Dave Brubeck, 1920–2012

By the jazz world’s wild standards, Dave Brubeck was a total square. He didn’t smoke or take drugs, and he limited himself to one martini before dinner. The pianist favored expressions like “baloney” and “you bet” over coarser alternatives. But when it came to music, Brubeck was anything but conventional. He experimented with challenging time signatures on tracks like “Take Five” and ran through all 12 keys on “The Duke,” winning the respect of his harder-living contemporaries. On tour in the Netherlands in the 1950s, stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith was asked by a reporter, “Isn’t it true that no white man can play jazz?” Smith gestured toward Brubeck and replied, “I’d like you to meet my son.”

Nothing in Brubeck’s background suggested that he was destined to be a jazz great. He grew up on the cattle ranch his father managed in northern California, said NBCNews.com. His mother, a classically trained pianist, banned her three sons from listening to the radio, believing they should play music if they wanted to hear it. The young Brubeck quickly mastered the piano, learning mostly by ear because he was born cross-eyed and had trouble reading music. Brubeck thought his future lay in ranching and had to be prodded to go to college, where at first he studied veterinary medicine. But he quickly “became smitten with jazz,” said the Associated Press, and switched his major to music.

After graduating in 1942, Brubeck enrolled in the Army as an infantryman, only to be pulled from frontline duty and given a military band to lead. There he met Paul Desmond, who would become Brubeck’s most important musical partner. The alto saxophonist “was a perfect foil; his lovely impassive tone was as ethereal as Brubeck’s style was densely chorded,” said The New York Times. Brubeck led a series of bands after being demobilized, and in 1951 he invited Desmond to join the Dave Brubeck Quartet. The group’s smooth West Coast sound proved a hit on college campuses, and “with the release of Time Out in 1959, Brubeck had an unexpected best seller,” said The Washington Post. It became the first jazz LP to sell more than a million copies, even though it included complex tunes like “Blue Rondo à la Turk.” The piece is in 9/8 time—nine beats to the measure instead of the customary four beats—and blended Turkish folk rhythms with jazz and Mozart.

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This success didn’t “come without reservations in the jazz world,” said The Guardian (U.K.). Some critics suggested that Brubeck only topped the charts because he was white, even though the pianist was a high-profile civil rights activist. He refused to play any venue that barred black musicians—his bassist, Gene Wright, was black—and he turned down a 1958 tour of South Africa when told that he could only perform with an all-white band. Brubeck always believed that race was irrelevant to music, explaining that jazz was based on the universal rhythm of the human heart. “It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat,” he said. “It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born—or before you’re born—and it’s the last thing you hear.”