“At the start of 1956 Brubeck made a personal decision that proved to be a most important change in his group. After three years with the quartet, drummer Joe Dodge decided to leave. Brubeck took a chance by hiring Joe Morello. Actually, little risk accrued from this decision as Morello was a masterful choice as his polished virtuosity and marked creativity made an immediate contribution to the quartet.
Described by some critics as a sort of purgatory for jazz drummers, Morello was to absolutely flourish in the confines of this supposedly ‘unswinging’ ensemble, especially with its high visibility, daring improvisations and later experimentation with odd or unusual time signatures.
All these factors helped launch Morello to a position of preeminence in the world of jazz drumming and with good cause. The leap into the limelight was no concoction of media hype but well-deserved fame for an exceptional musician.
With the Brubeck quartet, this powerful young workhorse on drums continued to have the same effect on audiences, but now in larger concert halls rather than in small clubs. Soon Morello was no longer a discovery, but a known commodity, emulated by a generation of young percussionists. “
- Ted Gioia, The San Francisco Scene in the 1950’s West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960, [p.96 and p.98, paraphrase].
In 1938, the legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz was presented with one of the 500 copies of Ansel Adams’ photographic masterpiece – Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail.
I, too, am an idolater of the perfect workmanship that is to be found in the drumming of Joe Morello as primarily exemplified in the many recordings he made with the Dave Brubeck Quartet from 1956-68. Sadly, Joe made too few recordings outside the DBQ including those under his own name.
Sadly, too, none of the major drum anthologies contain a chapter on Joe nor to my knowledge has Joe been the subject of a biography.
So to compensate for this omission, in the coming weeks, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to compile some selected writings about Joe and feature them as postings on the blog.
The following excerpts are from the chapter on pianist Marian McPartland’s trio in bassist Bill Crow’s From Broadway to Birdland: Scene from a Jazz Life [Oxford]. Bill’s reminiscence highlights three of the qualities that I most admired about Joe: [1] his prodigious technique, [2] his well-developed sense of humor which he often exhibited in his playing, and [3] his humility.
read more: http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com.br/2015/02/a.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+JazzProfiles+(Jazz+Profiles)
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