David Warren Dave Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. He wrote a number of jazz standards, including In Your Own Sweet Way and The Duke. Brubeck's style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote the saxophone melody for the Dave Brubeck Quartet's best remembered piece, Take Five,[1] which is in 54 time and has endured as a jazz classic on one of the top-selling jazz albums, Time Out.[2] Brubeck experimented with time signatures throughout his career, recording Pick Up Sticks in 64, Unsquare Dance in 74, World's Fair in 134, and Blue Rondo à la Turk in 98. He was also a respected composer of orchestral and sacred music, and wrote soundtracks for television such as Mr. Broadway and the animated miniseries This Is America, Charlie Brown.
Brubeck was born in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Concord, California,[1] and grew up in Ione. His father, Peter Howard Pete Brubeck, was a cattle rancher, and his mother, Elizabeth (née Ivey), who had studied piano in England under Myra Hess and intended to become a concert pianist, taught piano for extra money.[3] His father had Swiss ancestry (the family surname was originally Brodbeck), while his maternal grandparents were English and German, respectively.[4][5][6] Brubeck originally did not intend to become a musician (his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, were already on that track), but took lessons from his mother. He could not read music during these early lessons, attributing this difficulty to poor eyesight, but faked his way through, well enough that this deficiency went mostly unnoticed.[7]
Intending to work with his father on their ranch, Brubeck entered the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California (now the University of the Pacific), studying veterinary science. He changed to music on the urging of the head of zoology, Dr. Arnold, who told him Brubeck, your mind's not here. It's across the lawn in the conservatory. Please go there. Stop wasting my time and yours.[8] Later, Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read music. Several of his professors came forward, arguing that his ability with counterpoint and harmony more than compensated. The college was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, and agreed to let Brubeck graduate only after he had promised never to teach piano.[9]

After graduating in 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the U.S. Army. He served in Europe in the Third Army. He volunteered to play piano at a Red Cross show and was such a hit that he was spared from combat service and ordered to form a band. He created one of the U.S. armed forces' first racially integrated bands, The Wolfpack.[9] While serving in the military, Brubeck met Paul Desmond in early 1944.[10] He returned to college after serving nearly four years in the army, this time attending Mills College in Oakland. He studied under Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to study fugue and orchestration, but not classical piano. While on active duty, he received two lessons from Arnold Schoenberg at the UCLA in an attempt to connect with High Modernism theory and practice.[11] However, the encounter did not end on good terms since Schoenberg believed that every note should be accounted for, an approach which Brubeck could not accept. Although according to his son Chris Brubeck, there is a twelve-tone row in The Light in the Wilderness, Dave Brubeck's first oratorio; in it Jesus's twelve disciples were introduced by each singing their own individual notes. It is described as “quite dramatic, especially when Judas starting singing 'Repent' on a high and straining dissonant note.”[12]
After completing his studies under Milhaud, Brubeck worked with an octet (the recording bears his name only because Brubeck was the best-known member at the time), and a trio including Cal Tjader and Ron Crotty. Highly experimental, the group made few recordings and got even fewer paying jobs. The trio was often joined by Paul Desmond on the bandstand, at Desmond's own insistence.
Jack Sheedy owned San Francisco-based Coronet Records, which had previously recorded area Dixieland bands. (This Coronet Records should not be confused with either the late 1950s New York-based budget label, nor with Australia-based Coronet Records.) In 1949, Sheedy was talked into making the first recording of Brubeck's octet and later his trio. But Sheedy was unable to pay his bills and in 1949 turned his masters over to his record stamping company, the Circle Record Company, owned by Max and Sol Weiss. The Weiss brothers soon changed the name of their business to Fantasy Records.
These initial Brubeck records sold well, and he recorded and issued new records for Fantasy. Soon the company was shipping 40,000 to 50,000 copies of Brubeck records each quarter, making enormous profits.[13]
 
