It's About Time

A much-revered icon of jazz, Dave Brubeck is, as Doug Ramsey calls him, one of the most celebrated and successful jazz musicians of all time. It s About Time, Fred Hall s biography, explores the many influences on Brubeck s life and music: his youth on a cattle ranch in the foothills of the Sierras; a stint in Europe with Patton s army during World War II; the development of the West Coast jazz scene and the rise of the Dave Brubeck Quartet; musical relationships with Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright, Joe Morello, and many more jazz greats; his phenomenal experiments with polytonality and polyrhythm; his fifty-three-year marriage to Iola, manager, collaborator, and mother of their six children; and important career breakthroughs, such as the first-ever million-selling jazz single, Take Five. Including an annotated discography, It s About Time is much more than an upbeat examination of the Brubeck phenomenon. It is also a penetrating view of the culture, the music, the musicians, the recording industry, and race relations of the country and the century that gave birth to jazz.