During the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors, President Barack Obama recalled seeing honoree Dave Brubeck in concert in 1971 in Honolulu. Obama reflected in his remarks, “You can’t understand America without understanding jazz, and you can’t understand jazz without understanding Dave Brubeck.”
Brubeck, one of the United States’ greatest ambassadors of the distinctly American art form, had a seven-decade-long career that never saw his talent slump or falter. The pianist toured until he was 90, still playing with the same vigor that delivered him to that point. He passed away at age 91 on Dec. 5, just one day shy of his 92nd birthday.
Brubeck provided the world with music that would live on and continue to get passed down through generations. He also managed to make an entire generation fall in love with the art form he effectively delivered through his finger tips.
“He was the first crossover artist,” Syracuse Jazz Fest founder and president Frank Malfitano said upon hearing news of Brubeck’s death. “He brought the world to jazz. He brought everybody to jazz. A mainstream concert-going audience listened to jazz, didn’t know it was jazz and fell in love with it. He made people fall in love with jazz. Those charts are timeless. They’re still brilliant 50 years later. It’s one of those deals where if you asked people, most aren’t familiar with jazz, the masses. But I think everybody knows who Dave Brubeck was.”
Brubeck was born on Dec. 6, 1920, in Concord, Calif. His mother was a conservatory-trained pianist who encouraged his classical training. However, he always had difficulty reading music and therefore depended on his ears to play—a skill that came to benefit him in the world of jazz.
Brubeck attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., with plans to become, of all things, a veterinarian, but a professor noticed the time he spent in the music college and suggested the switch. Even then, he nearly didn’t graduate because of his music-reading difficulties. A professor noticed his talent and potential genius and begged to let him graduate.
By 1959, his LP Time Out (Columbia/Legacy), with the ever-recognizable “Take Five,” became the first jazz album to sell 1 million copies. He stood up as an advocate for racial harmony by refusing to play concerts in the South when officials wouldn’t allow his African American bass player, Eugene Wright, to perform with the group. He brought jazz to college campuses in the 1950s. He toured the world, including once-forbidden countries in the Middle East and the old Soviet empire. He also went on to father six children after marrying his wife, Iola, who he proposed to on the first date. His children Dan, Darius, Chris and Mathew all became musicians.
Brubeck also performed at Jazz Fest in 1991, 2000 and 2007, although Malfitano calls him an artist that could have come back every year. “Never enough,” he said.
Malfitano, who first heard Brubeck around 1958, says, “I owe my whole life to Dave Brubeck. He was always an outsider and I love that about Dave. They {Brubeck and saxophonist Paul Desmond} were so unconventional. Some very unflattering things were said, but obviously over time, that all got erased and he became an NEA {National Education Association} jazz master.”
Brubeck wasn’t simply a jazz contributor: He changed the world with his interpretation of the art form. He opened up jazz to an entirely new audience, all while exploring new time signatures, tempos and dives into polytonality, playing in more than one musical key at a time. He and Desmond became so tight musically that they could sense where each other was taking the music. Desmond would soar while Brubeck would attack. He was a brilliant force and presence in the world of music and one whose absence will be noticeably missed.
“I’m a huge fan of improvisation,” Malfitano says. “But I’m not a huge fan of free-form jamming. Dave could establish melody and structure, take it outside and bring it back in a way that I don’t think anybody can touch. When you think about giants, you think about Brubeck, Miles {Davis}, {John} Coltrane. He’s the master. It’s a sad day for the world of music. . . for the world.”
