Dave Brubeck
The ranch boy who counted beats on horseback crossed the world with music counted in fives and nines.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Companions ⏳🌊
- FamilyElizabeth Ivey Brubeck
His mother, who had studied piano in England, gave her youngest son, who could not read music, his first lessons at the keyboard.
- FamilyIola Brubeck
His wife of seventy years and a lyricist, she pioneered the college tours and wrote the lyrics for “The Real Ambassadors.”
- ColleaguePaul Desmond
The quartet's alto saxophonist for sixteen years from 1951, he composed “Take Five.”
- TeacherDarius Milhaud
A French composer who taught polytonality and counterpoint at Mills College and urged him not to abandon jazz.
- InfluenceDuke Ellington
An elder Brubeck deeply revered, he came by to congratulate him on his “Time” cover, and Brubeck dedicated “The Duke” to him.
- ColleagueLouis Armstrong
The star of “The Real Ambassadors,” he sang of the contradictions of jazz diplomacy.
I. The ranch boy · 1920–1942 (age 0–22)
(Concord) He was born in December 1920 in Concord, California. His father, Pete Brubeck, was a cattle rancher and a cowboy who also rode in rodeos. His mother, Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, was a pianist who had gone to England to study the instrument, and she taught the children piano at home. He was the youngest of three sons, and both his older brothers, Henry and Howard, also took up music. Howard in particular later became a composer and reappears many times in his younger brother's life. (Ione) When he was about twelve, the family moved to a sprawling ranch at Ione in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. After school the boy rode horseback and drove cattle. The rhythms he hummed in the saddle, he recalled many times, became the seeds of his later experiments with meter. Cross-eyed, he could not read music well, and in his mother's lessons he dodged the score by learning pieces by ear. (The brand) There was one scene he himself named as the root of his lifelong stand against racism. As a child, he recalled, his father asked a Black friend to open his shirt, showed the boy the brand burned into the man's chest like a mark on livestock, and told him that such a thing must never happen again. (College) In 1938 he entered the College of the Pacific in Stockton to study veterinary medicine, but a zoology professor reportedly told him his mind was across the lawn at the conservatory and urged him to switch. In the music department it came out that he could not read music, and he faced expulsion; but professors who recognized his feel for counterpoint, the weaving of two melodies at once, spoke up for him, and he is said to have graduated in 1942 on the condition that he never teach. (Iola) At college he met Iola Whitlock, who was studying drama and broadcasting, and they married in September 1942. For the next 70 years Iola was his wife, his lyricist and, in effect, his manager.
II. War and a teacher · 1942–1950 (age 22–30)
(Enlistment) Right after the wedding he joined the Army. Sent to the European front in 1944, he was about to be posted as a rifleman in Patton's Third Army when, he recalled, his playing at a Red Cross show caught a colonel's eye, and he was ordered to form a band instead of going to the line. The band he put together, the Wolfpack, had Black and white soldiers playing side by side — a rare integrated band in an army still strictly segregated. Seeing the horrors of war up close later flowed into sacred music that sang of peace and reconciliation. (Desmond) Earlier still, in 1944, at an audition for an Army band in California, he first met the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, as both men later recalled. Desmond was drawn to Brubeck's bold harmonies, but the two did not truly join forces until after the war. (Milhaud) After his discharge he used the GI Bill to study with the French composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland. A master of polytonality — writing in several keys at once — and of counterpoint, Milhaud encouraged him not to abandon jazz. By contrast, when he briefly sought out Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles, he recalled, he balked at the demand to justify every note and quit after a lesson or two. (The trio) With fellow Milhaud students he formed an eight-piece octet that tried experimental arrangements drawing on classical techniques, and in 1949 he formed a trio with Cal Tjader on vibraphone and drums and Ron Crotty on bass. Fantasy, a fledgling San Francisco label, recorded the trio, and his name began to spread over local radio. Now a father and breadwinner, he scraped together a living shuttling between clubs and radio appearances.
