scared them to death. “Where did you hear something like that?” So it quickly changed everything, being that [ ]
Gioia: What would you be paid then?

Brubeck: $42 a week. I was making . . .

Gioia: Was that union scale?

Brubeck: Yeah, that was scale. I was making as much a week as my future father-in-law. If you’re playing a one-nighter, like in Modesto at the California Ballroom, you might get $15.

Gioia: Let me just ask a couple more questions before we talk about college. I just want to – you mentioned you went to high school in Ione. What was the name of the school?

Brubeck: Ione High School. But before you go there, know that I got a big break in Stockton. Cleo Brown was there at the hospital in Stockton, because of a condition she had, living a kind of wild life. She was one of the best-known pianists in jazz at that time. Marian McPartland was listening to her in England. That’s in the ’30s. They wanted me to play intermission for her and open for her and bring her to the job . . .

Gioia: This is in Stockton?

Brubeck: Yeah . . . from a little house that the authorities from the hospital had gotten for her, and to bring her home at night. So here I’m thrown in with one of the top jazz pianists in the country. Gioia: About what age would you have been?

Brubeck: 19.

Gioia: 19. So you’d have just gone to college.

Brubeck: I’m still in college. Because I went at 17. 18, 19 – I would have been a junior.

Gioia: What were your parent’s reactions to you going away to college? Was this something they encouraged?

Brubeck: I didn’t want to go. My father had given me four cows when I graduated from grammar school. He kept those cows in his herd, but kept books on how they reproduced and what I owned. I thought I was going to be a cattleman.
Gioia: So by then these four cows had multiplied into quite a herd of your own.

Brubeck: Yeah. My dad had a 1,200-acre ranch separate from the 45,000 acres.

Gioia: 1,200. This is – he owned outright.

Brubeck: He owned. It was near Sutter Creek, near Drytown. I used to go there. There was a cabin and no running water, no stove. Yes, there was a stove, but that’s all. I thought, boy, this is the place I want to live. There was a spring where I could get water near the house and a stream that ran by down beyond about 50 yards where I could wash and wash my dishes.

Gioia: You wanted to be a cowboy.

Brubeck: Absolutely. I did not want to go to college. So my mother saw to it that a guy from San Rafael military academy would come and pick me up and take me to the academy. He did that. I went down there, and I hated it royally in about a half hour. Then he returned me home, and my dad said, “The academy – would you like to go there?” I said, “No.” He said, “Your mother thinks you should go there. The discipline would be good for you, the studying.” I said, “Dad, if you send me, I’m going to break everything on campus until you can’t afford to have me there and you’ll bring me home.” He said, “Dave, I don’t think I’ll send you.” So I got out of that. Then I said – when it was time to go to college, I said I didn’t want to go. I wanted to live on the Blakely Ranch. That was the name of the ranch.

Gioia: That was the ranch your father owned.

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: The Blakely Ranch.

Brubeck: “I want to live there.” He said, “That could work out.” My mother said, “You’re going to college, like your brothers. There’s no way you’re just going to go live on the Blakely Ranch.” My dad said, “If he’s got to go to college, he should study to be a veterinarian and then come back to the ranch.” That was how I got to [the College of the] Pacific, as a pre-med. Then I would have transferred to [the University of California at] Davis, which had a great agriculture and veterinary school.

Gioia: Still does. So your thought is, you wanted to get back to the ranch. You didn’t want to be a city boy. You wanted to live out in the country.

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: So, going to college, you decided you’d study to be a veterinarian, because that would give you a career you could go back.

Brubeck: My mother said I had to study, I had to go to college. Brother Henry had gone to Pacific.

Gioia: Was he there when you showed up? Was he still a student there?

Brubeck: He was 11 1/2 years older. There’s quite a distance.

Gioia: So he was gone.

