A much-revered icon of jazz, Dave Brubeck is, as Doug Ramsey calls him, “one of the most celebrated and successful jazz musicians of all time.”

It’s About Time, Fred Hall’s biography, explores the many influences on Brubeck’s life and music: his youth on a cattle ranch in the foothills of the Sierras; a stint in Europe with Patton’s army during World War II; the development of the West Coast jazz scene and the rise of the Dave Brubeck Quartet; musical relationships with Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright, Joe Morello, and many more jazz greats; his phenomenal experiments with polytonality and polyrhythm; his fifty-three-year marriage to Iola, manager, collaborator, and mother of their six children; and important career breakthroughs, such as the first-ever million-selling jazz single, “Take Five.”

Including an annotated discography, It’s About Time is much more than an upbeat examination of the Brubeck phenomenon. It is also a penetrating view of the culture, the music, the musicians, the recording industry, and race relations of the country and the century that gave birth to jazz.