III. The quartet and the campus · 1951–1957 (age 31–37)
(Injury) In 1951, during an engagement in Hawaii, he dove into the surf at Waikiki, struck his head on a sandbar and badly injured his neck. For a while there were fears of paralysis, and the trio scattered. With the fine movement of his fingers no longer what it had been, he explained, he shifted his playing toward block chords, hammering down harmonies in whole masses. Those heavy chords became his trademark. (The quartet) Once recovered, he formed a quartet with Paul Desmond that same year. Desmond, who said he wanted to sound like a dry martini, played a light, transparent alto that was the very opposite of Brubeck's massive piano — and for that very reason each illuminated the other. Their home base was the Black Hawk, a San Francisco club, and critics often grouped them with the calm West Coast cool jazz current. (Campus) It was Iola who opened up a new audience. She wrote to colleges across the United States proposing concerts, and students became their concert-hall audience. The 1953 live recording at Oberlin College and Columbia's 1954 “Jazz Goes to College” were the fruits of that effort. (Time) In 1954 the Columbia producer George Avakian signed him, and that November he became the second jazz musician, after Louis Armstrong, to appear on the cover of “Time.” When Duke Ellington knocked on his hotel door early one morning and handed him the magazine in congratulation, he recalled, he felt ashamed, thinking Ellington should have been on it first. “The Duke” and “In Your Own Sweet Way,” written in homage, were recorded by Miles Davis in the mid-1950s and became jazz standards. (Fantasy) Meanwhile, he recalled, he had believed he owned half of Fantasy, only to learn too late that he did not, and that disappointment was one reason he moved to Columbia. In 1956 the drummer Joe Morello joined, and the quartet's rhythm grew noticeably firmer.
The first fruit of the college circuit that Iola's letters opened. The block chords he found after his injury and Desmond's clear alto truly locked together for the first time before an auditorium audience.
- In “Perdido,” Desmond spins a long line across several choruses (one pass through the tune), altering a short motif little by little. Slipping in quotations from other tunes is his specialty.
- Brubeck's solo starts from a single-note melody and builds steadily into block chords, both hands hammering down whole harmonies. Here and there the texture of counterpoint — two melodies moving independently at once — comes through.
- Ron Crotty on bass and Lloyd Davis on drums keep the beat plainly. Over that simple floor, the conversation between piano and alto comes through all the more clearly.
- Recorded live in March 1953 at Finney Chapel, Oberlin College, Ohio. The hall's resonance and the audience's response are both captured, preserving the feel of jazz heard in a concert hall rather than a club.
IV. Nine and five · 1958–1960 (age 38–40)
(Wright) In 1958 the bassist Eugene Wright joined, completing what came to be called the classic quartet. Wright was Black. On a 1960 tour of Southern colleges, when many schools demanded that only the white members appear onstage, Brubeck refused, and 23 of 25 concerts were reportedly canceled. He also turned down a television appearance that would have kept his Black bassist off camera. The losses were heavy, but he did not back down. (The tour) In 1958 a State Department cultural-diplomacy tour took him on a route from Poland through Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Iran and Iraq. On the streets of Istanbul he heard musicians playing in 9/8 time and wrote it down, and the rhythms he encountered along the way led to the album “Jazz Impressions of Eurasia” and the piece “Blue Rondo à la Turk.” (Odd meters) In 1959 he announced he would make an album with no standards — all originals, and in odd meters of five and nine beats rather than the usual four. Columbia's executives reportedly hesitated, sure it would not sell. “Time Out,” recorded with the producer Teo Macero at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York, came out that December and sold enormously instead. “Take Five,” which Desmond wrote over Morello's five-beat drum pattern, reached the pop charts as a single in 1961, lodging itself in the public ear as few jazz singles ever had. (Wilton) In 1960 the family left California and settled in a house in the woods of Wilton, Connecticut. Its nearness to New York made touring and recording easy, and he spent the rest of his life there.
An unexpected hit from an odd-meter album that was never supposed to sell. Written by Desmond and born of Morello's drumming, it gives an even share to all four members of the quartet.
- The whole piece flows in five beats to the bar (5/4 time). Brubeck lays the floor with an ostinato, stubbornly repeating two chords, split into three and two, from start to finish.
