Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck, the influential pianist whose composition Take Five became a standard in the annals of jazz, died of heart failure Dec. 5, one day before his 92nd birthday.

Brubeck played his “cool” brand of West Coast jazz before Blessed John Paul II and eight presidents.

He became a Catholic in 1980 after completing a Mass titled To Hope.

Brubeck said in a PBS biographical profile, “I didn’t convert to Catholicism, because I wasn’t anything to convert from.

I just joined the Catholic Church.”