Iola Brubeck

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Iola Brubeck was an American lyricist and the wife of the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. She met him at the College of the Pacific in California and married him in 1942. Dave Brubeck became known with his quartet and the record Time Out (1959), with music in unusual time signatures. Iola worked behind the scenes on that career. She wrote lyrics to her husband's compositions and helped organise the quartet's performances at American universities, through which the group reached a new, young audience.

Music and breakthrough

Her best-known work is The Real Ambassadors, a jazz musical that she and Dave made in 1961. The piece was partly based on what she and their colleagues experienced on foreign tours for the American State Department. Brubeck's quartet had made such a tour in 1958, with concerts in Poland, Turkey, India and Iran, among other places. On the record Louis Armstrong, the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and Carmen McRae sing. In 1962 the musical was performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Influence

The Real Ambassadors looks with humour and criticism at jazz as America's calling card. Musicians who faced racial segregation at home had to carry their country's freedom abroad. With her lyrics Iola Brubeck gave that contradiction a voice.

Listening

In School of Rock

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• Magazine: Jazz as a Secret Weapon^NL Magazine