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Focused Profiles on Jazz and its Creators while also Featuring the Work of Guest Writers and Critics on the Subject of Jazz.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Dave Brubeck: A Life in American Music - Part 2
Part 2
December 6, 2010, Dave Brubeck will celebrate his 90th birthday. The editorial staff wanted to do something special to commemorate it, so we turned to Doug Ramsey, who has graciously consented to have his essay - DAVE BRUBECK: A LIFE IN AMERICAN MUSIC - posted on JazzProfiles.
It doesn't get any more special than that.
If you are looking for more of Doug's Jazz writings, his current musings can be found daily on his blog – Riffitides.
And should you wish to read his essay in its original form, you can find it as part of the accompanying booklet to the Columbia/Sony Records boxed set Dave Brubeck: Time Signatures A Career Retrospective.
Last, but not least, Doug is also the author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.
© -Doug Ramsey. Reprinted with the permission of the author; copyright protected; all rights reserved.
Dave remembers the octet as having played four paying concerts: at Mills College in 1946, in 1947 opening for the great Woody Herman Herd in San Francisco, and in 1948 at Dave's alma mater for the College of the Pacific chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national music fraternity. Then, in 1949, they gave a concert of their newest compositions at the Marines Memorial Auditorium in . That was a turning point. San Francisco
The Marines Memorial concert was attended by Jimmy Lyons, a young disc jockey with open ears.
' enthusiasm persuaded his bosses at KNBC to launch a weekly program called "Lyons Busy," featuring Bru-beck and a trio drawn from the octet. Ron Crotty was the bassist, Cal Tjader was the drummer, doubling occasionally on vibraharp. In some pieces, Tjader's quick reflexes and athletic ability were needed when he was called on to switch from vibes to drums in the split second between choruses. Lyons
In 1950, Down Beat, evidently on the strength of Brubeck's first trio recordings and the attention paid his music by critics like Barry Ulanov and Ralph J. Gleason, published a piece co-authored by
Dave and lola. In it, Brubeck recommended that jazzmen explore the possibilities contained in the polytonal examples of Bartok and other classical composers. But he went on to make it clear that in the matter of spontaneous creation, he felt that improvisation was the heart of jazz: "I will not go so far as to say jazz ceases to be jazz once it is written. But I do say that improvisation is the criterion by which all jazz, written or unwritten, is judged. The degree of its 'goodness' is based on its proximity to improvisation."
Although the quartet with Desmond is what most people think of when they hear the name Brubeck, the music in this collection, from the vaults of five companies, includes important recordings made before the quartet was formed in 1951 and after it was disbanded at the end of 1967. "
" was one of four trio performances the Brubeck Trio recorded in September of 1949 for Coronet, a INDIANA label established by the traditional trombonist Jack Sheedy. The two 78-rpm records were popular enough that when Coronet went out of business not long after, Brubeck (with the backing of Max and Sol Weiss) bought the masters of "INDIANA," "LAURA," "TEA FOR TWO" and "BLUE MOON." He paid $350. In those days, that was real money, especially for a young family man who wasn't working much. It was enough, in any case, to lay a foundation. San Francisco
The brothers Weiss operated the Circle Record Company, a pressing plant that manufactured the Coronet 78s. On the strength of the Brubeck records they started a company that would originate, not merely press, jazz records. Its first releases were reissues of the Brubeck Trio 78s. With the whimsy and refusal to take itself seriously that overlay everything the company did as long as they ran it, the Weisses named it after a science fiction magazine, Fantasy. Many of their LPs were pressed not on conventional black vinyl but in startling chemical shades of red, green, and purple.
The company was home base for Brubeck in the crucial early years of the trio and quartet, and to Cal Tjader and Vince Guaraldi, both of whom built successful careers on the popularity of their Fantasy recordings. It also helped launch Lenny Bruce, whose irreverence and attacks on conventional wisdom and attitudes sounded a lot like many of the conversations that took place on an average afternoon at the headquarters of Fantasy. Years later, Max and Sol sold Fantasy and their other label, Galaxy, to an employee, Saul Zaentz, who went on to acquire Prestige, Milestone, Riverside, Contemporary, and other labels, produce motion pictures, and build an entertainment empire.
Nothing so grand seemed in the offing at the little company tucked away in jumbled rooms below Market Street, at first in an alley called Treat Street and later in another named Natoma. Brubeck and the Weisses recorded more trio sides. Fantasy released recordings made by the Brubeck Octet, but only after the trio had proved that Brubeck could sell records, which had begun to move well not only in the Bay Area but in
and Portland . From among the first records, "BLUE MOON" was chosen best of the month by Metronome magazine. That started a series of awards to Brubeck that has never ended. Three of the trio's recordings, including "UNDECIDED," were on the best-of-the-year list in Jazz 1951, Metronome's yearbook. Seattle
Now Jimmy Lyons, the enthusiastic disc jockey, had more good news for Brubeck. He had landed the trio a job at the Burma Lounge, a popular club near
, virtually in the center of Lake Merritt . After a month of baking, Oakland Dave, lola, and their two sons said goodbye to the corrugated oven at . The "Lyons Busy" program, riding on the powerful signal of KNBC, sent the live music of Brubeck, Tjader, and Crotty the length of the West Coast and far out into the Pacific, where sailors picked it up on shipboard radios. When the sailors had liberty in Clear Lake , every Navy man's favorite port, they sought out the trio at the Burma Lounge, then later across the bay at the Blackhawk in San Francisco , which became Brubeck's virtual headquarters. San Francisco
As much as six months out of every year, the trio, and later the quartet, played at the Blackhawk, a monument to dimness, dustiness, and the proposition that in a sympathetic setting the listener can become a part of the creative process. His Blackhawk experience must have had a lot to do with the development of Brubeck's often-quoted observation that the success of the quartet was due in large part to the participation of its fifth member, the audience.
"I've worked and slaved to keep this place a sewer," Guido Caccienti used to say of his long, narrow temple of gloom. Guido, his partner Johnny Noga, and their wives, Elynore and Helen, kept the prices reasonable and kept musicians and audiences relaxed with their good-humored toughness. It wasn't unusual for a line of customers to wait more or less patiently to pay their dollar cover charges at the door while Elynore and Helen exchanged gossip or the latest Mort Sahl line.
Musicians loved to play the Blackhawk, which the
Dave Brubeck Trio helped establish as a jazz club. Count Basic had to love it, to be willing to squeeze 16 instrumentalists and Joe Williams onto a bandstand roughly twice the size of a cocktail table. It was one of Miles Davis' favorite places to play, and Thelonious Monk's, and Shelly Manne's, and the Modern Jazz Quartet's. And, of course, Cal Tjader's and Vince Guaraldi's. On one occasion in the early '50s, when their quartets were working regularly and gaining in popularity, Brubeck's path crossed Gerry Mulligan's, literally; when his group moved south from the Blackhawk to The Haig in , Mulligan's quartet moved north from The Haig to the Blackhawk. Los Angeles
Where the Blackhawk once stood at Turk and Hyde in the Tenderloin, no building now stands. The corner is a parking lot, without so much as a plaque to commemorate one of San Francisco's cultural treasures, one of perhaps a half-dozen jazz clubs across the country that may not have made anyone rich, but, through their owners' love of the art and the artists, made a difference in the development of the music.
lola was susceptible to Paul's charm from the first time she met him. She told
Gene Lees 40 years later that Desmond looked so forlorn, she went out back and told her husband, "You just have to see him." Brubeck did and, lola said, "...he was full of promises to Dave. He said, 'If you'll just let me play with you, I'll baby-sit, I'll wash your car.'"
Brubeck was unable to keep up his resistance. The partnership was back on, at least in spirit. But making the trio a quartet was impossible financially because club managers discouraged anything that might jeopardize the growing success of the trio. Desmond sat in, but the businessmen interested in the modest fortunes of the group were not particularly happy when he did.
Nonetheless, when the trio was booked into
, Desmond went along to sit in at The Haig and later at Zardi's. Los Angeles Dave's family also went to The Brubecks had been living in an apartment in L.A. and now rented a tiny cottage on the beach at San Francisco . They had put money down on a house near Santa Monica . When the work in San Francisco ended and it came time to close on the house, Los Angeles Dave and lola put Darius and Michael in the car and drove all night to keep the appointment. Brubeck remembers having lola periodically slap him to keep him awake during the 400-mile drive.
They arrived on time, to discover that the deal on the house had fallen apart. Their down payment money was tied up in escrow. Most of their belongings were in storage. They had no place to live. So when a booking materialized at the Zebra Lounge in
, Brubeck took the trio, the wife, and the kids to Honolulu . Stone broke, living in cramped quarters, eating food from cans that had been dented and sold at reduced prices, the Brubecks' fortunes were at a low ebb. Hawaii
They got lower.
The beaches of
provided sunshine, water, free recreation, and distractions from poverty. To Honolulu Dave, lola and the boys, the Tjaders, bassist Jack Weeks, and Dave Van Kriedt, afternoons on the beach were relief from ungenteel poverty. Weeks had replaced Ron Crotty in the trio and Van Kriedt was in playing a separate job. They were all together one afternoon when Honolulu Dave, diving through waves, hit a sand bar and wrenched his neck with so much force that an ambulance driver, noting the angle of the head, thought the injury was fatal.
"I heard him calling ahead on his two-way radio, telling them that he was bringing in a DOA; dead on arrival. I thought he was right," Brubeck says. "I was going in and out of consciousness."
The first hospital he was taken to rejected the patient for inability to pay. When it was established that he had been in the service, arrangements were made for him to be admitted to Tripler, a Veterans Administration hospital. Late that night, lola, who had seen
Dave being taken away, got a call informing her that her husband was probably not going to be paralyzed, as doctors had at first feared, that, in fact, he was showing improvement.
Nonetheless, the damage to vertebrae and nerves required him to be in traction for three weeks, ending the job at the Zebra Lounge and putting the
Dave Brubeck Trio out of business. Tjader and Weeks went home and formed a new group. Nearly 40 years later, Brubeck still feels pain in his back, neck, and fingers; the legacy of his accident in the Hawaiian surf and a reminder that the outcome could have been infinitely worse.
In traction, on his back painfully scribbling a note to Desmond,
Dave wrote, "Maybe now we can start the quartet." Desmond saved the note all his life.
Out of the hospital and back in
, San Francisco Dave convalesced, then finally got together with Desmond in early 1951 and formed the first Dave Brubeck Quartet. Desmond had kept eating by taking a job in the reed section of the band led by Alvino Rey, who was several years beyond and several pegs below his success in the 1940s with an admired show band. By now, his leadership attempt happily behind him, Desmond had no desire to be anything but a sideman and leave the worrying to someone else. The inclination was so strong that it extended to his business relationship with Brubeck. Throughout all but the earliest years of their career together, they never had a signed contract.
"Paul and I never had an argument about money," Brubeck told
Gene Lees. "He never looked at the books. He never asked the attorney to see anything. He said, 'Whatever you say is right.'"
When Paul died, by terms of his will, his share of royalties was left to the American Red Cross, which still receives proceeds of the group's recordings, and royalties from Desmond's universally popular composition "TAKE
The trio had been a success, but the change to a quartet meant a rebuilding challenge. Fred Dutton and Herb Barman were the initial bassist and drummer, with Wyatt "Bull" Ruther or Norm Bates playing bass and Lloyd Davis or Joe Dodge on drums as the band evolved. After the trio dissolved, Cal Tjader had gone on to work with Alvino Rey, then formed his own band before joining George Shearing in 1953. Ron Crotty was back with Brubeck for much of 1953 and 1954.
The group worked in the Bay Area, mostly at the Blackhawk, with occasional forays into southern
or the Northwest. But before the end of 1951, they began to gain attention. The band found itself in demand in clubs around the country. Performances of the spirit, freshness, and intricacy of " California LOOK FOR THE SILVER LINING" (in this collection), struck a chord (altered, augmented, or diminished; rarely orthodox) with listeners.
The improvement in fortunes extended to domesticity. There was a new real estate transaction, and this time it did not collapse. By the middle of 1954, a house in the Oakland Hills contained six Brubecks, Christopher having made his appearance in 1952 and Catherine in 1953.
Dave liked it there. He liked it so much that even though national success was in the air, he was on the verge of ignoring it in favor of spending the rest of his career gigging around the Bay Area. There were trips east, but as late as 1954 Brubeck was reluctant to commit himself to the road life that would be required to achieve and maintain major stardom.
In 1954, Brubeck received a boost so unlikely for a jazz musician that the mere thought of it might send him into gales of cynical laughter. time magazine made him the subject of its main article in the
November 8, 1954, issue, with an Artzybasheff cover painting of Dave and a caption paraphrasing his boyhood piano idol, Fats Waller: "The joints are really flipping." In the mid-50s, before the pervasive hype of television diluted the impact of every print medium, a cover story in time was a national event. It brought massive attention to the subject.
By then, he and Fantasy had agreed to an amicable separation and
