Please look and listen to Audrey, one of the most beautiful collective improvisations by the earlier edition of the fabulous Dave Brubeck Quartet.
From the original liners to Brubeck Time:
Audrey is a truly ‘impromptu’ number.
In a wistful mood, photographer-cineast Gijon Mili, who was present at the session, suddenly declared:
“I’d like to see Audrey Hepburn come walking through the woods …”
Still half lost in his thoughts, Paul Desmond replied:
“So would I.”
Dave started counting – “One, two, three, four…” – and that’s how Audrey was born.
Something a mystery indeed, but what else could you expect at a session with these four guys.
The ‘guys’: Paul Desmond (as), Dave Brubeck (p), Bob Bates (b) and Joe Dodge (d) – October 12, 1954;
Blog owner’s note from Nov. 25, 2012: This article has been updated several times already. I will let you, dear readers, know as soon as some other version of “Audrey” will surface (scroll down for the newest). — And I have substituted the digital tracks with transfers from the original LP’s.
Here the cover of my LP (Update: I’ve sold it; and everyone should beware of this, ’cause there are some transfer-flaws on this very release by Philips):
The original cover (I’ve purchased the original release two years ago):
P.S. — Bud Powell’s Audrey – also a blues – should be heard too.
Blog owner’s note: This track stems from the Blue-Note-LP UK-release “The Amazing Bud Powell – Vol. 2”.
It’s not DMM, or with electronic stereo, and such gimmicks.
Bud Powell (p) George Duvivier (b) Art Taylor (d) – WOR Studios, NYC, August 14, 1953
>>—> A grande, nevertheless quiet 2nd P.S. <—<<
Here’s “Makin’ Time” from the same DBQ session; it’s just another walk with “Audrey”:
One more with “Audrey” (here entitled “Pilgrim’s Progress”), on Paul Desmond’s 88th birthday, celebrated today, November 25, 2012, at Doug’s Rifftides.
Notes by the uploader:
Interesting variation on the famous “Audrey”, recorded in the summer of 1956 in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Norman Bates on bass & Joe Dodge on drums.
Since the other video with “Audrey” seems to be gone for good, here is, at minute 4:55, a later ‘live’ version of “Audrey”:
I will treasure this LP (Time Out) as long as I live because master Dave Brubeck has signed it for me when he was in Cologne ’round two-thousand-and-three:
“Swing it, Dave, swing it!”
Another addition based on “Audrey’s” chord progression, posted today (December 2, 2012) at Doug Ramsey’s Rifftides:
Now, as a very big P.S., a lovely scene from the wonderful film which certainly inspired my great jazz colleagues to their portraits of “Audrey”: Roman Holiday (1953)
