Iconic jazz pianist Dave Brubeck has died at age 91. His exquisite phrasing and tireless sense of innovation can be heard on his best known recording, Take Five, so named because it abandons the usual 4/4 time of jazz for a much more adventurous 5/4. (one-two-three-one-two, one-two-three-one-two...) Take Five, like the hundreds of other ground breaking recordings and the man who played on them, inhabits a special place of timeless cool. Wrote the Chicago Tribune of Mr. Brubeck:
As a humanist, he was at the forefront of integration, playing black jazz clubs throughout the deep South in the ’50s, a point of pride for him. "For as long as I’ve been playing jazz, people have been trying to pigeonhole me,” he once told the Tribune. "Frankly, labels bore me."