Dave had signed an agreement with Columbia Records. But in the overlapping commitments to the two companies, there were to be three more Brubeck albums for Fantasy: in 1957 one of solo piano, and another reuniting the quartet with tenor saxophonist and composer Dave Van Kriedt, Brubeck's boon companion from the and octet days. In 1961, long after Brubeck had become, with Miles Davis, one of Mills College 's two major jazz artists, he recorded a quartet album for Fantasy with clarinetist Bill Smith, another octet alumnus, replacing Desmond. Columbia
In 1959, while Brubeck vacillated over whether to aim for a big career, his attorney, James R. Bancroft, asked him, in effect, whether he was interested in getting out of debt and being able to put his children through college. The family was more than broke;
Dave recently had paid off a loan to cover back taxes. Bancroft persuaded Brubeck to rent the Oakland house, go on the road for a year and move his family to the East Coast, near the sources of most of the potential work in clubs and at the colleges where the band had become increasingly popular. In comparison with the East, there wasn't nearly as much work for jazz musicians out West in those days. He could always move back to the house in the hills above the bay.
A Columbia Records executive, Irving Townsend, was about to take over the label's jazz operations on the West Coast and offered to let Brubeck rent his house in
. Wilton, Connecticut Dave and lola took a deep breath and made the move.
The house, one of a dozen in a colony owned by a woman who liked to rent to artists and writers, was in the woods. It had openness, light, and lots of room. The Brubecks liked living there, and
Dave enjoyed being able to spend time with his family rather than chewing it up traveling back and forth from coast to coast. Eventually, they decided to sell the house in the Oakland Hills and build their own place in , an establishment immediately christened by Desmond "The Wilton Hilton." Visitors remember a piano in every room, including the kitchen. In 1992, they still live there. From its hill, the house looks down and across a sweep of the property's 20 acres of meadow, streams, and woodland. Wilton
Brubeck's career had begun to show that it had the potential for steady, respectable growth. Now it took off. His record sales leaped, not only the
recordings with Desmond, Bob Bates, and Joe Dodge, but the ones on Fantasy as well. Columbia
Paul gave up his flat in
and took a spacious top-floor apartment in a building at San Francisco 55th Street and 6th Avenue in ; "right at ground zero," he said. He lived there the rest of his life, ten stories up from his favorite restaurant, the French Shack, and within easy striking distance of clubs, concert halls, book stores, record shops, and Fruits of the New York Aegean, a Greek seafood place that was another of his preferred dining spots. The apartment was just around the corner from the Half Note after it moved to midtown, making it easy for Desmond when he worked there in the 1970s to "fall out of bed and into the club."
Desmond's importance to the success of the quartet is unquestioned, especially by Brubeck. Both of them told me on several occasions that even the stunning moments of contrapuntal improvisation in the best of their Fantasy and
recordings did not approach the peak of what Desmond called their "inspired madness" at the Band Box and later when he sat in with the trio. There's a hint of it in the 1952 Storyville album that for the next 25 years remained Paul's favorite, more than a hint in the 32 bars of counterpoint in the live broadcast of " Columbia LOOK FOR THE SILVER LINING" from 1951, and an intense dose of it as Dave supplies his partner harmonic direction and rhythmic accents in "LE SOUK," 1954, one of Desmond's greatest flights of invention.
That accompaniment is the work of a man in profound concentration and support, deep in the interaction of emotions and intellects that constitutes jazz improvisation. It epitomizes and symbolizes the selflessness and interdependence that in its finest moments make jazz an act of cooperative creation without parallel in the performing arts. The frequency of those moments in the Brubeck group is what led bassist Eugene Wright to tell a fellow musician who came backstage one night to question Wright's presence in an otherwise white band, "Look, man, there's a lot of love in this group."
The power and weight of many of Brubeck's solos have led his critics to charge him with the sin of heavy-handedness, excessive romanticism, bombast. Once in the 1960s when we were discussing jazz criticism, an activity he regards with alternate amusement and frustration, he said, "The word bombast keeps coming up, as if it were some trap I keep falling into. Damn it, when I'm bombastic I have my reasons; I want to be bombastic. Take it or leave it."
Many critics, full of admiration for Desmond, wondered how he could put up with what they considered the insensitivity of Brubeck's piano playing. They did not hear or could not hear what led Desmond, in his most serious moments of discussing his friend, into effusions of praise for the attentiveness, delicacy, and suggestiveness of Brubeck's accompaniments.
Ignoring the success of the early trio, it was often alleged that without Desmond, Brubeck would never have made it. In that invaluable interview with Marian McPartland, Paul responded, plainly:
"I never would have made it without
Dave. He's amazing harmonically, and he can be a fantastic accompanist. You can play the wrongest note possible in any chord, and he can make it sound like the only right one.
"I still feel more kinship musically with
Dave than with anyone else, although it may not always be evident. But when he's at his best, it's really something to hear. A lot of people don't know this, because in addition to the kind of fluctuating level of performance that most jazz musicians give, Dave has a real aversion to working things out, and a tendency to take the things he can do for granted and most of his time trying to do other things. This is okay for people who have heard him play at his best, but sometimes mystifying to those who haven't.
"However, once in a while somebody who had no use for
Dave previously comes in and catches a really good set and leaves looking kind of dazed."
In the quartet, Brubeck's taste for a little bombast extended to the exuberances of drummers. In a few places on the celebrated Jazz Goes To College album he can be heard encouraging the bass drum detonations inserted into his solos by Joe Dodge. "Yeah, Joe," he exclaims, whereupon Dodge launches another little mortar attack.
Desmond's idea of appropriate drumming was more in line with that of one of his heroes, Lester Young. Young had been conditioned in his Count Basic days to the impeccable ball-bearing smoothness of Jo Jones and he spent much of the rest of his career discouraging the enthusiasms and paradiddle fills of those he sometimes called "the bebop kiddies."
"Just a little tinky-boom," Pres used to instruct his percussionists. "Don't drop those bombs back there." It's no wonder that Desmond loved to play with Connie Kay, the former Lester Young drummer who took his subtlety and mastery of time to new levels with the Modern Jazz Quartet.
On the other hand, and both feet, there was Joe Dodge, succeeded by Joe Morello. Dodge, an old
hand, was a bear of a man, a swinger capable of using wire brushes to drive the time unobtrusively but whose temperament had something in common with that of a bombardier. Desmond was fond of Dodge's playing and arranged a truce under which Dodge would keep things down to, at maximum, a medium roar when Paul was soloing. San Francisco
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Saturday, March 20, 2010
Dave Brubeck: A Life in American Music - Part 1
Part 1
No one writes about Jazz in general and about
Dave Brubeck in particular like Doug Ramsey, unless, of course, Doug is writing about Dave's long-time musical associate and their mutual friend, the late alto saxophonist, Paul Desmond.
Concerning the latter, Doug is the author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.
Doug still writes about Jazz on a daily basis for his blog Riffitides and for other publications.
And nowhere are his unique insights and in-depth knowledge about
Dave Brubeck and his music better revealed that in the lengthy essay he prepared as the insert notes to the Columbia/Sony Records boxed set Dave Brubeck: Time Signatures - A Career Retrospective
The editorial staff is privileged and honored to post on JazzProfiles, Doug's exemplary essay - DAVE BRUBECK: A LIFE IN AMERICAN MUSIC – which will be featured on the site in three parts.
© -Doug Ramsey. Reprinted with the permission of the author; copyright protected; all rights reserved.
"Some time ago, a woman in
, where Connecticut Dave Brubeck lives, was looking for a pianist to play a wedding. Having got hold of a musicians union directory, she called a number she found under the "Piano" heading. Brubeck was considering taking the job, for scale, the minimum amount of pay the union allows a player to accept. But finally the name attached to the phone number registered with the woman. She shrieked in embarrassment, apologized profusely for what she believed had been an insult, and hung up.
"Usually, I play at weddings only for close friends," Brubeck joked later. "But I was thinking it over."
He may also have been thinking about the years following World War II, when his dream was to make scale. The earliest recording in this collection is from 1946, when that dream seemed closer and there was hope of getting out of the poverty of a struggling musician fresh out of the Army. The most recent recording is from 1991. Brubeck, now famous around the world, still carries the memory of living with his wife and babies in a corrugated tin room without windows.
The music here includes recordings from a period during which Brubeck and his quartet galvanized an entire college generation's interest in jazz, made the cover of Time magazine, became the first instrumental group to sell a million records (Time Out], opened the jazz community to the possibilities of improvisation in time signatures such as 5/4,7/4,9/8,11/4, and 13/4, and was on the road more or less continuously, playing for audiences at home and in India, Poland, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Holland, Argentina, the Soviet Union, and most of the rest of the United Nations.
Brubeck's importance to and influence on jazz are undeniable, except by some of the jazz "elite" and the constituency it has educated to believe that the enormous popularity of the quartet was proof that wide commercial acceptance is tantamount to artistic sellout. The same charge has been made against Louis Armstrong, Cannonball Adderley, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and just about any solvent jazz musician.
In 1953, before it was considered commercially successful, the
Dave Brubeck Quartet won first place in both the Critic's Poll and the Reader's Poll in Down Beat Magazine. With recognition came detraction. Some of the reasons are rooted in the complexities of ethnocentrism, clannishness, commercialism, and transitory values in our society. Others are as ancient as the jealous ego. But time, not the jazz establishment of the moment, will evaluate the permanence of Brubeck's contributions. It will take into account his work as a pianist whose individualism does not always match the conventional view of what is proper in jazz piano, as a song writer of power and lyricism, as a long-form composer of secular and religious music, and as a leader who harnessed and melded the talents of men with personalities that, like his own, grew out of strength, even obstinacy.
Brubeck needed strength when he emerged from the Army at the end of the war, burning to develop ideas that had germinated through an active musical childhood and his years of studying music at College of the Pacific in
. Stockton, California Dave had been playing the piano since he was four years old in , where he was born on Concord, California December 6, 1920. Music was an important part of his life even when, from the age of 13, he started working as a cowboy on the 45,000 acre cattle ranch managed by his father.
The ranch, still owned by the Moffat family, spreads across the parched fastness of
San Joaquin, , and Amador counties. Its original boundaries were the Sacramento north to the Cosumnes, and from the Mokelumne River Sacramento River east to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Brubeck says that as he tended cattle, the rhythms of the ranch fired a fascination with divisions of musical time.
"The first polyrhythms I thought about were when I was riding horseback. The gait was usually a fast walk, maybe a trot," he says, "and I would sing against that constant gait of the horse. Moving the cattle, we might drive them from Oakdale to lone, 40 miles or so. In a round-up, my dad always told me to keep in sight of the cowhands to my left and right, but they could be a mile or so away. The cattle, the horses, everything, got into a rhythm on those hot summer days, except when one of the cattle would turn back and I'd have to get it back with the herd. There was nothing to do but think, and I'd improvise melodies and rhythms."
His imagination was sparked by the sound permutations of anvils in the blacksmith shop, machinery in the hay fields and the one-lung gasoline engine that drove the pump forcing water into the stock tanks.
"That little engine was an incredible generator of rhythms. It would take a couple of hours for one of those water tanks to fill. I'd sit there in the shade of the tank listening to the engine and putting other rhythms against it."
H.P. (Pete) Brubeck,
Dave's father, was a lifelong cattleman and a championship rodeo roper. I recognized someone familiar when I saw a photograph of Mr. Brubeck on the ranch in his working outfit — Levis, shirt buttoned closely around the wrists to protect against scrapes and insect bites, five-gallon hat cocked over the right eye, the horn of a prize bull in one hand and a halter rope in the other. I was looking at my grandfather and uncles on the family ranch in where I did part of my growing up; the same easy confidence in the stance, the same gaze signaling defiance at the ready. The face might have been painted by Charles Russell. And it has a quality that brings to mind Paul Desmond's celebrated account of meeting and playing with Montana Dave Brubeck for the first time and being struck by this daring pianist "with the expression of a surly Sioux."
Paul's poetic image may have reflected reality. Pete Brubeck's heritage had a lot of Germany in it, but
Dave told Gene Lees in 1991 that his father, born in 1884 near the Pyramid Lake Indian reservation in Nevada not far from the California border, could be part Modoc, maybe as much as a fourth or more.
"Once in a while, my dad would make a remark that hinted at this heritage, and when I was young he took a picture of me with an Indian boy who was my age. He wrote on it, 'Which is the Indian boy?' Any time he'd mention it, my mother would deny it. And to this day, my dad's younger brother, who's over 90, says it's impossible. But another branch of the family says my grandfather was married three times, once perhaps to an Indian woman."
"The livery stable was sort of the rent-a-car of those days,"
Dave says, "so my Dad went to rent a saddle horse and hire some hands to help him move the stock to the new family ranch near . My mother was in her early teens. Her father went home that night and told her, 'I met a real young man at the corral today.' My dad soon ran off the other suitors. When my dad finally proposed, my mom's father told her, 'Bessie, if you marry him, you'll never want for a sack of flour.' Concord
