Joseph Albert Morello (July 17, 1928 – March 12, 2011) was a legendary jazz drummer whose virtuosity and command of odd time signatures made him an integral part of the Dave Brubeck Quartet on such classic recordings as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk. He appeared on over 120 albums and CDs, of which 60 were with the Dave Brubeck Quartet and three with legendary guitarist Hank Garland, including the landmark album, "Jazz Winds From a New Direction".
Joe Morello was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. As he had a visual impairment, his childhood activities were principally indoor ones – with violin studies a priority, encouraged by his parents from the age of six. His playing advanced, and the celebrated violinist Jascha Heifetz became the young Morello's hero. He was good enough to perform Mendelssohn's violin concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the age of nine. At 15, however – when Morello had the opportunity to meet Heifetz and hear the virtuoso's tone at close range – he felt that he would never achieve what he called "that sound".
In Brubeck's group, Morello's mix of a classical player's standards of accuracy and a jazz musician's improvisational and on-the-fly participatory instincts came into elegant balance. The undemonstrative calmness with which he executed complex
polyrhythms seemed to suggest he had a separate brain operating each of his limbs. Brubeck's quartet made a trademark out of
![]()
ostensibly "unswinging" classical time-signatures and forms such as the rondo and the fugue, and Morello's crucial contribution was to inject a coolly grooving relaxation into devices that in other hands could have sounded like calculating attempts to woo a classical audience to jazz.
polyrhythms seemed to suggest he had a separate brain operating each of his limbs. Brubeck's quartet made a trademark out of
Morello recorded more than 60 albums with the quartet, starting with "Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A." and "Dave Digs Disney" in 1957. He was with the quartet on its 1958 State Department-sponsored tour that took the group to 14 countries, including Poland, India, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.
When the quartet disbanded in 1967, Morello turned to drum-
![]()
teaching, occasionally participated in Brubeck and McPartland reunions, and played with his own quartet around New York. He was a columnist for the magazine Modern Drummer and published teaching resources.. He was elected to the Modern Drummer magazine Hall of Fame in 1988, the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1993, and was the recipient of Hudson Music's first TIP (Teacher Integration Program) Lifetime Achievement award in June, 2010.
Morello died at his home in Irvington, New Jersey, on March 12, 2011, aged 82, and is interred at Saint Michael Cemetery. (Edited from John Fordham @ The Guardian & Legacy,com)