- All of the crucial recordings from the first decade of Dave Brubeck�s career
- Featuring the hit �Take Five� and many more classics
- Feat. Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and many more
�The American pianist and composer Dave Brubeck (1920-2012) was one of the most successful jazz musicians of the 20th century. With his album Time Out and its single Take Five, composed by Paul Desmond, he scored one of the biggest hits in the history of this music.
Initially, Brubeck wanted to study veterinary medicine, but his professor urged him to follow his true passion and make the move over to the music department. During his military service he founded one of the first multiracial ensembles and in 1944 also met saxophonist Paul Desmond. After studying with Darius Milhaud he turned back to jazz and founded first an octet, including Desmond and Cal Tjader, a trio, again with Tjader, and a quartet: the trio + Desmond. Brubeck was injured in a surf accident in 1951, and afterwards fought with severe pains when playing the piano and subsequently changed his style towards the characteristic block chords. The quartet with Desmond played a successful long-term engagement at the Jazz Club Black Hawk in San Francisco and Brubeck's recordings began to sell in larger quantities.
Success allowed Brubeck to book his quartet into the auditoriums of universities that had not previously presented Jazz, and to reach a large white middle-class audience. With his appearance and recording at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, which he dedicated entirely to his role-model Duke Ellington, he also convinced the elite of New York�s music critics.
This compilation combines the best recordings from the crucial first decade of Brubeck's career. The great live recordings at college and festival appearances, the series with odd rhythmic meters that started with Time Out, his first solo album, the recordings with musical impressions from his worldwide concert tours, and the totally underrated The Real Ambassadors , featuring Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross with a fantastic libretto by Brubeck's wife Iola.