Bessie Brubeck was a classical pianist and a prominent piano teacher. She studied in
with the influential teacher Tobias Matthay and later with Dame Myra Hess, the legendary pianist known as the Great Lady of Music and the First Lady of the Piano. But Mrs. Brubeck's studies abroad began after she had three sons. The eldest, Henry, went to Great Britain Europe with her. She came to miss terribly the two sons she had left at home. Deciding against a career as a concert pianist, she returned from to raise her children and teach piano. London
One of her students fooled her. Her youngest son's ear was so adept that he learned to play by listening. She discovered when it was too late, when he was playing well, that David could not read music, that when he stared so intently at the manuscript pages on the piano, he was faking. But it was not just his exceptional ear that led to his cover-up.
"I was born cross-eyed. I had to wear glasses before I got out of the crib. I was very cross-eyed," Brubeck told me. "You see things differently, and I think at first it wasn't clear to me how the music lined up, and I learned I could get by faking it. My mother taught all day long and I could hear the things she was teaching and could pretend that I was reading. I tried to correct it myself, but by then I was 12 or so and it was very difficult to change my habits."
Through weekly visits to the eye doctor from an early age, and through the use of corrective lenses, young
Dave's eyes eventually uncrossed. As he got older, his vision improved and his trademark tortoise shell "bebop" glasses were no longer a necessity.
By the time the Brubecks moved to lone, southeast of
in the foothills of the Sacramento , Sierra Nevada Mountains Dave's mother was convinced that he was going to be a cowboy, and she never gave him another lesson. Nor did the question of reading music ever come up between them.
"We never discussed it," he said. "It must have been an embarrassment to her."
Literacy in the language of music, as in the language of words, comes easiest and most naturally when the brain is young and growing and at its peak of receptiveness. Later in life, as
Dave was to discover, it comes with great effort. During his teenage years on the ranch he continued to explore the harmonic and rhythmic possibilities of the popular songs of the day. By the time he was in his early teens, he was making money playing the piano, his remarkable ear carrying him through.
The little gasoline engine and the hooves of horses inspired polyrhythms. As often as he could, he rode with Pete Brubeck's top cowhand, Al Walloupe from the Miwok tribe, who sang with young
Dave and, through his knowledge of Indian songs, became a lifelong friend and musical influence. But the jazz that first moved Brubeck was by pianists Fats Waller and Billy Kyle.
"The first record I ever bought was by Fats Waller, when I was 14. But I had heard the Billy Kyle trio on the radio, even before I heard Fats. The Waller record had "LET'S BE FAIR AND SQUARE IN LOVE" on one side and "THERE'S HONEY ON THE MOON TONIGHT" on the other. When you're working for a dollar a day and the record costs 50 cents, it's a big decision."
More than two decades later,
Dave and his hero, Kyle, collaborated at the piano behind Louis Armstrong's vocal on Brubeck's "summer song," heard in this collection. In the mid-1930s, his playing was influenced by Kyle and Waller, but his older dance band colleagues noticed the streak of unorthodoxy that was to baffle or frustrate other musicians for a long time to come.
"The band used shuffle rhythms in practically everything, just that steady shuffle rhythm that Jonah Jones had all those hits with later. The leader was a trumpet player and he loved Clyde McCoy. I'd get bored and screw that rhythm up on purpose, break it up, and get dirty looks. And harmony; by the time I got to college at 17, I was really messing with harmony, but I didn't know how to explain it to anybody else."
He had no idea of music as a profession. He was committed to the career his father had in mind for him.
"I would never have left the ranch if my mother hadn't insisted that I go to college like my two brothers did. I didn't want to go. No way. The compromise was that I would be a veterinarian and come back to the ranch."
Brubeck enrolled at College of the Pacific in
as a pre-medical veterinary student. He lived in a boarding house with several music students. During the progress of his education, which was saturated with science studies, he related his academic situation to theirs. Stockton
"I knew, innately, what they were struggling over musically. What I was struggling over was zoology and chemistry, which, innately, I did not know. What my brilliant mind put together was, 'as bad as this is, it would be easier in music.' So I switched over, with no intention of becoming a so-called trained musician. It was just a way of staying in school more easily, because I was a very uneven student. I was likely to get an A in one subject and an F in another."
Now he was a music major and his inability to read began to haunt him. Faking it wasn't quite so easy here, where a professor was likely to insist that he be able to describe a progression or the makeup of a chord. The legend at C.O.P. is that Brubeck and three other musicians lived in an enormous basement they called "The Bomb Shelter." The amenities were a cold water faucet, a stove for cooking, and an old upright Starr piano. In the September, 1991, Jazzletter,
Dave told Gene Lees about those days.
"....Like, in ear training, I'd usually be asleep, 'cause I'd been working in some joint the night before until two in the morning. There are stories about the teacher saying, 'Well, can anybody play this progression and tell me what I've just played?' Then he'd say, 'Well, if nobody can, then wake up Brubeck.'
"In my own way, I could do it. He'd say, 'What chord is this?' and I'd say, That's the first chord in "don't worry 'bout me.'" Then he'd say, 'Well, explain that, Mr. Brubeck.' I'd go play that chord. He'd say, 'Well can't you say that's a flat ninth?' I didn't know it was a flat ninth. But that's the way I got through."
Sometimes he wasn't allowed to explain simply by playing an answer to a musical question. Finally, forced to take a keyboard class, the deceiver was exposed. The professor reported to the dean the inescapable and astounding fact that
Dave Brubeck, a senior in a music conservatory, the brother of two distinguished conservatory graduates, the son of a respected music teacher, could not read music.
"In my final for harmony class, I got an A for ideas and an F for writing the notation down, so he gave me a C. I remember my teacher, Dr. J. Russell Bodley, telling me, 'I couldn't wait to get to your paper because I knew it was going to be the most exciting.
Dave, you misspelled most of the chords, but you had the right notes down.' That was typical."
The dean informed Brubeck that he would not be allowed to graduate. But Brubeck had proved to some of the faculty that he had a brilliant aptitude for harmony and counterpoint. He had, in fact, enchanted the counterpoint teacher, who explained to the dean that Brubeck had "written" the best counterpoint of any student he'd ever had. Dr. Bodley, the ear-training and composition professor offered similar praise, and the two of them convinced the dean to let Brubeck graduate. There was, however, a condition; that Brubeck promise "never to teach and embarrass the conservatory."
He promised. He was graduated. His teaching has been by example.
Brubeck's father, who had hoped for a son to join him in cattle ranching, was disappointed when
Dave turned from veterinary medicine to music. But he offered support and a fallback position.
"He understood, and he said, 'You know we started a herd of cattle that's yours.' He gave me four cows when I graduated from grammar school. He kept books on how they multiplied, kept 'em separate and said, These are
Dave's,' and he told me, 'You know, if it ever gets too tough on you, you can always come home and you'll have a start in the cattle business.' That was important to me, too, because there were times when I was ready to give up; driving across the country in my Kaiser automobile, trying to keep the family together, without money to stay in a hotel, living in the worst kind of conditions. When it was impossible to keep groups on the road and I wouldn't know how we were going to get to the next town, defeat after defeat after defeat, I'd start thinking about the ranch again."
Not long after his graduation from C.O.P., Brubeck went into the Army. In 1942, when he was on a three-day pass, he married lola Whitlock, a student he fell in love with at C.O.P.; "the incomparable, regal lola," Paul Desmond called her.
Dave had met her after his mother insisted that at least once before he graduated he do a conventional college thing, go to a fraternity dance. Three hours after they arrived at the dance, Dave and lola decided to get married. Six children and fifty years later, lola still wears her long brown hair in braids, and she and her husband are under the same spell they cast on each other that night in . Stockton
Brubeck was in an Army band at
, near Camp Hahn . He got into Riverside, California occasionally, thinking of himself as a potential composer and arranger who happened to play piano, and eager to make an impression. Once when he was on a pass, he visited the rising young bandleader Stan Los Angeles Kenton at Kenton's house in the Hollywood Hills. He had written a piece called "PRAYER OF THE CONQUERED" with Kenton's band in mind. He played it on Kenton's piano.
"He asked me, 'Where did you ever hear voicings like this?' and had me take the music to the NBC radio studio where he was the bandleader for the "Bob Hope Show." The
Kenton band played the chart down, but Stan found it too far out. He said, 'Bring it back in ten years. I'd like to talk to you about arranging for the band.'"
The year was 1942, and
Kenton was consolidating a reputation as a forward-looking bandleader. But the 22-year-old Brubeck was apparently looking a considerable distance beyond Kenton's vision.
"I was always getting put down for what I was writing. Trumpets a half-step apart, that sort of thing. It's common now. It wasn't then. But there were always some people who liked it, always someone who would say, 'Oh, boy, I never heard chords like that.'"
In another
encounter, Brubeck, with high hopes, approached the formidable composer Arnold Schoenberg, a member of the music faculty at UCLA. Brubeck wanted to study with this pioneer of modern music who early in his career moved beyond the norms of tonality and form. Los Angeles
"I had one interview and one lesson," Brubeck recalls. "After I had played him something, he said, 'Why did you write this?' I told him, 'It's what I wanted to show you.' He asked me, 'But do you have a reason for every note? There has to be a reason for every note.' I told him, 'I write it because it sounds good.' He said, 'That's not reason enough; there has to be a reason.' I didn't like his approach and he didn't like mine and that was the end of it. I like much of his music, but I knew we couldn't get along."
After D-Day in 1944, the American military machine in
Europe demanded a massive injection of combat troops. Brubeck and many of the other musicians from were shipped to Camp Hahn Europe as riflemen. On his way through , he sat in with members of the 253rd American Ground Forces Band stationed at the Presidio. One of those in the jam session was a clarinetist who had taken up alto saxophone the year before. Years later, the alto player, whose name was Paul Desmond, said he had been dazzled by Brubeck's harmonic approach. In an interview for a Down Beat article in September, 1960, Desmond alleged to pianist Marian McPartland doubling as journalist, that he complemented Brubeck as follows: San Francisco
"Man, like Wigsville! You really grooved me with those nutty changes." He said Brubeck replied, "White man speak with forked tongue," a line that was occasionally exchanged between the two over the next three decades to the glee of Brubeck and Desmond and the mystification of nearly everyone who overheard it.
A replacement in Patton's Third Army, 140th Infantry Regiment, A Company,
Dave was near the front in the of the Bulge in late 1944 and early 1945. Twice, he found himself behind the German lines when the front moved. He was always near the action, on the verge of being sent into combat. Music saved him. Battle
Waiting for an order to move with his outfit closer to the battle, Brubeck heard a Red Cross girl ask if anyone could play the piano for a show. He volunteered. A colonel who heard him pulled the form required to send an enlisted man into combat, and ordered Brubeck and two other musicians to put together a band to entertain the men who had returned from the front to recover from battle fatigue. The band was made up for the most part of soldiers who had been wounded, and it was, to Brubeck's knowledge, the first integrated military unit in World War II.
For reasons Brubeck can't remember and says he may never have known, the group was called The Wolf Pack Band. A private first class, he had the lowest rank in the band but was ultimately assigned an 020 specialty number, bandleader, and put in charge of an outfit in which he was outranked by all of the members.
"Eventually they wanted to make me a warrant officer," Brubeck says, "but I would have had to live with the officers, and I didn't want to leave the band, so I kept the PFC rating and stayed where I was."
Where he was, frequently, was in trouble. The colonel, concerned that everyone qualified to fight was about to be sent to the front lines, ordered Brubeck to load the band on a couple of trucks and "take a Cook's Tour." In other words, he and the band were to get lost until the crisis passed.
"Unfortunately, we drove right into the Bulge, which wasn't the Bulge yet. We saw some guys in a clearing, eating, so we thought we'd play for them. As we were playing, a plane flew over. Since no one had seen an enemy plane for a month, no one thought anything of it. Then it came back, and we saw that it was a German plane. I said, 'Let's get the hell out of here.'
"The driver took a wrong turn, and we were going away from protection, through the enemy lines. It was dark by now, no headlights allowed, and a sentry with a camouflage flashlight waved us through a checkpoint. As we drove through, I realized it was a German soldier and a German checkpoint. We went up the road a way, turned around, gunned the engine, and drove by him as he waved us through again. I thought for sure there would be a tank there ready to blow us to hell.
"When we got back to a sentry point on the American lines, a soldier walked up to us carrying two hand grenades with the pins pulled, ready to use them. One of the guys in the back of the truck was yelling, 'Don't forget the password.' But even after I gave it, this guy was suspicious. I still thought he might drop the grenades into the truck. After a few tense moments, he finally believed who we were. He then explained that earlier the same night Germans wearing American uniforms and driving American trucks had killed all of his buddies at that same sentry point."
