Pianist, composer Brubeck, 91, dies

Dave Brubeck, a pianist and composer whose distinctive mixture of experimentation and accessibility made him one of the most popular jazz musicians of the 1950s and ’60s, died Wednesday morning in Norwalk, Conn. He would have turned 92 today.

He died while on his way to a cardiology appointment, Russell Gloyd, his producer, conductor and manager for 36 years, said. Brubeck lived in Wilton, Conn.

In a long and successful career, Brubeck helped repopularize jazz. His quartet’s 1959 recording of “Take Five” was the first jazz single to sell a million copies.

Outside of the group’s most famous originals, which had the charm and durability of pop songs (“Time Out,” “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” “It’s a Raggy Waltz”), some of its best work was in its overhauls of standards such as “You Go to My Head,” “All the Things You Are” and “Pennies From Heaven.”

David Warren Brubeck was born on Dec. 6, 1920, in Concord, Calif.

In 1942, he married Iola Whitlock, who he met while attending the College of the Pacific, near Stockton, Calif. He graduated that year and was immediately drafted. Fortwo years he played with the Army band at Camp Haan in Southern California.

Finished with the Army at 25, Brubeck moved with his wife into an apartment in Oakland, Calif., and studied at Mills College with the French composer Darius Milhaud.

Brubeck had met his most important musical colleague, Paul Desmond, in an Army band in 1943. Desmond and his alto saxophone were a perfect foil; his delicate, impassive tone was as ethereal as Brubeck’s style was densely chorded. In 1947 they met again and found instant musical rapport.

In 1954 Brubeck was the first jazz musician to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. In 1958, as part of a State Department program that brought jazz as an offer of good will during the Cold War, his quartet traveled in the Middle East and India, and Brubeck became intrigued by musical languages that didn’t stick to 4/4 time - what he called “march-style jazz,” the meter that had been the music’s bedrock.

The result was the album Time Out, recorded in 1959. With the hits “Take Five” (composed by Desmond in 5/4 meter) and “Blue Rondo a la Turk” (composed by Brubeck in 9/8), the album propelled Brubeck onto the pop charts.

Other collaborations followed, including with his musician sons Darius (a pianist), Chris (a bassist), Dan (a drummer) and Matthew (a cellist).

In 2004, he worked with producer Richard Rosenberg, then the artistic director for the Hot Springs Music Festival, on an album for the American Classics imprint.

Information for this article was contributed by Daniel E. Snotnik of The New York Times and Eric Harrison of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 12/06/2012

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