So here, from “Time Out,” is the classic “Take Five.” See if you can count along and really feel the five-beat rhythm. Players like him helped develop what became known as “cool jazz” or the “West Coast sound.” While other saxophone players were playing fast and brash, Desmond chose to lay back and play sweetly. Much of it was due to Desmond and his smooth, dry sound on the sax. The Dave Brubeck Quartet stayed together for decades and really developed a signature group sound. This gives the tunes a very different rhythmic feel, as you’ll hear in today’s song, called “Take Five.” Written by Brubeck’s longtime collaborator and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, the song has five beats per measure and went on to become a Top 40 hit single - something that rarely happens to a jazz tune. Brubeck experimented with songs that had five, six, nine, 13 beats per measure. Most of the songs we listen to have four beats per measure. The album was based on Brubeck’s search for the new, with all of the songs being in different time signatures. He released an album called “Time Out” in 1959 with his quartet that was the first jazz album to be certified platinum (1,000,000 copies sold). ![]() ![]() ![]() Loved by many, he is one of the few jazz artists to cross over to a non-jazz audience. Paul Desmond had written Take Five partly as a gesture to the quartet’s drummer, Joe Morello, who wanted to show off his newfound confidence playing in 5/4 time. Welcome to Day 2 of Jazz Appreciation Month! Today we turn our ears to Dave Brubeck, another one of the towering figures in jazz.īrubeck had a 60-year career and played into his 80s before he passed away last year.
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