RIP: Dave Brubeck 1920-2012
The BBC has a nice, concise obituary of the cowboy turned jazz composer and musician who died of a heart attack a week before his 92nd birthday.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet ruled the college jazz circuit for years, and you couldn’t go a week on a college radio station without having someone request a cut from the crossover album Time Out. The most productive and longest lasting version of the Quartet featured Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on saxophone, Joe Morello on drums, and Eugene Wright on bass.
Obviously the two biggest hits were Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” and Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk”, but the common theme of the album was the use of unconventional time signatures, 5/4 in the case of “Take Five” and 9/8 for “Blue Rondo”.
I haven’t heard those two cuts for years, and am certainly not musically gifted, but I can still ‘hear’ them when I see the titles. Be aware that listening to the album will draw you in and you will soon be listening to Dizzy, Miles, Thelonious …
December 5, 2012 7 Comments