- Desmond's alto is a light, dry sound with almost no tremble (vibrato). His solo takes its time and leaves space, making the unfamiliar meter sound oddly comfortable.
- The heart of the piece is Joe Morello's drum solo. Keeping within the five-beat frame, he splits and twists the beat so the listener is always on the verge of losing it.
- The form states the same melody twice, passes through a contrasting middle section (the bridge), then returns. Brubeck reportedly suggested using one of the two melodic fragments Desmond brought in as the bridge.
- Recorded in the summer of 1959 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York, produced by Teo Macero. The 1961 single is a shortened edit with the drum solo and other passages trimmed.
Rhythms he wrote down on the streets of Istanbul during the 1958 State Department tour meet American blues within a single piece. It is the opening track of “Time Out.”
- The first theme drives hard in 9/8 time, grouped two·two·two·three. The sway of that final three, where the stride seems to stretch ever so slightly, gives the piece its character.
- It is built in rondo form, with the theme returning again and again between other sections, so the title itself announces the form.
- When the solos begin, the meter suddenly shifts to a 12-bar blues in four (the basic jazz form that cycles through twelve bars). It is the stretch where Desmond, then Brubeck, loosen up at leisure.
- Near the end, the nine-beat theme and the four-beat blues alternate a few bars at a time, the two worlds colliding before the piece closes once more on the first theme.
V. The real ambassadors · 1961–1967 (age 41–47)
(Ambassadors) Back from the tour, the Brubecks began writing a musical about the contradictions of jazz diplomacy. America sent Black musicians abroad as symbols of freedom while discriminating against them at home. “The Real Ambassadors,” with lyrics by Iola, was recorded in 1961 with Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae and the vocal group Lambert·Hendricks·Ross, and was staged just once, at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival. Armstrong, the Brubecks recalled, broke into tears while singing one of the songs during the session. (Expansion) After the success of “Time Out,” the quartet pressed on with its rhythmic experiments in the seven-beat “Unsquare Dance” from “Time Further Out” (1961), in “Countdown” and in “Time Changes,” while a 1964 tour of Japan yielded “Jazz Impressions of Japan.” Playing countless dates each year, the quartet became one of the busiest and highest-earning jazz groups in America. (Critics) Popular success was not always welcome. Some critics panned his piano for not swinging, and he was dogged by the view that he was merely an idol of white college audiences. He admitted in interviews that such judgments hurt him, yet he did not change his ways. (Breakup) The classic quartet disbanded after a concert in Pittsburgh in December 1967. He was worn out by 16 years of touring and wanted to devote himself to composing close to home, where six children were growing up — those were the reasons he gave. It was the moment his center of gravity shifted from the pianist onstage to the composer at the score.
A piece from “Time Further Out,” which carried the rhythmic experiments forward on the strength of “Time Out.” Without Desmond, the trio plays mischievously with seven beats.
- Each bar holds seven beats (7/4 time). Handclaps mark the groupings of two·two·three, so that listeners who clap along soon feel the seven in their bodies.
- Eugene Wright's bass quietly repeats a seven-beat pattern throughout the piece, while Joe Morello taps the rim of his drum with his sticks for a dry, wooden sound.
- Brubeck's piano slips in a bluesy tune that sounds like a country dance. At the end he quotes the American folk song “Turkey in the Straw,” and the laughter that follows is said to be Morello's.
The Brubecks wrote this work with satire and sorrow about a contradiction: America sent Black musicians abroad as ambassadors of freedom while discriminating against them at home. Iola wrote the lyrics, and Louis Armstrong took the lead role.
- In his rough, warm voice, Armstrong offers the lyrics as if speaking rather than singing. It is the manner of a man telling his own story, the jazz ambassador who had toured the world.
- “They Say I Look Like God,” the heart of the album, calmly poses questions about God and race over a slow, chant-like accompaniment.
- Lambert·Hendricks·Ross lead the chorus with vocalese, setting words to fast lines like instrumental solos, while Carmen McRae's crisp diction stands in contrast to Armstrong's voice.
