Dave Brubeck @ 90

Dave Brubeck, the legendary pianist, is 90 years old today.

His quartet created the biggest-selling album in jazz history, ‘Time Out‘, which spawned two huge hit singles, ‘Take Five‘ and ‘Unsquare Dance‘. He is famous for ‘normalising’ tricky time signatures (‘Take Five’ is in 5/4 and ‘Unsquare Dance’ 7/4) and for his use of polytonal harmony. Although he didn’t compose ‘Take Five’ (it was written by saxophonist Paul Desmond), the track has become synonymous with jazz across the world, used on TV commercials, film soundtracks and still the composition of choice for beginning jazz saxophonists.

Dave Brubeck was brought up on a northern Californian cattle ranch. He once said, ‘I was actually thinking of of being a cattle man back then!’ He attended the College of the Pacific as a music major. Vision problems kept him from learning how to read music but he could write music down. He began studying composition with French composer Darius Milhaud. In 1942, he joined the US Army during World War Two. He created one of the first racially-integrated armed forces bands, The Wolfpack, and also met Paul Desmond while serving.

In 1946, he left the army and continued his studies with Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California. He formed his first band, an octet. As the years progressed, that group became a trio and eventually the famous quartet with which he became famous, featuring Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello. Starting in 1956, this quartet enjoyed huge success until their parting in 1967, and came to epitomise the ‘cool’ West Coast jazz sound.

Brubeck has famously revealed that his record company were not keen to release either ‘Take Five’ or ‘Time Out’: ‘You don’t know the fights that we had to put that out. It wasn’t in 4/4 time… That’s exactly where your problems start, with the sales force. You have to challenge the record companies and music publishing companies. And they will come up to the challenge. “Time Out” is proof of that.’

Regarding the unique use of harmony in his playing, Brubeck once said, ‘I use polytonality. You use a chord in your left hand against a different tonality in your right hand. Like C major in your left hand against F#major in your right hand.’

As Donald Fagen sings about Brubeck on the title track of his album ‘New Frontier‘, ‘he’s an artist, a pioneer…’