You can't understand America without understanding jazz. And you can't understand jazz, without understanding Dave Brubeck. (Applause.) His mother was a classical pianist with high hopes for her son. And by the time he was four, he was playing himself. But by the time he was a teenager, he was tearing up local honky-tonks. Even his mother had to admit: "There is some hope for David after all." (Laughter.)
And perhaps it was World War II – his service in Patton's Army – that changed his sound, forcing him, as he said, to work the war out of his system by playing some "pretty vicious piano." Whatever it was, his sound – the distinctive harmonies and improvisations of the Dave Brubeck Quartet – would change jazz forever, prompting Time magazine to put him on the cover as the leader of a new jazz age.
Having brought jazz into the mainstream, he then transformed it, with innovative new rhythms on albums like "Time Out" – the first jazz album to ever sell more than a million copies and still one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time.
Dave Brubeck has never stopped reaching new audiences: Performing for Presidents from Johnson to Reagan; composing orchestral tributes to Martin Luther King and Pope John Paul II; and even in his 80s, dazzling jazz festivals across America.
And I know personally how powerful his performances can be. I mentioned this to Dave backstage. In the few weeks that I spent with my father as a child – he came to visit me for about a month when I was young – one of the things he did was to take me to my first jazz concert, in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1971, and it was a Dave Brubeck concert. (Laughter and applause.) And I've been a jazz fan ever since. The world that he opened up for a 10-year-old boy was spectacular.
And, Dave, for the joy that you've given millions of jazz lovers like me, for your six decades of revolutionary rhythms, you are rightly honored – especially today, on your 89th birthday. (Applause.)

Barack Obama at KEnnedy Center on Dave Brubeck's 89th birthday