- It was recorded in New York in September 1961. It was staged only once, at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival.
VI. The composer's path · 1968–1988 (age 48–68)
(Oratorio) Soon after the breakup he unveiled the oratorio “The Light in the Wilderness” (1968), on the teachings of Jesus. The cantata “The Gates of Justice,” written the following year, sang of solidarity between the Black and Jewish communities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and “Truth Is Fallen” of 1971 was dedicated to the victims of the Kent State shootings. Memories of the battlefield and of stigma passed straight into the score. (Stage) He did not leave the stage behind either. From 1968 he toured with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, and in the 1970s he performed with his sons Darius, Chris and Dan, who had become professional musicians, under the name “Two Generations of Brubeck.” (Farewell) In 1976 the classic quartet made a reunion tour for its twenty-fifth anniversary. The following May, Desmond died of lung cancer. His last performance is said to have been onstage with Brubeck in New York earlier that year. Afterward Brubeck played in tribute to his old colleague at many concerts. (Mass) In 1980, on commission from a Catholic weekly, he wrote the mass “To Hope! A Celebration.” After the premiere a priest pointed out that the Lord's Prayer was missing. Brubeck was reluctant to touch the piece, but he later recalled hearing the melody in a dream, getting up and writing it down. That year he joined the Catholic Church. Since he had never belonged to any church before, he said, it was not a conversion but a joining. (Diplomacy) In 1987 his piece “Upon This Rock” was performed at the Mass of Pope John Paul II during his visit to San Francisco, and in 1988 he played at the dinner of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Moscow. The musical diplomacy that had begun with a State Department tour thirty years earlier had picked up again at the tail end of the Cold War.
A mass written just before he joined the Catholic Church. The Lord's Prayer he said he heard in a dream was added to it, and a man who had known war and discrimination took hope as his theme.
- It is scored for chorus, orchestra and jazz quartet. Between solemn choral sections that follow the order of the liturgy, the piano quartet breaks in with improvisation, and chant and jazz take turns.
- The choral melodies lean toward the simple and singable. One can hear the composer's intention plainly: he wanted the congregation to be able to sing along.
- Brubeck's signature block chords and feel for shifting meters survive even within sacred music, so that the rhythms of his quartet years seem to shine through here and there.
VII. The last chorus · 1989–2012 (age 69–92)
(Touring) From around the 1980s he kept a quartet going with alto saxophonist Bobby Militello (who joined in 1982) and drummer Randy Jones (who joined in 1978), among others, taking the stage every year even past eighty. Many remarked that while his hands had slowed, the weight of his harmonies and his sense of time were unchanged. “Take Five” closed nearly every concert. (Honors) He received the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, and in 2009, on his eighty-ninth birthday, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2000 the Brubeck Institute, bearing his name, was founded at his alma mater, the University of the Pacific, and the couple entrusted their scores, letters, photographs and performance records to the school. It was the very school where a ranch boy who could not read music had escaped expulsion and gone on to graduate. (Family) In 2009 he lost his son Michael. His marriage to Iola lasted seventy years, until his final day, and all the while Iola wrote lyrics, arranged schedules and stood beside him in nearly every scene of his musical life. (Conviction) To the end he called jazz the music of freedom. He regarded tearing down racial barriers and bringing different meters and cultures onto one stage as the same work, and even in interviews in old age he said he did not regret canceling the Southern tour. (Rest) On December 5, 2012, one day before his ninety-second birthday, on his way to a cardiology appointment, he died of heart failure at a hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut. Iola followed him in March 2014.
