Well what is there to say that won’t be said a hundred, a thousand times today and tomorrow and then the day after and beyond, about Dave Brubeck whose death at 91 following heart failure has been announced? The subject is vast and the analysis will be long and needed.

Along with only a tiny number of jazz musicians (Louis Armstrong chief among them) his name transcended music and was public property, in Brubeck’s case mainly because of ‘Take Five’ the instrumental hit Paul Desmond wrote and the quartet played to such effect, achieved with the slightly unusual time signature, impatient feel, and a melody that has permeated the very sinews of every street corner you’re likely to chance upon. A “living legend" the US Library of Congress put it, he passed away in Connecticut but his music was not of a place, more of a state of mind. A gentle reverie a generation of college educated Americans in the late 1950s and 60s will feel was synonymous with their youth, and which will remain.

Above Dave Brubeck on the cover of Time magazine