Brubeck: He and Dell Courtney were roommates at Risonia. Then Henry decided that the jazz and dance band business had too many pitfalls in it. So he went back to Pacific and graduated when he was 28. I went with him to Stanford University, where he was going to be – I forget the word – scrutinized by a principal that wanted a teacher of music in Lompoc, California. The three brothers went. When we got there, the principal said, “You have to come back tomorrow. I’m too busy to see you today.”

So we slept three of us in one bed. I don’t know how we paid for it. In the morning, when it was time for breakfast, we were penniless, except I had a dime. So we got a stack of hotcakes. The three of us ate a hotcake each. But he did get the job. From Lompoc, where he was quite successful, he went to Santa Barbara, where he became the chairman – I forget the term – of schools. Supervisor?

Gioia: Supervisor – superintendent?

Brubeck: No. Head of public school music. There were various high schools and junior highs. Very successful until he retired.

The question that I drifted away from – what was it?

Gioia: I was asking you about [ ]. Henry was still at the College of the Pacific when you were there.

Brubeck: Yeah. He wasn’t. But he had been there.

Gioia: When you went to college, my understanding is that you still came home every weekend?

Brubeck: Whenever I could.

Gioia: How easy of a trip was that? Was that close by?

Brubeck: 38 miles. It was very close. Then I’d play with Bill Lammi’s orchestra.

Gioia: You started playing with Bill when you were in high school?

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: Tell me about that band. Same thing? Was it a dance band playing stock arrangements?

Brubeck: Yeah. We played in Jackson, Sutter Creek, Mokelumne Hill, Angel’s Camp  all those towns.

Gioia: So even after you went to college, you would occasionally come back to play with Bill’s band?

Brubeck: My freshman year, because I didn’t know – I wasn’t in the union yet.

Gioia: How did you get back and forth? You take a bus? You drive a car?

Brubeck: I had a Durant automobile which I bought for $60. It was known on campus as the silver streak. In the summer, I worked for Dr. Saunders, the veterinarian in Stockton. He had a big practice. I would either work in the animal hospital doing jobs that I do not like. The worst, having to put the dogs under that weren’t claimed, because the dog pound was next door. They finally let me off that job, because I’d pet the dogs until they died. All the . . .

Gioia: What a sad job to do.

Brubeck: Oh yeah.

Gioia: Why don’t we stop this right here then, and we’ll continue on . . .

[Recording interrupted; it resumes in mid-sentence]

Brubeck: [ ] fight. We aren’t fighting each other. We’re just raising, but I’m the victim, being – I was taking a bath. My roommate wanted a bath. So he came in and poured a bottle of iodine into the water. Then I locked the door and drained the tub and took another bath. When he couldn’t get in, he backed up in the hall – he was 6-foot 4 – and came, and with his feet in front of him, jumped and hit that door.

That door went onto the side of the bathtub. Water spilled out, went down into the dining room, and ruined her new ceiling and some of her tablecloths. Then she came upstairs, furious, as she should have been. I hadn’t done anything. But she started chasing me, and I hollered “Mrs. Anderson, I’m naked.” “I don’t care.” I went behind a bed – a pull-down bed, where you can get in behind it. She came in behind it after me, screaming and hollering, “You ruined my house.” [ ] remembers all this.

Gioia: This is Darrell Bodley. Dean Bodley?

Brubeck: No, thank God. It was Dean Corson. His son is still teaching at the – when he met me, he started telling me, “Boy, you sure raised some – my father was always talking about you at home.” The punishment was we had to live a mile off campus. We moved to Tuxedo Circle.

Gioia: Dave, a couple things that Ken’s pointed out to me that we didn’t cover. Could you give me the full names of both your parents?

Brubeck: My father, Howard Peter Brubeck. My mother . . .

Gioia: Did he go by the name Pete?

Brubeck: Yeah. Absolutely.

Gioia: But Peter was his middle name.

Brubeck: Yeah.

Gioia: And your mother.

Brubeck: Elizabeth Ivy Brubeck, and sometimes Elizabeth Johanna Ivy Brubeck.

