“I am primarily a jazz composer. Most of us don’t even like the word jazz—Ellington didn’t like it, Stan Kenton didn’t like it. It’s really an extension of what Bach and Mozart did every day: improvise. Bach improvised every Sunday. Classical music shouldn’t abandon it. The composers most likely to live on from the 20th century are Ives, Copland, Bernstein, Ellington, Gershwin and all the people wise enough to use jazz, like they were.” – Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck has long served as proof that creative jazz and popular success can go together. With the success of his Dave Brubeck Quartet in the 1950s and 1960s and the incredible public response to their style of playing, Brubeck was at once embraced by the public, helping to reawaken public interest in jazz after World War II. Their album “Time Out,” released in 1959, was not only the first million-selling jazz record in modern jazz history but also triggered a slew of albums by other artists also experimenting in nontraditional time signatures.

In 1954, just three years after the founding of the quartet with himself, Paul Desmond, drummer Joe Dodge, and bassist Bob Bates, Brubeck became the first jazz musician to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, which heralded Brubeck as the leader of “the birth of a new kind of jazz age in the U.S.”

Brubeck left the quartet in 1967 to develop his composing skills in the realms of ballet, opera and scores. He and his wife Iola often worked together writing lyrics to many of his songs and collaborated on writing “The Real Ambassadors,” a musical theater piece starring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae.

In 2009, Brubeck was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient. And in 2003, the Library honored him as a Living Legend.

From 1942-1944, Brubeck served in the Army during World War II. While in service, he led the Wolf Pack Band. The Library’s Veterans History Project has his collection, which includes an oral history interview of his wartime experiences.

The Library’s Denise Gallo and Larry Appelbaum sat down with Brubeck and his wife to discuss their lives and working together.

For those really into “all that jazz,” the Library has several related collections, including the Gerry Mulligan Collection and the photos of William P. Gottlieb.