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Comment by andrewcooke | Hacker News Reader

"put jazz back in vogue"? i've searched the article and still can't work out what this is referring to. is he particularly prized in the usa? was he some kind of tv personality?

(i listen to a fair bit of jazz; respect to the guy - he made one of the famous jazz records - but if he was the first jazz musician on time's cover that, in honesty, says a lot more about time, american culture, and his skin colour (no criticism of brubeck implied - see the article for his impeccable credentials there) than his status as a jazz musician).

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> "but if he was the first jazz musician on time's cover that, in honesty, says a lot more about time"

That's a mistake in the obituary: he was the second jazz musician to make the cover of Time. Louis Armstrong was first, five years earlier in 1949 (http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19490221,00.html)

So it should really be "put jazz back in time" ;-)

It's right in the third paragraph:

"In a long and successful career, Mr. Brubeck helped repopularize jazz at a time when younger listeners had been trained to the sonic dimensions of the three-minute pop single. His quartet’s 1959 recording of “Take Five” was the first jazz single to sell a million copies."

He got a jazz record up the pop charts at a time when that was not really something that was happening.

Yep, I think Brubeck had a place as a cultural signifier in that time. I think of this little verse from Donald Fagen's (voice of Steely Dan) reminiscence of his days growing up in the late 50s:

   Have you got a steady boyfriend
   'Cause honey I've been watching you
   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.

There's two factors here. One is that bebop--the previous ruling jazz style--faded considerably during WWII, and was also dominated by black culture. Brubeck brought jazz back into style, and also--as you noted--made it less of a racial issue. The previous white jazz was big band swing, which had its heyday in the '20s and was long gone by Brubeck's day.

thanks. i should read some history. i have very little idea of the social context.

You're a bit off in your chronology. Swing was big up through the late 40s - Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington dominated the charts.

Bebop didn't really take over until the post war years.

...and Benny Goodman and Count Basie.

Bebop was created in NYC clubs during WWII during club dates that occurred during the recording strikes and shellac shortages.

Bebop didn't get commercial play until soldiers came home and heard the new sounds put down by Bird, Diz, and Monk.

In many ways, bebop and jump blues filled the gap between the two "music for dancing": swing and rock and roll.

In addition to what has already been commented, his music also reached the more classically-oriented people who found jazz to be too esoteric and incomprehensible.

Basically, he created jazz music that a wide spectrum of people were able to appreciate and enjoy, while at the same time advancing the state of the art.

That's the biggest issue with jazz. It's for jazzers. But anyone, jazzers and newbies alike, can dig Take 5 or much of their other output.

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