📍Ione, CA 95640, USA
1933 – 1938“I was born in Concord, California, in December 1920, the youngest of three sons of Pete Brubeck, a cowboy and champion roper, and Elizabeth, who had studied piano in England with Myra Hess and Tobias Matthay and wanted to be a concert pianist. She played piano all day and taught pupils at home, and my brothers became musicians, but I wanted to be a cowboy like my father, and I quit lessons at eleven to concentrate on roping. In 1933, when I was twelve, we moved to Ione, a ranching town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, south-east of Sacramento, where my father became manager of the Arroyo Seco ranch, forty-five thousand acres with eight thousand head of cattle and hundreds of horses. I worked with him every day, riding, roping and branding, and when I finished grammar school, he gave me four cattle to start my own herd. I loved the life of the ranch and the open country. But I also kept playing the piano, making up my own music, and at thirteen I played with local dance bands on weekends. I had poor eyesight and never learned to read music properly; I faked it so well nobody noticed. I went to the College of the Pacific in Stockton to study veterinary science, planning to come back to ranching, but a teacher told me to go across the lawn to the music building. I studied with Darius Milhaud, and in 1951 formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Our album Time Out, with Paul Desmond's Take Five, became the first jazz album to sell a million copies. The rhythms of the ranch never left my music.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today