Among The Wolf Pack's assignments was the accompaniment of a touring unit of the
show which included the Rockettes. This allowed the musicians the luxury of sleeping in hotels rather than haystacks and boxcars or on the ground. But luxury seldom came. As members of an unauthorized band, they had no access to Army instruments. They traded cigarettes for instruments in captured German territory and later in a village in Radio City Music Hall known for its instrument making. Czechoslovakia
None of the Wolf Pack musicians reached anything like Brubeck's prominence. But Johnny Stanley, the master of ceremonies, had a postwar comedy hit record called, "IT'S IN THE BOOK." Another member, Leon Pober, was the composer of the song "PEARLY SHELLS" and many other commercial successes and gets credit for "ZEN IS WHEN," in Brubeck's 1964 album, Jazz Impressions Of Japan. (CS 9012)
Dave remained with the band until he was discharged in 1946 and has stayed in touch with many of its members to this day.
At College of the Pacific, Brubeck had faced discouragement more daunting than sleeplessness and the academic obstacles erected by his inability to read music; he was a jazz musician. As much as individual members of the faculty may have liked Brubeck and admired his gifts, the jazz musician was a species beneath their consideration as a serious artist and
Dave's unorthodox ideas about music were resisted and discouraged by some of the faculty and many of the students. Given his single-minded-ness and cowboy stubbornness, the opposition may have spurred Brubeck in his determination. Ironically, in developing his jazz, Brubeck was dedicated to experimentation with tonality, harmony, and polyrhythms not unlike qualities in the music of Bartok, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Milhaud, and other pioneers of contemporary "classical" music.
That made the next stop in his career a considerably more congenial affair. Discharged by the Army in 1946, Brubeck rejoined the wife he had not seen in two years. Under the GI Bill that made higher education possible for millions of veterans, he entered
in Mills College to study under Darius Milhaud. Pete Rugolo and Oakland Dave's brother, Howard, were Milhaud's first male graduate students at this women's college. Howard served for many years as Milhaud's assistant at Mills. The composer of "ALLEGRO BLUES," Howard Brubeck is retired as chairman of the music department at in southern Palomar College . Rugolo went on to become one of California 's busiest composers, contributing heavily to Stan Hollywood Kenton's book during the band's peak of success.
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was a French composer of staggering creativity and output. He wrote at least 450 works with opus numbers. Among them were full-scale operas, choral works, orchestral compositions, 18 string quartets, chamber music of every description, and piano pieces. A member of the celebrated group of composers known as The Six that included Francis Poulenc and Arthur Honneger, he was very aware of Igor Stravinsky and Charles Koechlin and jazz.
The result was a style incorporating diatonicism, metric complexity, syncopation, and daring uses of bitonality. Listeners interested in finding common ground between Milhaud and Brubeck may hear it most clearly in Milhaud piano pieces. Those interested in how Brubeck wrote the lessons of the modern masters into his own compositions may refer to his octet pieces "PLAYLAND-AT-THE-BEACH" and "RONDO" (Fantasy OJCCD 101) also under the spell of the Stravinsky of the "EBONY CONCERTO" period.
"At my lessons with Milhaud," Brubeck says, "he would play through my compositions and make suggestions. One piece was a sonata. I thought the second theme was fine. But he said, Put a flat in front of every note in that theme.' I did, and it was transformed, so that when the piece returned to the first theme there was a modulation.
"He always said that modulation was the greatest thing in music, that it could lift your spirit... or bring it down. Then he said something I've never forgotten: The reason I don't like 12-tone music is that you're never someplace. Therefore, you can never go someplace.'
"Beethoven loved modulation. So did Brahms. They're always taking us to a new place."
When he arrived at Mills,
Dave thought of himself as more a composer than a pianist. He still couldn't read well, but Milhaud immediately saw Brubeck's potential and guided the 26-year-old's studies in counterpoint, theory, polyrhythms, and polytonality. He insisted that Dave learn compositional theory and, once satisfied that he had, urged Brubeck to put it into practice. That didn't take much urging. At Milhaud's suggestion he and some of the other Milhaud students put together a band so they could hear what they were writing.
The band born in Milhaud's classroom was initially called "The 8." It became the
Dave Brubeck Octet, a group that worked on some of the same problems confronted later in the decade in some of the same ways by nine musicians whose creative leader was Gil Evans, the former New York bandleader of Brubeck's brother Henry. Under Miles Davis' name, the New Yorkers recorded what came to be known as The Birth Of The Cool. "CURTAIN THEME," sometimes called "OPENING THEME, " was written for the octet by Brubeck in 1946 (three years before The Birth Of The Cool sessions). Stockton
"Milhaud liked our music," Brubeck says. "He loved
Dave Van Kriedt's "FUGUE ON BOP THEMES." He said it was a wonderful example of a real fugue, written in a jazz style. He was as strict as could be about counterpoint. You had to follow his rules, which were Bach's rules. Kriedt just had a natural gift for writing fugues. How else could this young jazz player absorb that so fast and translate it into the jazz idiom? It's a classic piece."
Asked in 1992 about when he had finally learned to read, Brubeck said, "next year." Asked what it was like to write music when he was not a proficient reader, he said, "like sweating blood, but I'm getting better."
Maybe because of the eye problem, I was a hard person to train, whether it was shooting a rifle, playing sports, or playing the piano. I always had to do everything my own way. The way I learned to read music was by writing music. I struggled with that for years. Milhaud told me, 'You're never going to have conventional classical training, but you will do it on your own. I know you're going to be a composer.' So I got to where I could put it down and read my own stuff. By now I'm to the point where I can write music on airplanes."
Most of the members of the octet were studying with Milhaud: Brubeck, Bill Smith,
Dave Van Kriedt, Jack Weeks, and Dick Collins. Collins, a superb trumpet soloist, along with Van Kriedt and Weeks, had also studied with Milhaud in . Weeks, a pianist and arranger, who was the son of the popular San Francisco bandleader Anson Weeks, plays bass and trombone on some of the octet recordings and contributed to the octet's repertoire, among other pieces, a demonic short arrangement of "THE PRISONER'S SONG." From the Bay Area jazz community came Cal Tjader, Bob Collins, Ron Crotty, Paul Desmond and Bob Cummings, the latter two sharing alto saxophone duties. Desmond and Tjader were students at San Francisco State College, where Desmond was majoring in creative writing and Tjader in music education. Paris
There are interesting parallels between the Brubeck and Davis bands. Both were experimental, although in pieces such as "CURTAIN MUSIC" and "THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT," the Brubeck Octet demonstrated more audacity with its polytonality and polyrhythms. Both bands were ahead of their time. Both had few paying jobs. On records released in the same year, both sound fresh and undated more than 40 years later, still models for inventive uses of textures, counterpoint, moving harmonies and time signatures. The time signature for "CURTAIN MUSIC" is in 6. Bill Smith used 7/4 in "schizophrenic scherzo" and experimented with overlapping rhythms (5 against 4, etc) throughout "WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE." Brubeck's adventures in time began long before "BLUE RONDO A LA TURK" and "TAKE FIVE."
There are similarities in phrasings of melody lines and in voicings, right down to the ways in which the alto leads of Paul Desmond and Lee Konitz were employed in the two bands. Classical influences and currents of musical thought in post-war jazz were informing composers and arrangers working 3,000 miles apart. Gerry Mulligan, along with Evans and John Lewis, a key arranger for the
band, went on to form his own quartet, which became, like Brubeck's, one of the most successful of the 1950s. More than 20 years later, Brubeck and Mulligan became collaborators. Davis
THE THREE Ds
In 1947, the year lola gave birth to their first son, Darius, Brubeck had managed to find work as a pianist while he was studying at Mills with Milhaud. He had a gig at the Geary Cellar in
in a group called The Three Ds, led by tenor saxophonist Daryl Cutler and including a bassist named Don Ratto who was later replaced by Norman Bates. "We used to call him Dorman Bates," Brubeck says. The singer was Frances Lynn. Paul Desmond frequently sat in. Desmond told me years later that the first time he and Brubeck played together at the Geary Cellar, the empathy was total and the counterpoint that became the centerpiece of their collaborations happened that night without planning or discussion. San Francisco
In 1960, Desmond told Marian McPartland, "If you think
Dave plays far out now, you should have heard him then. He made Cecil Taylor sound like Lester Lanin." Unless you want to include their brief encounter during the war, it was the beginning of one of the tightest, and longest, musical partnerships between any two jazz musicians. Nonetheless, the relationship nearly ended before it had a chance to get off the ground.
Having been offered a job as leader, Desmond in 1949 hired Cutler's band out from under him for an engagement in
at the Band Box, a club Brubeck described to Palo Alto Gene Lees as "a Quonset Hut kind of place." Brubeck enjoyed playing with Desmond and felt he had no choice but to join Paul's band, even though Cutler had been paying him $100 a week and Desmond was paying $42. The challenges of working with Desmond at the Band Box came in several forms other than financial. One of them was getting to the job, 30 miles away.
"Paul considered himself a terrific driver," Brubeck once told me. "He had calculated that the traffic lights on a stretch of road down the peninsula to
were timed for 45 miles an hour. Using perfect logic, he figured out that if you could make all the lights at 45, you could make them at 90 and leave later for the gig. Every time we drove down there, I thought there was a good chance I was going to die." Palo Alto
Having arrived alive, however, the two further developed the symbiosis that had sprung up at the Geary Cellar through ESP, fate or good luck. Brubeck remembers the music during the three weeks of the Band Box engagement with the same expressions of awe and amazement that Desmond related in the Down Beat interview.
"I have a memory of several nights that seemed fantastic, and I don't feel that way too often," Desmond told Marian. "I'd give anything for a tape of one of those nights now, just to see what was really going on.
"I know we were playing a lot of counterpoint on almost every tune, and the general level was a lot more loud, emotional, and unsubtle then. I was always screaming away at the top of the horn, and
Dave would be constructing something behind me in three keys. Sometimes I had to plead with him to play something more simple behind me.
"It seemed pretty wild at the time; it was one of those few jobs where you really hated to stop — we'd keep playing on the theme until they practically threw us off the stand.
"Anyway, that's where the empathy between
Dave and me began, and it's survived a remarkable amount of pulling and pushing in the 11 years or so since."
But it nearly failed to survive the Band Box episode and its aftermath. For Brubeck, one of the perils of Paul was Desmond's youthful self-absorption, which matched and sometimes overrode his charm. While
Dave was scuffling on the Band Box pay under Desmond's leadership, Paul got a job at the Feather River Inn, northeast of in the peaceful countryside above San Francisco , and stole the band. He took Bates and Frances Lynn with him, hired another pianist and refused to let Brubeck take over the job at the Band Box, insisting that he would come back to it at the end of the three-months' run at Sacramento Feather River. He didn't. In early 1950, he took a chair in the saxophone section of Jack Fina's band and eventually one in Alvino Rey's.
With Desmond on the road playing "SPAGHETTI RAG" with Fina, Brubeck was faced with finding a way to support his family. Unable to get the Band Box job, he finally landed a gig at a resort club called the Silver Log Tavern at
, north of Clear Lake . The quartet was led by the Santa Rosa trumpet player Rudy Salvini. The deal was scale plus a place to stay. The "place" was a corrugated tin enclosure. Its only opening was a door. In the daytime it was too hot to occupy. At night, Oakland Dave and lola made it cool enough for themselves and their two young children by directing the breeze from a fan through wet sacks.
It was about this time, Brubeck recalls, that he told his wife, "I never want to see Paul Desmond again."
The octet was Brubeck's primary passion, but it was doomed by its size and the adventurous character of its music to a life of rehearsals. In an era that loved "OLD BUTTERMILK SKY," "THE ANNIVERSARY SONG," "ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH" and "A, YOU'RE ADORABLE," music informed by the examples of Milhaud and Stravinsky did not get the attention of the masses. Or, if there was a chance that it might have, there was none that it would get past the people who booked clubs and concerts."
… TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2 ... coming Friday, March 26, 2010.
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Oh, summer: it's that magical time of freedom from school, lazy days on the beach, and BBQs stretching into all hours (or at least that's how we'd celebrate it were we not chained to this desk). Sadly, this year's revelry has been slightly tainted by the record-breaking heat and economic woes. But alas, there is relief on both fronts! Today, 7-Eleven is giving away Slurpees, completely free.
(MORE: Summer Heat Wave Roasts the Midwest, Northeast)
It's an extra special day for 7-11 as the company marks its 85th year in business. Happy birthday, you old fogey, and thanks for the present. The momentous birthday isn't the reason for the giveaway, though — it's become an annual tradition for the convenience store chain to recognize its eponymous date, July 11 (get it?), with Free Slurpee Day.
(MORE: How Hot Can It Get? The 10 Hottest Places in the U.S.)
So sweat on over to your local 7-Eleven (find it here) for a little slushy sustenance in the form of a 7.11-ounce Slurpee. And in keeping with the numerical significance, the deal is only valid from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Strike early (NewsFeed's experience is that they sell out quickly) and sip slowly. It might just extend your diversion from work. Ah, now doesn't that taste like summer?
MORE: Why Free Things Can Cost A Lot — And Make Your Brain Freeze

