Dan Brubeck's new album celebrates his parents' partnership

For over 60 years, Dave Brubeck was one of the most important jazz musicians in America, but not many knew just how heavily he relied on his wife Iola in his career.

According to Brubeck's son Dan Brubeck, Iola was not just a key organizer of her husband's grassroots fanbase. She was also the lyricist of many of his songs.

"No one really knew that she had written a lot of lyrics to these songs, and they were really beautiful lyrics and she was really well-respected in the music industry on a lot of levels," Dan Brubeck said.

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The relationship of his parents, romantic and working, is celebrated in the Dan Brubeck Quartet's latest live album, Live From The Cellar: Celebrating the Music & Lyrics of Dave & Iola Brubeck, which features songs his parents worked on together.

"She's always been a very behind-the-scenes person. I think women of that generation were more the 'woman behind the man' kind of philosophy," Dan Brubeck told All Points West host Robyn Burns.

"Often I felt sad about that because my mom was extremely bright and very talented."

In 2014, when the album was coming together, Iola was dying of cancer. But before her death, she was able to contribute to the album by writing liner notes something she had also done for many of her husband's albums.

"I was kind of in disbelief," Dan Brubeck said when he received the liner notes. "I knew she was in a major amount of pain and going through a lot of stuff. I couldn't even imagine how she could concentrate on writing them."

"On one level I was shocked. On another level, that's how my mom was. She said she wanted to write them, so she did it."

Dan Brubeck will be performing songs from the album at Hermann's Jazz Club in Victoria on Thursday, Nov. 12.

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