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Playland at the Beach: Dave Brubeck's Early Octet and Trio

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Chances are you've heard Dave Brubeck before, even if you're not a jazz fan. His 1959 album Time Out has sold over a million copies and “Take Five," written by longtime Brubeck collaborator and saxophonist Paul Desmond, became a hit single and cultural musical staple. Brubeck made the cover of Time Magazine in 1954, did global tours for the U.S. State Department during the Cold War, and has enjoyed a long run as an icon of mainstream jazz.

But at the start of his career in the late 1940s Brubeck was studying with composer Darius Milhaud and pursuing experimental sounds with a group of like-minded youthful colleagues. As the leader of what came to be known as the Octet, Brubeck became a West Coast jazz pioneer. His small ensemble blended classical elements and jazz, achieving a sound that bordered on Third Stream and the avant-garde, and the recordings they made are among the most interesting of Brubeck's long career.

The Night Lights show “Playland at the Beach: Dave Brubeck's Early Octet and Trio" pays tribute to Brubeck on his 90th birthday by taking a look at a little-known and little-heard chapter of his career—the early days before he rose to fame with his 1950s quartet—and also relates the story of how his musical partnership with Desmond nearly ended right after it began, the bizarre swimming accident that changed the course of Brubeck's career, and, strangely enough, how he helped pave the way for the eventual rise of the rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival.

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