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2010 Poll: Who Will Win the West?
: Uncategorized : Written by Mike Kurylo : 10-14-2009
Los Angeles Lakers (Vegas odds to win title: 5:2) Unlike the East, the West has one clear favorite. Since trading for Pau Gasol, the Lakers have appeared in two straight Finals winning it all last year. Not content to let it ride, Los Angeles upgraded from Trevor Ariza to Ron Artest. This would be a gamble for most teams considering the Queensbridge native's history, but Phil Jackson has always been able to keep individual personalities from ruining a team. San Antonio Spurs (6:1) In an attempt to keep up with the Lakers, the Spurs bolstered their roster in the off …continue reading


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Operating instructions I have JDC 11 camera but i don't have the operators manual could someone upload a copy. need operators manual for jdc-11 digital camera- upload, anyone?
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Got a digital concepts 5.1 digital video camera last christmas and have lost the instruction manual. do not know khow to operate it and want to take some video for thanksgiving. where can i get a copy of the instructions
... Digital Concepts 54782/54783 Digital Camera
I have purchased an Olympus sp-600uz digital camera, but there isn't any instructions or disc included on how to set it up. would it be possible to get an instruction manual so I can use my camera. sincerely Beverley Hutchin
Hi, the instruction manual is available here: http://www.olympusamerica.com/files/oima_cckb/SP-600UZ_Instruction_Manual_EN.pdf ... Olympus SP600UZ Digital Camera
Instruction manual I am looking for an instruction manual for a sanyo lcd digital camera vpc-g250
... Sanyo VPC-G250 Digital Camera
Hi there, could you tell me please, where I can get an instruction manual for the Opus 4000 digital camera, free if possible. A friend gave me the camera but he lost the manual. Cheers
... Ezonics Opus 4000 Digital Camera
I received a Vivicam 7024 digital camera as a gift. But I did not receive an Instruction Manual. Is it possible that I can be sent an Operaters Manual on how to use the camera? Thank You! Constance Grudesen 100 5th Avenue Kings Park New York 11754
You can download the manual from the manufacturer's web site at\012\012\012http://vivitar.com/files_products/402/ViviCam_7022_Camera_Manual.pdf ... Vivitar ViviCam 7024 Digital Camera
I need a manual to instruct me on using a Olympus Camedia digital camera c-3000 Zoom I bought used with no manual and would like instructions...Really like product my name is Steve my address is as follows [email protected] please help thank you
Hi Steve,You can download and print the instruction manual in PDF format by clicking these links:\015\012\015\012C-3000 Zoom Instructi ... Olympus C-3000 Zoom Digital Camera
I need an instruction manual for a 880x Samsung digital camcorder I purchased this camera and used it one time and put it in my case and now I can't find my instructions. I am a total loss on how to operate this camera. thanks cs
What is the model number of the unit?it usually starts with SC-******http://www.samsung.com/us/support/download/supportDownMain.doyou can enter the model number here then look for the manual to download ... Samsung Digital Cameras
Digital camera I need an instruction manual for my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 digital camera. I have lost my original one during my last move.
I have recently purchased a panasonic lumix dmc-tz1 digital camara and i have not got the manual. pls help to get one.regardsaun [email protected] ... Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 Digital Camera
Instruction manual We need an instruction manual..please advise.. we've never used a digital camera and have no clue.. Help!!
Hi\015\012\015\012this is the home page of the camera:\015\012http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_support_product.asp?id=521\015\012this is a link to the instruction manual\015\012http://www.olympusamerica.com/files/c3030manuals.zip\015\01 ... Olympus Camedia C-3030 Zoom Digital Camera
We bought a hitachi hdc1499e digital camera from argos, but the instruction manual that came with the camera is in very small print and she cannot read it, can i download a user manual online?
... Digital Cameras
Need instruction manual for a Canon IXUS 9515 digital camera
In the Americas, this model is the PowerShot SD1200 IS. You can view and download the Camera User Guide for it ... Canon Digital Cameras
Bell and Howell Simple Microcam Digital Recording Web Camera instruction manual
... Digital Cameras
Instruction manual i received a vivitar s130 digital camera for christmas and there was no instructions inside the box. is there a web site i can download instructions to this???
Hello,Yes there ishttp://www.manualowl.com/p/Vivitar/S130/Manual/176161Thank you. ... Sakar Vivitar ViviCam S130 - Digital camera - compact - 16.1 - VS130-BLK
Sipix quest Dual Cam Digital Camera issues. I need the Manual instructions. The software and the Drivers for this camera. Does anyone have this informtion? Or where to go on a website. Or a contact phone number for this company. I am unable to locate any information on any searches that I do. My mother's camera and she lost the information after she donated her computer with the software on it. Signed: What's a mother to do? uuuuh ask her daughter (kid) to fix it. :)
... SiPix iQuest Dualcam Digital Camera
Lost instructions I have lost the instructions manual for my Olympus camedia digital camera D-490 Zoom. How can I get a new set of instructions.
My dad just gave me an olympus d 490 zoom. i am looking for an adapter. anyways, i did see where the olympus company has some instruction manuals that you can download on the computer. \015\012\015\012hopes this help . ... Olympus Camedia C-350 Digital Camera
Need a PDF of the Owners Manual for JDC25 3-in-1 VGA Digital Camera
... Jazz Digital Cameras


