Max Décharné

The good boy of jazz: Dave Brubeck’s time has come round at last

The clean-living pianist finally gets the recognition he deserves

issue 07 March 2020

On 8 November 1954, Dave Brubeck’s portrait appeared on the cover of Time magazine, accompanied by the words ‘The Joints are Really Flipping’. Inside, the pianist and leader of his own jazz quartet was variously described as ‘a wigging cat with a far-out wail’ and ‘way out on Cloud 7’, who when at college chatted up his future wife Iola with the immortal philosophical enquiry: ‘Tell me about this Plato cat.’

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