TAKE FIVE: The Incomparable Cool of Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck’s art is the kind that can reach and uplift any and all of us. He believed that music should and does transcend boundaries and categories, and his art certainly does. In subtle ways it is part of a force that uplifts our whole human culture via universality.

- Terence Smith

Dave Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012), continues to be one of the most celebrated and popular musicians in the worlds of jazz and classical music. With a career spanning over six decades, his experiments in odd time signatures, improvised counterpoint, polyrhythm and polytonality remain hallmarks of musical innovation.

Brubeck wrote a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke." His style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills.

His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote the saxophone melody for the Dave Brubeck Quartet's best remembered piece, "Take Five," which is in 5/4 time and has endured as a jazz classic on one of the top-selling jazz albums, 'Time Out.'

The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s recordings and concert appearances on college campuses in the ‘50s and early ‘60s introduced jazz to thousands of young people. The quartet’s audiences were not limited to students, however. The group played in jazz clubs in every major city and toured in package shows with such artists as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzerald, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. The Dave Brubeck Quartet repeatedly won top honors in trade magazines and critic’s and reader’s polls. In 1954, Brubeck was featured on the cover of Time, the second jazz musician to be so honored (the first being Louis Armstrong on February 21, 1949).