“Take Five” #25 10/9/1961

In the early days of rock, tunes from other genres regularly snuck onto the pop charts. Here’s one that became a moderate pop hit in October 1961. Dave Brubeck was a well-established pianist in the jazz field when his quartet recorded this instrumental in 1959, but it wasn’t released for two years. Brubeck would often perform in unusual time signatures; this one was in 5/4 time, thus the title “Take Five.” The single cut out almost all the drum solo, which sounds free-form here on the album version but was actually very structured. I can SO appreciate the musicianship on this record.