Lesser-known stories
(Royalties) “Take Five” is often remembered as Brubeck's tune, but its composer was Paul Desmond. Desmond, who died in 1977, left his composer's royalties for the piece to the American Red Cross, which was reported to have received millions of dollars since. Because the face of the tune was the Brubeck Quartet, its composer and his bequest remained comparatively little known. (Howard) “Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra,” recorded in 1959 by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic with the Brubeck Quartet, is the work not of Brubeck but of his brother Howard Brubeck. Howard, who had worked as Milhaud's assistant, contributed as a composer at many points in his younger brother's career, but his share was often forgotten, overshadowed by the brother's name printed large on the album covers. (Wolfpack) The Wolfpack, the integrated band he led during the war, dates from around 1945, before the U.S. military officially abolished racial segregation. Because the story became known mainly through oral-history interviews and documentaries late in his life, the fact that he had already held to the same principle on the battlefield, before canceling the Southern tour, is mentioned far less often than the 1960 episode. (Archive) The Brubeck Collection at the University of the Pacific holds the letters Iola sent to colleges, tour itineraries and contracts. As these materials were catalogued, Iola's part in the college tours and in planning several large-scale works came to light again. Since the official credits usually listed her only as lyricist, her role long remained a footnote.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Block chords
(Meaning) A block is a lump, a brick. The term means stacking notes into a single mass like bricks rather than laying them out one by one. (In jazz) A technique in which each note of the melody is packed underneath with a full chord and struck with both hands at once. The melody moves together with thick harmonies, making the sound grand and heavy. It resembles a choir in which, instead of the soprano singing alone, the altos, tenors and basses add harmony in the same rhythm and cry out with one voice. After injuring his neck, Brubeck made this technique his trademark.
Odd meter
(Meaning) Byeon (變) means departing from the ordinary, and bak (拍) means beat. The term refers to meters that break out of the familiar frames of two, three or four beats. (In jazz) A meter that divides a bar into an odd number of beats, such as five, seven or nine, grouped unevenly at that. The five beats of “Take Five” are grouped as three and two, and the nine beats of “Blue Rondo à la Turk” as two·two·two·three, so that they sway. If you were jumping rope to one·two·three·four and suddenly had to count to five before jumping, your feet would tangle; the Brubeck Quartet made that misalignment sound like a natural flow.
Ostinato
(Meaning) In Italian it means stubborn, persistent. The term describes clinging stubbornly to the same figure and refusing to let go. (In jazz) The repetition of a short melodic or harmonic pattern in the same shape throughout a piece, over which other instruments freely spin out solos. It is like a stomp-stomp-clap rhythm that goes on endlessly in the stands while the cheers sung over it keep changing. The piano accompaniment of “Take Five” is a classic example.
Rondo
(Meaning) It comes from the French rondeau and shares a root with the word for going round in a circle. The name holds the idea of a theme that goes all the way around and comes back again. (In jazz) Originally a form of classical music, a structure in which a central theme A keeps returning between other sections (A-B-A-C-A…). Brubeck brought this form into jazz to create “Blue Rondo à la Turk.” It is easy to picture if you think of a children's song in which the same refrain returns after each new verse.
Polytonality
(Meaning) Da (多, 'many') is joined to joseong (調性, 'tonality'), the word for which note a piece takes as its center. It means using several keys at once. (In jazz) A technique of layering two or more keys at the same time, a specialty of Brubeck's teacher Darius Milhaud. Brubeck brought it into jazz piano by, for instance, having his right and left hands move in different keys. Imagine two classes singing the same song at the same time, each at a different pitch, and a moment when they somehow fit together.
Counterpoint
(Meaning) The English counterpoint comes from a Latin phrase meaning 'note against note.' The Hanja daewi (對位) likewise means setting note against note. (In jazz) A compositional technique of weaving two or more melodies so that each moves independently yet they sound well together. Brubeck learned it in college and from Milhaud, and he loved performances in which piano and alto saxophone traded different melodies at the same time. A round, in which the people in front and behind sing different parts yet it all sounds like one song, is the simplest counterpoint.
Cool jazz
(In jazz) A movement of the 1950s that pursued a calm, restrained sound in contrast to the fast, hot playing of bebop. Because it was played by many musicians on the American West Coast, it was also called West Coast jazz. Paul Desmond's light, vibrato-less alto is the signature sound of the movement. Think of it as music that holds its tension inward, like a quiet game of chess rather than a rowdy pep rally. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech, calling someone cool means they are breezy and free of lingering attachments, or simply stylish.