Pioneering Jazz Musician Dave Brubeck Dies

By ⋅ December 5, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
Dave Brubeck in Monterey, California, September 2007. (Photo: REUTERS/Kimberly White)

Dave Brubeck in Monterey, California, September 2007. (Photo: REUTERS/Kimberly White)

The pioneering jazz musician, Dave Brubeck, died Wednesday of heart failure.

He was one day shy of his 92nd birthday.

Brubeck and his quartet produced a sound that helped define jazz in the 50′s and 60′s with pieces like “Take Five,” written by the group’s sax player Paul Desmond.

“Take Five” was the first jazz instrumental to sell more than a million copies. It epitomized modern jazz for a generation.

Dave Brubeck’s music was known all over the world.

In fact during the Cold War, he introduced his music, American music, to places that did not have diplomatic ties with the US.

Nate Chinen, jazz critic for The New York Times, said Brubeck was a cultural ambassador for the United States.

Brubeck’s modern jazz sound inspired musicians all over the world, including in Jamaica, where a Ska version of “Take Five,” was created in 1968 by instrumentalist Val Bennett.

A tip of the hat to the great Dave Brubeck.

Discussion

One comment for “Pioneering Jazz Musician Dave Brubeck Dies”

  • Michael Tiemann

    PRI has made a most ironic selection in choosing how best to honor Dave Brubeck and his quartet’s most iconic composition: Take Five.  Val Bennett’s Ska cover exemplifies how *not* to play Take Five, falling out of the 3-2 feel into a 2-2-2 feel immediately after the three bar introduction (at 4:31 in the soundcloud file).  This is perhaps the most common mistake one would expect from a middle-school band class playing the piece for the first time, but not something that their band teacher should ever let them play in concert, and certainly not something that should be played as the final eulogy for the great innovator of rhythm in jazz, Dave Brubeck.