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Looks – Metallic Orange and Brown Neo Sci Fi Eye
Needed to do something quick before we went out to eat, and this is the result! Finally used Molten Sol liquidlast, yay!
I used Goldmode pigment (LE) on lid, Evening Aura eyeshadow (LE) on inner lid, Expensive Pink eyeshadow on middle of lid, Antiqued eyeshadow on middle/outer lid, Satin Taupe eyeshadow on outer lid and crease, Femme-fi eyeshadow (LE) on brow and above crease, Molten Sol liquidlast liner on upper and lower lash line, Graphblack technakohl on lower water line, and Plushlash mascara on lashes. I had Margin blush on cheeks. I wore Sci Fi Delity lipstick (LE) with Soft & Slow lipglass (LE).
** These are recommendations for dupes based on permanent colors available — may not necessarily be identical; they are the closest I can think of!
Goldmode = Rubenesque; Evening Aura = Juiced + Nylon; Femme-fi = Shroom; Sci Fi Delity = New York Apple (blotted); Soft & Slow = Lust


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Widow publishes love letters from the war
SHERRILL >> Although her husband Oliver passed away in 2010, Jean Tudman has found a heartfelt way to keep his memory alive.
She has compiled the love letters he sent home to her from the European Theater during World War II and written a book about their life together called "A Love Story." Jean, now 92 and a retired guidance counselor from Vernon-Verona-Sherrill Central School, said she often reads passages from the book when she is thinking of her late husband of nearly 70 years.
"I read a little bit of it every night; it's very therapeutic for me," she said. "Whenever I miss him, I get the book out."
They are both natives of Central New York -- Jean grew up in Bartlett, while Oliver wasn't far away in Hecla. When they were both bused to Westmoreland Central School for seventh grade, they ended up in the same class in a house converted into a classroom. Jean noticed the young man because he was so tall, she said, but neither said a word to the other that whole year.
Oliver made an impression on Jean the following year, however, and vice versa, as he sat behind her in class. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, as she recalls in the book:
"He was a pest," she writes. "One day he kept running a pencil or something back and forth across my back. At one point I had had enough of that and I swung with my right hand and slapped him on the left cheek. I left my handprint on his face."
She felt badly after that and apologized, and Oliver never did such a thing again. Soon, a mutual attraction was building, and one day one of Oliver's buddies told Jean that he had something he wanted to ask her. She said "yes" immediately, knowing he wanted to sit with her on the bus after a basketball game. Shortly afterwards, they shared their first kiss in the girls' coat room.
They graduated in 1938, with Jean the valedictorian of their class. Oliver went to work selling Avon Products and later at Oneida Ltd. in Sherrill while Jean went to the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia. Back then women had the choice of becoming a teacher, nurse, or secretary when they went to higher education, so she planned to become a home economics teacher. Being away from home for the first time was tough enough, but being so far away from her love made it an even tougher adjustment for her.
"I loved Oliver so much and I was so lonesome. Many a night I cried myself to sleep," she said. "I made up my mind the only way I could get home to Oliver was to dive into work and do the best I could."
Both of them shared an avid interest in flying, and each received a pilot's license. They even spent many of their dates at Marcy Airport, Jean said.
She recalls vividly the day of Dec. 7, 1941 and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
"We weren't even sure where Pearl Harbor was," she admitted, "but when it meant war, I knew our lives would not be as planned."
Those plans at the time included their upcoming marriage, and Oliver gave her a diamond that year for Christmas, although Jean admitted her mother was less than happy. They married on July 11, 1942.
After the honeymoon, they moved to Sherrill. Oliver was keeping track of the draft numbers and knew he would soon be called to service, so he took a test to see if he might be accepted for pilot training. He was accepted as an aviation cadet even as his draft notice was on its way, and enlisted in the Army Air Force Reserve in August 1942 for the duration of the war.
Jean, who was pregnant with their son David, moved back in with her parents when Oliver left for the war. In January 1943 he was called up for active duty and told to report to the Albany Post Office prepared to travel.
David was born May 6, 1943 while Oliver was away at the Army Air Force Flying School in Texas, and he received the news via a Western Union telegram. Oliver finally got to meet his son when the youngster was six months old, Jean said.
Once he made his way overseas in October 1944, the mail was slow in coming. Oliver was in the war zone, so even when Jean received a letter, she never knew if it would be the last one, or even if Oliver was still alive by the time it found her. In his letters, Oliver calls her by the nickname "Butch," signing his own as "Fuzzy," and constantly reminds them of his love by offering kisses by the bushel to his wife.
"With every letter I never knew if he would write another one," Jean said. "He always just wanted to let me and David know he loved us."
In a letter written on Dec. 9, 1944, he describes the site the Americans found in some areas of France:
"There are a lot of ghost towns here. Completely bombed out!" he wrote. "We saw a couple today from housetop level. It's really a shame! Not a house left intact!"
He continues, "One of our guys met a French gal and she showed him her house or what was left of it. It got a direct hit. You never know what to expect from these people. Some like Americans and some don't."
The same missive laments on how expensive things are, noting he just spent $2 on a used scout knife.
One of the most frightening letters she received was dated Jan. 28, 1945, as Oliver describes crashing his plane and almost being shot by a Frenchman.
"In 24 hours I've been through more than I've been through in my life," he wrote. "I've crashed a P47, been taken prisoner by the French as a spy, taken care of two wrecked planes and my buddy that crashed in the other one."
He continues: "I trimmed the woods with my prop and wings like your dad would trim a hedge. Then I clipped two electric light poles with my right wing. Then good old mother earth. I didn't get shaken up much but I almost got shot by a Frenchman. He thought I was a Jerry. It was dark and he couldn't see the markings on the ship. You can imagine the time I had trying to talk to them. I can't speak French very fluently. Someone called up that they saw parachutes dropping down and they thought I was a spy. Some French colonel came after me to check my papers. Finally I was cleared of all doubt. The French colonel was very good to me. He let me use his car to get back to my base today."
Most of his letters simply tell how much he misses his wife and son.
"Darling, I love you and miss you terribly," he writes from Europe on May 28, 1945, echoing the sentiments of many of his letters. "I'd give anything to be home and hold you in my arms again. Please wait for me, Butch. I would be lost without you. Kiss Davey for me. Here are a few billion for you. I love you, Jeanie."
Oliver finally made it back to the states in December 1945, after being away for 14 months. Jean kept every one of those letters and has treasured them since -- especially in the recent years when she has had to live without her beloved husband.
She remembered the day when Oliver realized he had Alzheimer's disease. He started to cry. His dad had it also, so he knew what would be happening to him as it progressed.
Jean helped him as best she could for nine years, but he became too heavy for her so she was forced to send him for professional care.
He spent his last 14 months in the Lutheran Home in Clinton. Oliver passed away on July 6, 2010 from kidney problems.
"I really hated to see him as he dwindled down to nothing," she said. "The Lord took care of that for me."
David now lives in Rochester, and the couple had two more sons, Dick and Doug, who both live in Sherrill. Today there are also seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, Jean said. It was mainly for them that she wanted to write her book, as a way to keep alive the memory of their father/grandfather/great-grandfather, she said.
She finished it just in time for Christmas last year and has a few copies left for sale to the public.
Tudman admitted that the loss of her husband has left a big emptiness in her life. Sometimes she even finds herself feeling the same as she did back in the days when she waited for him to come home from the war, but then she catches herself knowing that this time he will never be back.
"I miss him and I can't get over the feeling of loss -- we were married for 68 years so it's like half of you is gone," Tudman said.
Tudman will sell and autograph copies of "A Love Story" Tuesday, May 14 from 5-7 p.m. at the Sherrill-Kenwood Free Library.
The book is $20 and quantities are limited.
The Sherrill-Kenwood Free Library is located at 543 Sherrill Road in Sherrill. Call them at 363-5980 for directions or more information on the book signing.