The quartet in 1959 during the Time Out sessions.From left to right Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck, Eugene Wright.
In 1951, Brubeck damaged several neck vertebrae and his spinal cord while diving into the surf in Hawaii. He would later remark that the paramedics who attended had described him as a DOA (dead on arrival). Brubeck recovered after a few months, but suffered with residual nerve pain in his hands for years after.[14] The injury also influenced his playing style towards complex, blocky chords rather than speedy, high-dexterity, single-note runs.
Brubeck organized the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951, with Paul Desmond on alto saxophone. They took up a long residency at San Francisco's Black Hawk nightclub and gained great popularity touring college campuses, recording a series of albums with such titles as Jazz at Oberlin (1953), Jazz at the College of the Pacific (1953), and Brubeck's debut on Columbia Records, Jazz Goes to College (1954).
When Brubeck signed with Fantasy Records, he thought he had a half interest in the company and he worked as a sort of A & R man for the label, encouraging the Weiss brothers to sign other contemporary jazz performers, including Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker and Red Norvo. When he discovered that all he owned was a half interest in his own recording, he was more than willing to sign with another label, Columbia Records.[15]
In 1954, he was featured on the cover of Time, the second jazz musician to be so honored (the first was Louis Armstrong on February 21, 1949).[16] Brubeck personally found this accolade embarrassing, since he considered Duke Ellington more deserving of it and was convinced that he had been favored for being Caucasian.[17] Ellington himself knocked on the door of Brubeck's hotel room to show him the cover and the only reaction Brubeck could give was, “It should have been you.”[18]
Early bassists for the group included Ron Crotty, Bob Bates, and Bob's brother Norman Bates; Lloyd Davis and Joe Dodge held the drum chair. In 1956 Brubeck hired drummer Joe Morello, who had been working with Marian McPartland; Morello's presence made possible the rhythmic experiments that were to come. In 1958 African-American bassist Eugene Wright joined for the group's U.S. Department of State tour of Europe and Asia. Wright became a permanent member in 1959, making the classic Quartet's personnel complete. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Brubeck canceled several concerts because the club owners or hall managers continued to resist the idea of an integrated band on their stages. He also canceled a television appearance when he found out that the producers intended to keep Wright off-camera.[19]
In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded Time Out, an album about which the record label was enthusiastic but which they were nonetheless hesitant to release. Featuring the album art of S. Neil Fujita, the album contained all original compositions, almost none of which were in common time 98, 54, 34, and 64 were used inspired by Eurasian folk music they experienced during that Department of State sponsored tour.[20] Nonetheless, on the strength of these unusual time signatures (the album included Take Five, Blue Rondo à la Turk, and Three To Get Ready), it quickly went platinum. It was the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies.[21]
Time Out was followed by several albums with a similar approach, including Time Further Out Miro Reflections (1961), using more 54, 64, and 98, plus the first attempt at 74; Countdown Time in Outer Space (dedicated to John Glenn) (1962), featuring 114 and more 74; Time Changes (1963), with much 34, 104 (which was really 5+5), and 134; and Time In (1966).
These albums (except the last) were also known for using contemporary paintings as cover art, featuring the work of Joan Miró on Time Further Out, Franz Kline on Time in Outer Space, and Sam Francis on Time Changes.
A high point for the group was their 1963 live album At Carnegie Hall, described by critic Richard Palmer as arguably Dave Brubeck's greatest concert.

In the early 1960s, Brubeck and his wife Iola developed a jazz musical, The Real Ambassadors, based in part on experiences they and their colleagues had during foreign tours on behalf of the Department of State. The soundtrack album, which featured Louis Armstrong, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and Carmen McRae was recorded in 1961; the musical was performed at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival.
At its peak in the early 1960s, the Brubeck Quartet was releasing as many as four albums a year. Apart from the College and the Time series, Brubeck recorded four LPs featuring his compositions based on the group's travels, and the local music they encountered. Jazz Impressions of the USA (1956, Morello's debut with the group), Jazz Impressions of Eurasia (1958), Jazz Impressions of Japan (1964), and Jazz Impressions of New York (1964) are less well-known albums, but all are brilliant examples of the quartet's studio work, and they produced Brubeck standards such as Summer Song, Brandenburg Gate, Koto Song, and Theme From Mr. Broadway. (Brubeck wrote, and the Quartet performed, the theme song for the Craig Stevens CBS drama series; the music from the series became material for the New York album.)
In 1961, Dave Brubeck appeared in a few scenes of the British jazzbeat film All Night Long, which starred Patrick McGoohan and Richard Attenborough. Brubeck merely plays himself, with the film featuring close-ups of his piano fingerings. Brubeck performs It's a Raggy Waltz from the Time Further Out album and duets briefly with bassist Charles Mingus in Non-Sectarian Blues.
In the early 1960s Dave Brubeck was the program director of WJZZ-FM radio (now WEZN). He achieved his vision of an all-jazz format radio station along with his friend and neighbor John E. Metts, one of the first African Americans in senior radio management.
The final studio album for Columbia by the DesmondWrightMorello quartet was Anything Goes (1966) featuring the songs of Cole Porter. A few concert recordings followed, and The Last Time We Saw Paris (1967) was the Classic Quartet's swan-song.