In the movie Jailhouse Rock, at a professorial cocktail party, Elvis's character is nonplussed by a pretentiously intellectual discussion of jazz. 'I think Brubeck and Desmond have gone just as far with dissonance as I care to go,' says one of the guests. This was 1957, three years after Brubeck had moved from the small Fantasy label to all-powerful Columbia and seen his face on the cover of Time magazine. His Quartet, featuring poll-winning alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, seemed to be at the height of its fame, the biggest-selling jazz group in the country. Yet two years later, Brubeck would record the album that outsold all his previous recordings and yielded the first ever million-selling jazz single. The album was, of course, Time Out.
展开▼
