Very sad to note the passing of Dave Brubeck.

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“For as long as I’ve been playing jazz, people have been trying to pigeonhole me. Frankly, labels bore me.” – Dave Brubeck

I hear you’re mad about Brubeck/
I like your eyes, I like him too/
He’s an artist, a pioneer/
We’ve got to have some music on the new frontier.
– Donald Fagan, “New Frontier”

“If you own two and only two jazz albums, I’ll wager they’re Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘Time Out.’ This says a lot about your taste. Namely, that it’s good.” – Jed Gottlieb, Boston Herald

I own a lot more than two, but those two are among them.

Dave Brubeck passed away this morning from heart failure. He was 91, and would have turned 92 tomorrow.

My dad loved all kinds of music, and “Time Out” was one of the few record albums he would sit down and listen to, focus his attention on, time and again.

“Time Out” was released in 1959. Critics hated it at the time. Goes to show what critics know. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: the critic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.