January 18, 2016
Alto saxophonist Paul Desmond worked with pianist Dave Brubeck for 18 years. He's best known for his composition "Take Five," which helped make Brubeck's record Time Out a mega-hit. Desmond's saxophone playing was always marked by an unusual fluidity and warmth. Through a number of solo records, he expanded on a relaxed but sophisticated sound.
Who would have guessed that Paul Desmond had a wickedly acerbic wit, ironic and self-deprecating at the same time?
"I have won several prizes as the world's slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness."
"I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was."
"I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini."
When asked by Gene Lees what accounted for the melancholy in his playing, he replied, "Well, that I'm not playing better."
He was an English major in college. His reason for not pursuing a literary career, "I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter."
"Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught."
Of writer Jack Kerouac he said, "I hate the way he writes. I kind of love the way he lives, though."
Of Vogue fashion models, he said, "Sometimes they go around with guys who are scuffling -- for a while. But usually they end up marrying some cat with a factory. This is the way the world ends, not with a whim but a banker."
"Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over new York City, and somebody says, `Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says, 'Why bother? He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.'"
His response to the annoying banality of an interviewer, "You're beginning to sound like a cross between David Frost and David Susskind, and that is a cross I cannot bear."
Shortly before the Dave Brubeck Quartet disbanded, "We're working as if it were going out of style -- which of course it is."
Of yogurt he said, "I don't like it, but Dave is always trying things like that. He's a nutritional masochist. He'll eat anything as long as he figures it's good for him."
Of contact lenses: "Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze"
On Ornette Coleman's playing, "It's like living in a house where everything's painted red."
Desmond's fondness for scotch was well known. So in early 1976 when a physical examination showed lung cancer, he was ironically pleased that his liver was fine. "Pristine, perfect. One of the great livers of our time. Awash in Dewars and full of health."
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