Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck, the pianist from Concord, California, spent his career proving that jazz could count past four and still swing. Born in 1920, he was drafted into the Army, where a Red Cross show he played went over so well it kept him out of combat, and where he formed one of the first racially mixed bands in the service. In 1951 he launched the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and its classic lineup, with Paul Desmond on saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums, ran from 1958 to 1967.

A State Department tour in 1958 fed into Time Out in 1959, the record that turned odd meters into a hit. Desmond's "Take Five" loped along in 5/4 like it was the most natural thing in the world and became the best-selling jazz single ever, while "Blue Rondo à la Turk" in 9/8 and "Unsquare Dance" in 7/4 kept the game going. Brubeck folded his mother's classical training, West Coast cool and the pull of Darius Milhaud into what came to be called third stream.

The honors piled up: a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, a Library of Congress Living Legend title in 2003, Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, and a spot for Time Out in the National Recording Registry in 2005. He kept releasing music until his death in 2012, and "Take Five" still sneaks onto rock radio's countdowns, a jazz tune elbowing in among the guitars.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.