Vinyl Vault: Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, “1975: The Duets”

This week’s Vinyl Vault will feature a collection of duets by Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond. The album, “1975, The Duets,” was released on Horizon Records in 1975.

Although Brubeck and Desmond had played together for decades, they had never played strictly as a duet. Their prior associations had always been with a rhythm section. Then, in June 1975, they found themselves literally at sea on a jazz cruise with a rhythm section that had not rehearsed all the songs they wanted to play. The solution was for Brubeck and Desmond to play at least one song during their sets as a duet. The results astounded them, including giving each player much more freedom than in the rhythm section context. It also heightened the emotional aspects of the ballads they had chosen.

Several months later, Brubeck and Desmond were in New York City at the same time, so they booked a studio for a couple of days and recorded several duet pieces. The result is this week’s Vinyl Vault feature. Besides the studio tracks, the album includes one of the pieces recorded during the jazz cruise by the BBC, “You Go To My Head.”

Check out this fine duet album from two jazz masters recorded 50 years ago on the next Vinyl Vault with Geoff Anderson, on Tuesday, November 18 at 8:30 p.m. only on KUVO JAZZ.