![]() One of his most innovative compositions, 1959's "Blue Rondo a la Turk," with its exotic nine-beat rhythm, was based primarily on a folk song that Brubeck heard while touring the Middle East in 1958, according to jazz writer Kevin Whitehead's Why Jazz? A Concise Guide.Brubeck's virtuosity led to his being appointed bandleader, even though he was a lowly private first class and was outranked by the other members. According to Hall, some of his fellow musicians were soldiers who had been injured in combat and were recruited for the group from their beds in military hospitals. ![]() Army in Europe, and while in the service he entertained other soldiers as part of the Wolf Pack, a racially-integrated jazz band - at the time, a rarity, especially in the still-segregated U.S. During World War II, Brubeck served in the U.S.He managed to hide the problem, because his musical ear was so sharp that he could listen to other students play piano exercises and then imitate them. Brubeck, who was born cross-eyed, had vision problems in his youth that actually made it difficult for him to read sheet music when his mother was teaching him. But they weren't just a stylish affectation, according to Hall. Brubeck's heavy, tortoise-rim glasses became his trademark - and probably inspired a lot of would-be hipsters to head to the optician.According to Brubeck biographer Fred Hall, Brubeck's father Pete, a champion rodeo roper, wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, but his mother Bessie - who thought he had a musical future - forbade him from using certain rope techniques that might injure his hands. The son of a cowboy and a piano teacher, he spent much of his youth on a ranch near Stockton, Calif., tending to cattle when he wasn't at the keyboard. Brubeck came from a colorful background, even for a jazz musician.Here are five intriguing facts about one of American culture's great treasures: Brubeck was a musical innovator who incorporated unorthodox rhythms into his work and infused jazz piano with classical influences, playing with what Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich calls "an elegance of tone and phrase that supposedly were the antithesis of the American sound." But he also expanded the boundaries of the jazz idiom, composing and performing choral and orchestral works that challenged people's preconceptions as well. His Dave Brubeck Quartet scored the first-ever million-selling jazz LP, Time Out, in 1959, and his signature song "Take Five" actually crossed over onto the Billboard pop charts in 1961. 4 in Connecticut, was one of the biggest stars in the history of jazz.
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