Mr Paul Desmond

By Liam Scrivener

(You can read the parent post to this essay here.)

If MF DOOM is the “best MC with no chain you ever heard”, then Paul Desmond is the best sax-man that you’ve never heard. Although it is highly likely you have heard his playing, seeing as he did write arguably the biggest hit of Jazz, Take Five, off The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s magnum opus, Time Out. Here you can see him in action: 

Perhaps it’s a bit of an overstatement, I am sure many Jazz-heads are crying out right now: “but of course we know about Paul!”, and yet his legacy is a quiet one, especially when contrasted with the other giants of Jazz; Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Coltrane (is a first name even necessary?). These guys are known throughout the western world and beyond, their legacy piercing cultural spheres otherwise untouched by horn or sax. Even if they haven’t heard their music, they know that these names are synonymous with Jazz.

The reason I bring this up is to make salient a particular kind of human excellence. If human excellence is found in someone who has mastered a skill to the extent that their craft becomes an art in itself, I believe that there is a kind of human excellence that goes under the radar due to the nature of that excellence. I guess you could say Paul Desmond is my muse in this regard. No one would ever declare Desmond a bad musician, but it takes a closer listen to appreciate his music. His playing is restrained, controlled, smoothly articulated, and supremely cool. He toes the line perfectly between conventionality and experimentation, and will no doubt please the ears of both those new to Jazz, as well as the discerning critic. I believe that these characteristics are what make his playing special, but it is also probably due to these that he largely avoided the spotlight.

In order to bring out Desmond's excellence, in contrast, let's first compare him with a fellow saxophonist, John Coltrane. For anyone wanting a taste of Coltrane, I recommend listening to his rendition of My Favorite Things: 

He takes the hit from The Sound of Music and completely dissects it, exploring every nook and cranny of possible melody. If you want another example of human excellence in saxophone form, this is it. But it is on the other end of the scale to a Desmond. He pushes the song to its limits, even transcending them, for it seems incredible that such a relatively simple tune can hide so many melodic possibilities. When the song ends it feels as though Coltrane leaves it feeling used and ashamed of itself. Mr Desmond, in contrast, plays with so much restraint and control that you wonder if they are even playing the same instrument.

A similar distinction appears to me in the contrast with how Chet Baker and Miles Davis use their trumpets. Baker generally plays with more restraint and with less technical wizardry, but seems to somehow pick more interesting notes and play them with pure emotive expression. Why did Baker become more well known than Desmond? Well, although they are both from the school of “cool jazz” (yes it is really called that), Baker had the image to go with it. He is the emo poster boy of cool jazz, you get yourself a rainy Sunday with a cigarette and bitter coffee, put on some Chet and you’ve got yourself a mood. In a rather funny contrast, Desmond is a complete dork, and I say that with love. The depiction on the back of one of his records I own shows him in what looks like a safari jacket with absurdly large pockets, a cravat blossoming at his throat, wearing his signature thick-rimmed glasses and smiling goofily directly into the camera’s lens. It’s fantastic, there’s no image to hide behind, no tricks—the curtain has been completely disassembled.

Perhaps the similarity in Baker’s and Desmond’s approach to their instruments is why they collaborated. Here is their rendition of Concierto De Aranjuez:

This remains my favourite rendition of the song, it’s absolutely packed with gorgeous licks and phrases that revolve around a central theme originally played on classical Spanish guitar with an accompanying orchestra. Desmond’s version is 20 minutes long (8 minutes longer than the orchestral version and the longest rendition I know of) yet its sprawling nature never seems too long or demanding on the listener. You put it on as background music but your attention is inevitably drawn to it, such is the power of its enchantment. Paul Desmond is the snake charmer of jazz. He will play a handful of notes in what seems at the time the most interesting way those notes can be played. There are only so many ways I can praise this man before it gets tedious. He is one of the most slept on artists in jazz. Yet, I do not think this is just a Jazz thing, this is an archetype of a kind of artist that may exist in many genres or domains: the snake charmer, quietly doing their thing with killer precision, flying low beneath the mainstream radar. And for anyone sceptical about jazz, play Take Five at a party, I guarantee it will be a hit.