Gioia: Another question about your mother: when she came back from England, what did she do in music after that? Was it primarily as a teacher?

Brubeck: Teacher, living in her original home in Concord, California. She had a studio built right into the home that was beautiful. You could have recitals there, which she always did. It was a very pleasant room.

Gioia: Did she have much chance to perform when she came back?

Brubeck: People – singers would ask her to accompany them. She did a good job. Then the choir she had every Thursday night rehearsal and Sunday in the church. That was her main way of playing outside of teaching.

Gioia: Let’s go back now and talk about college. How did you go from planning on a career as a veterinarian to deciding you were going to study music and be a musician?

Brubeck: It’s really up to my zoology teacher. Dr. Arnold said to me, “Brubeck, why don’t you go across the lawn to the conservatory, because your mind is not here in the lab.” I took his advice. Went across the lawn to the conservatory the next year.

Gioia: How did your parents react to your decision to become a musician?

Brubeck: My dad really disliked – the first time that we really talked about that is he had wanted me to come back to the ranch for the summer, and I said, “Dad, I have a chance to play in a nightclub this summer, and I’d rather do that.” He said, “I can’t understand how you’d want to be in a smoky place like that when you could be out here in the fresh air and the open country. I can’t understand you wanting to do that.” I said, “I really love to play.” He had told my mother, when I had gone to college – and he told me – “I have three sons. You’re the last one that could follow in my footsteps and be a cattleman.

The other two older boys are now both musicians. I thought you and I were partners.” I said, “That’s true, but I just love to play, and I think I’d rather do that.” He said, “I think it’s going to be a hard life for you. If you ever get discouraged, remember, I’ve kept track of how many cows and calves you have, and I always want you to come back and be my partner.”

He said, “Don’t forget. It can be rough on the road in this business. You’re welcome to come back, and we’ll be partners again.” Many a time – I remember telling the owner of Birdland in New York after I’d played there and I was really getting fed up with what was going on, all the different scenes that were so far from what I thought was right, and even the murder of one of the brothers that owned – ran Birdland, and other things that were making it seem this isn’t such a great thing – I told the owner – or the manager of Birdland.

I said, “Maybe I won’t come back. I can always go back to the ranch.” He started laughing. He said, “I’ve heard a lot of things since I’ve been in this business, but I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘I can always go back to the ranch’.” When he’d introduce me or talk about me, he’d say, “And he’s the guy that said, ‘I can always go back to the ranch’.” I was serious. What I had put my wife and the kids through, more than how much I disliked the atmosphere, was what I had to put them through in order to be a musician. We lived in places where – you’d have to call it slums.

Gioia: You had a tough stretch there, where it was hand to mouth. Absolutely.

Brubeck: What?

Gioia: You had a tough stretch there, especially the late 1940s, where it was difficult times.

Brubeck: Yeah – even – lots of long years where you practically didn’t know where you’re going to live, how you’re going to live, how you’re going to feed your family. That’s the thing – I used to try to - to survive, I’d go to the farmer’s market Saturday at closing time, because they didn’t stay open on Sunday. They threw away what they hadn’t sold Saturday. They got to know me, and they’d give me stuff almost for nothing. I’d fill the back of the trunk of my car. There were a lot of us living on 18th Street…….Castro District: Bill Smith and his kids, Dick Collins, and our friends Alice and Basil Johns. We all lived within a block or two of each other. I’d bring them produce. Then I’d go to the dented-can store. They also had canned goods that had been through a fire. I remember buying up a case of baby food that had been in a fire and thinking, boy, this will be great. My kids wouldn’t eat it. When kids turn down something, and just push their hands away from the spoon, you aren’t going to get them to eat. I had to eat all that baby food. It was terrible.

But one way or another – Iola cooked a lot of beans. Sometimes we’d feed other musicians that were hungry. My wife’s nickname is Oley. Her name is Iola – Oley. She became famous with the nickname for the food, “Oley’s frijoles.”

Part 2 click here