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Dave is great. I do have a hard time believing he never learned to read music over his entire musical career. He may think in "numbers" as do most jazz musicians (as in VI-II-V-I or the I-VI-II-V III-VI-II-V "Rhythm Changes"), but still he has to know how to apply that to the many scales and not being able to read a chart is a large obstacle which can easily be overcome by simply learning to read.

As a matter of fact, I know this is total bunk because when alto sax player and fellow band mate Paul Desmond wrote the tremendous hit song "Take Five", Brubeck is the one who wrote it down for him because Paul didn't know how to!

I do have a hard time believing he never learned to read music over his entire musical career.

Indeed. This is from www.Schirmer.com:

Born on 6 December 1920 in Concord, California, jazz legend Dave Brubeck is equally distinguished as composer and pianist. Studies at the College of the Pacific and with Milhaud at Mills College led to the founding, with fellow students, of the experimental Jazz Workshop Ensemble which recorded in 1949 as the Dave Brubeck Octet. Later, in 1958, the combination of Brubeck with drummer Joe Morello, double bassist Eugene Wright, and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond quickly achieved an overwhelming popular success as the Dave Brubeck Quartet. The Quartet's experimentation with time signatures unusual to jazz produced works like Blue Rondo a la Turk and Take Five, introducing millions of enthusiastic young listeners to unexplored regions of jazz. The group recorded and performed together continuously through 1967.

As composer, Brubeck has written and, in some cases, recorded several large-scale works including two ballets, a musical, an oratorio, four cantatas, a mass, works for jazz combo and orchestra, and many solo piano pieces. In the last 20 years, he has organized several new quartets and continued to appear at the Newport, Monterey, Concord, and Kool Jazz Festivals. Brubeck performed at the White House in 1964 and 1981 and at the 1988 Moscow summit honoring the Gorbachevs. He is the recipient of four honorary degrees, the BMI Jazz Pioneer Award, and the 1988 American Eagle Award presented by the National Music Council.

It is often said in jazz circles that Erroll Garner was the last great jazz musician who never learned to read music.

I'm sure he can read music as in understand the charts - what he may mean is that he cannot play from music in real time as he reads, i.e. he cannot take a chart he's never seen before and play it spontaneously.

From a classically trained perspective, one cannot read music if one cannot immediately play the music as one reads the score.

" He may think in "numbers" as do most jazz musicians..."

I am not a musician, but I enjoy music. I have thought that the great ones could somehow visualize the music. It is the only way I could explain Andre Previn playing three songs at once and ending all on the same note. To me, a non-musician, Dave Brubeck plays the most technically complex music.