Thursday, December 6, 2012

Dave Brubeck

I first heard of Dave Brubeck on December 31st, 1961. Brubeck and his jazz quartet were the subject of a report by Walter Cronkite on the Sunday afternoon CBS show called "The Twentieth Century." My dad and I watched that show, which featured Brubeck's hit, "Take Five." My dad's a jazz lover, and even though I was mainly a fan of Top 40 pop music at the time, I immediately became hooked on jazz as performed by the Brubeck quartet when I heard "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk." A few days later my dad and I went to a department store and bought the group's "Time Out" LP on Columbia records, and played it over and over again in subsequent weeks.

Over the years, I've collected hundreds of jazz LPs and CDs by artists like Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Woody Shaw, and Herbie Hancock. I rarely play a jazz album now without remembering that afternoon when I first saw Dave Brubeck's combo playing "Take Five" on TV.

Brubeck resigned from life this week. Meanwhile, Limbaugh lives on.

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