REMINISCENCES OF THE CATTLE COUNTRY (1946)

DETAILS

(1947) 7 min. “Dedicated to my Parents”

Reminiscences of the Cattle Country (1946)

I. Sun Up
II. Breaking A Wild Horse
III. The Fairgrounds
IV. Look at My Pony
V. The Chickens And The Ducklings
VI. Dad Plays The Harmonica

INSTRUMENTATION

Solo piano

MUSIC

Dave Brubeck

PURCHASE & LICENSING

For more information contact Derry@BrubeckMusic.com

PROGRAM NOTES

My roots are in jazz, and I have worked in it professionally since the age of fourteen; but I grew up on a cattle ranch in Northern California and the jazz I played Saturday nights was in dance halls in rough and ready towns like Angels Camp, Murpheys, Sutter Creek, and Mokelumne Hill. My mother’s classical training had given me a Bach-like harmonic approach to popular and western tunes.

Reminiscences of the Cattle Country is a reminiscence of my early days on the rach, which my father managed and where I worked after school and summers as a cowhand. In the evenings, my father often played the harmonica (cowboy style) and my mother played the piano (classical style). These two diverse traditions produced in me a jazz style that was individual, and a compositional style that is an amalgam of a variety of early influences.

These compositions, written in 1946, were my first pieces for piano not in the jazz idiom of the blues or popular song form. I was then a student of Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California.

The act of writing music then was a tremendous struggle and the reading of what I had written next to impossible. Milhaud’s usual response, after hearing me play through a new piece was “Very good, ‘Boo-Boo,’ but not what you have written.” He had infinite patience with a poor jazz pianist who could scarcely read or write music, and encouraged me to become a composer. But he was insistent that I not give up jazz. “In jazz, you are free,” he would say.

Milhaud was not just referencing to the music, but to a lifestyle—to working in dance halls and bars, traveling the world, and being able to make a living wherever there was a piano. How long it has taken me to appreciate his great discernment!

— © Dave Brubeck