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The first verses after the enlightenment reflect the revelation of Guru Nanak
appearing in Aad Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh Holy Book (AGGS. p. 1).
There is One God, the Infinite, Truth,
The Creator, without Fear and without Enmity.
The Timeless, created by Itself,
Neither takes Birth nor Dies to be born again.
By His Grace shalt thou Worship and Know Him.
Before Time itself, there was Truth.
As time runs its course, the Truth sustains.
And that Truth shall prevail for evermore.
The Holy Book includes 5894 writings of 36 holy men from 12th to 17th centuries honoring their spirituality. Scriptures portray the condition of the times from Guru
Nanak (1469-1539) to Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708) perpetuating the philosophy which continues to this day. Daily prayer of a Sikh culminates with the words: "Under Your Divine Will, We Pray for the Welfare of All (Humanity)."
Sikh devotees aspire to follow the following teachings:


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Forget fighting long lines, endless searching, and watching the "count down" until the item you've been eyeing finally goes on sale. This year, make the most of your time. Stay home and enjoy your family on Black Friday and leave the heavy lifting to us.
Take advantage of our best sale of the year on diamond jewelry (make that sales: Cyber Monday's got some beauties on sale too, including gemstones) while knocking out your holiday shopping in one stop. We've made your job easy with a round-up of our most popular (and discounted) diamond jewelry, including necklaces, earrings, and bracelets for every special woman on your list.
Talk about a match made in heaven! These oval-cut diamonds are framed in an elegant 18k white gold basket and seamlessly transition from a casual daytime look to fancy at night. The best part? This gift is always the right fit.
Her jaw will drop when she sees this two-stone diamond pendant. With graduated round-cut diamonds set in 14k white gold, she'll never want to take it off.
You'll make her spirits bright with this updated basic. Perfect for anyone on your list, our versatile diamond bracelet will leave her smiling. Ladies, if you can't wait for the holidays, Santa will never know you snuck this one into your stocking yourself.
This isn't your grandmother's diamond necklace. When elegance meets modern, you'll find a classic piece that will never go out of style.
This is the gift she might not have dropped hints about, but she's secretly been eyeing. Go ahead and add some matching bling to your spouse's ring with this half-carat total weight brilliant-cut diamond band.


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Footloose Fridays organizers plan to take a second stab at welcoming the summer season on June 7. Events along with the regular Toledo Farmers Market on the Tama County Courthouse Square begin at 5 p.m.
Sugar &?Spice will kick off the entertainment from 5-6:30 p.m. on the bandstand.
Tama County Beef Producers will begin serving sandwiches at 5:30 p.m.
Article Photos
From 7-9 p.m. John Schumacher and Dave Gray will play.
The first Footloose Fridays scheduled for May 3 was rained out.
The event is held on the first Friday of each month except July during the summer in downtown Toledo.
The Toledo Stoplight Festival is held in July.


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*Item may not be exactly as shown.This upholstered piece may have many different fabric choices for your home and may be shown differently in our showroom than as pictured on the website, price will vary depending on fabric chosen. This online price may not reflect the price of the item with the options shown.
This item is not on display at any of our locations.
Infinite position, customized motion means that you can find the position that best suits you, whether you need to soothe back pain or relax and watch TV. This gentle motion is suitable for everybody, even people who struggle with physical pain and mobility issues. And its as easy to use as a touch of a button.
Don't be fooled by the technical jargon- Blue Steel and Dualflex springs are the real deal. The manufacturer's innovative, time-tested Blue Steel springs and the updated Dualflex system are made of heavy-duty materials and never need retying or replacing. If you don't believe it, the spring system can be replaced by the manufacturer at any time thanks to a lifetime warranty.
Leather match is an industry term that denotes different qualities of material used on different parts of a recliner. Helping make the piece more affordable, top grain leather is used on the parts of the recliner that touch your body, while a lower-quality split leather or color-matched vinyl is used on the back and sides. This is very common for reclining furniture, and doesn't change the sophisticated look of your chosen leather upholstery.
Make your recliner less cumbersome by removing the back(s) when you are moving in or out of your home. Locking brackets safely join the reclining seat(s) and back(s), ensuring your recliner will be stable when you use it.
Aside from the sturdy and supportive spring suspension, this recliner features a firm yet comfy cushion construction that's guaranteed to please even the pickiest recliner shopper. This model has a modern look that makes it a perfect addition to your refurbished family room, home theater, or man cave. Includes upholstery that's heavy-duty and resistant to daily use from young kids and pets. Additional cover options in leather and performance fabric may be available, see store for details.
The Latitudes-Tosha Modern Power Glider Recliner with Folded Pillow Arms by Flexsteel at Crowley Furniture & Mattress in the Kansas City Area: Liberty and Lee's Summit, MO & Overland Park, KS area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.
This item has been tagged as: Recliner, Reclining Chair, Glider Rocker Recliner, Rocking Recliner, High Leg Reclining Chair, Lift Recliner, Pop - Up Recliner, Reclining Chair and Ottoman, Motion Recliner, Standard Recliner, No - Rock Recliners, Wall Recliners, Easy Chair, Living Room Chair, Living Room Furniture, TV Chair, Chair Recliner, Massage Chair, Massage Recliner, Swivel Rocker Recliner, Massaging Recliner
Nothing on this page may be copied or reproduced without explicit permission.


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Next :
Ductile Iron Wing Nut
Product standard:BS1139;AS1576;GB.GB15831-2006,Our fastener products have National Industrial Product Manufacturing License and accord with GB15831-2006 standard.
Product's technical performance: with the minimum anti-skid index of 15KN, our products have reached B-class standard of EN74-1:2005.
Features: deformation resistance, gliding resistance, good fastness, excellent corrosion resistance, 30-year warranty!
Honors:ISO9001:2008 Quality Management System Certification;National Industrial Product Manufacturing License;SGS Certification.


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Female Student in a Parody of the Wisteria Maiden
Description: The vertically oriented postcard contains a depiction of a woman in a simple gown and cape, holding an umbrella, amongst some leafy vines. The ground of the card stock is tan, the woman's hat and cloak are black, and the vine is green as is the simple line indicating the woman's sandals.
Date: 1905
Creator: Asai Chu
Partner: UNT College of Visual Arts + Design


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College of Menominee Nation
Brennan (Menominee) is a first-generation college student studying biological and physical sciences at the College of Menominee Nation.
"Being raised by a single mother in a poverty-stricken community… can make it difficult to pursue higher education or any type of dream," Brennan said. "Fortunately my mother was very strict when it came to my schoolwork. She would make me sit at the kitchen table to finish my homework before I could play outside. I carried that discipline throughout high school and was able to stand out of the crowd to be named Menominee Indian High School Class of 2009 Valedictorian."
Brennan learned the importance of discipline when he was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes at the age of nine. During a week-long hospital stay he learned he would be insulin-dependent for life.
"With my new best friend, insulin, I had to balance the thoughts and actions of living in poverty," he said. This included planning meals, limiting stress, and taking care of his health. "My mother and I had lived with friends and family members for the majority of my life. After my sophomore year of high school, I moved in with my best friend Heaven and her grandparents. I lived with them during the last two years of high school because I did not want to keep wondering, 'When am I going to be moving next?' These struggles also gave me the drive to push myself and be the best I could in school."
Brennan is active in the local and national chapter of the American Indian Science & Engineering Society and many other cultural and extracurricular activities. He says he found his calling after he interned with the College of Menominee Nation Sustainable Development Institute for six weeks with a forest health forester at the Menominee Forestry Department. There he studied invasive plants, insects, and diseases that may impact the health of the world-renowned Menominee forest.
Brennan continues to study the Menominee forest and its sustainability for the Menominee Nation. Read his blog post on our blog.


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Plan your trip anywhere in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA)
What is this? Read the Next Vehicle Frequently Asked Questions.
The Next Vehicle feature, is provided by Transit App. Enter your current location and you will be presented with the nearest TTC train, bus, or streetcar. The results of searching possible routes for the Next Vehicle will appear below. Enter the summary of routes by pressing the Tab key. For each route, there are one or more options, labelled as tabs. Navigate between routes using the Tab and Shift + Tab keys, and among the options using the arrow keys.
TTC's Electric Bus is now in service!
On Monday, June 3 the first bus will service the 35 Jane route. Learn more about the eBus and other TTC Green initiatives.
Transit Review
The City of Toronto, TTC and Province of Ontario are reviewing transit planning. Have your say!
We want to hear from you!
Have your say in this short, five-minute survey. Your feedback may help shape the TTC's 5-Year Service Plan & 10-Year Outlook.
Pay your fare
Fare evasion costs us all. Do the right thing and pay your share.
pital Investment Plan
15-year capital funding outlook that focuses on existing needs and growth based on approved regional and city plans.
Subway service will end at 11 p.m. between Wilson and St Clair West stations on June 3, 4 and 6, 2019 - REVISED
There are 4 alerts currently affecting TTC service. Find out more.
Toronto Transit Commission, Copyright 1997-2019


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Call Today!
We accept all major credit cards.
Smyrna Air Conditioning Repair
Residents and businesses of Smyrna, GA trust Comfort Shield for all of their heating and cooling needs. We offer maintenance and repair on all makes and models of air conditioners, furnaces, heat pumps and air handlers. Our mission is to help our customers extend the life, and protect the investment, of your heating and cooling system.
Only if your existing heating and air conditioning system is beyond repair, will we give you other options.
Call Today and we can get your heating and air conditioning system running in peak condition. Not only will this help protect your investment, but will save you money.
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If your heating system suddenly breaks down, you can rely on Comfort Shield. Our expert trained technicians are standing by to help. When we arrive at your home or business, we perform an entire system safety check. It is important to have your heating system or furnace checked by a professional so that we can alert you to any potential problems.
We care about the residents of Smyrna and we will make every effort to get your heating and air conditioning system up and running as quickly as possible. Contact us today for an evaluation of your heating and cooling system. We take the fear out of calling a service company, we are honest and reliable.
Smyrna Heating and Air Conditioning Repair
Comfort Shield, Heating and Air Conditioning LLC is a full service Air Conditioning Company that specializes in A/C Repair, Heating Repair, Air Conditioning Repair and Installation, Heat Pump Repair and Installation and Furnace Repair and Installation.
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Find more information about the advantages of our energy-efficient HVAC systems on this website. We are here to serve you!
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We accept all major credit cards.


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The United States Presidential Election of 2012 is going to be held in less than six months. With this important election fast approaching, it is very important that voters in every state have access to accurate election information. The Voting Information Project is an organization that "offers cutting edge technology tools to provide voters with access to customized election information to help them navigate the voting process and cast an informed vote." Cutting edge technology tools offered by the Voting Information Project include the Voting Information Project API, a Google "Find My Polling Place" Gadget as well as other various projects.
These tools help voters find the election information they need such as the correct polling location, how to navigate the voting process and what issues are on the ballot.
The Voting Information Project API allows state election divisions to publish accessible voting information data using an open format. The API uses RESTful calls and data responses are available in XML and JSON format. The API provides information on polling places, candidates, deadlines, rules, regulations and more. There are API samples available for Android, JavaScript, .Net and iOS available on the official website.


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Debunking fat myths
Research shows some commonly held beliefs are just great big lies
We are born with a set number of fat cells that never changes.
False: Researchers have found that our pool of fat cells increases through childhood and adolescence and levels off as an adult -- then doesn't change. The number of fat cells we end up with does seem to be linked to our genetics.
Fat cells do serve a biological purpose.
True: The main role of fat cells is to store energy, cushion major body organs and insulate the body. They also produce hormones and secrete a variety of substances that are important in our metabolism. But when the cells are larger, they secrete these substances at higher levels, which can cause health problems related to obesity: diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, liver disease and certain types of cancer.
Losing weight doesn't eliminate fat cells; it just makes them smaller.
True: When you lose weight the amount of fat being stored in the cell decreases. And although recent research has proven that fat cells do die, they are replenished at the same rate so their numbers stay the same. Surgery and liposuction can remove fat cells, but researchers disagree over whether your body regenerates them to maintain your body's "normal" level.
If you cut way back on your calorie intake you'll shrink fat cells and lose weight.
False: When you don't eat enough calories to maintain basic functions, your body goes into "starvation" mode, and will store even more fat in your fat cells the next time you eat. Studies have shown that people who eat three meals a day generally keep metabolism on track and are less likely to overeat.
You can't target one area of your body for shrinking fat.
More InformationGet HealthyLife
This story is an excerpt from the latest issue of HealthyLife magazine, a publication that comes out 10 times a year and covers women's health from the perspectives of body, mind and spirit. For home delivery of this free magazine, call 203-330-6435 or sign up at
True: Despite every promise you see to the contrary, your body burns stored fat everywhere, not from one specific place.
Eating fatty foods is more likely to make you fat.
False: Fat comes from calories. So if you eat too many calories, whether it's in a big salad or a big burger, you'll gain weight. The caveat is that there are generally more calories in high-fat foods, so it takes fewer of them to eat a higher number of calories.
You can't be healthy if you're overweight.
False: People can be fit, physically, and still carry excess body fat.
Sources: New York Times, Johns Hopkins Health Alerts, ScienceBlogs, Fit Day, Mayo Clinic