Actually, the song is not written Brubeck himself, but by the saxophonist
Paul Desmond (born Paul Emil
Breitenfeld; November 25, 1924 – May 30, 1977)
"He was an American jazzalto saxophonist and composer, born in San Francisco, best known for
the work he did in the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for penning that
group's greatest hit, "Take Five". He was not only one of
the most popular musicians to come out of the West Coast's "cool
jazz" scene, but also the possessor of a legendary and
idiosyncratic wit." (Wikipedia.org)
The song was inspired by Turkish music, when Brubeck was on a tour sponsed by the State Department. The music, supposingly based on Bulgarian mfolk music, was in a in western music rare 9/8. Brubeck decided to make an album not based on the traditional 4/4 in jazz.
It was the first jazzquintuple song to become mainstram, reaching the Billboard in 1961.
I like the song because it has a smooth swing and brings the 5/4 to become an agile beat. Probably a lot of people don´t realise that it is an "off beat", just feel is somehow uncomfortable to to dance on. It doesn´t even matter part of the song is a drum solo, which makes it even more spedctacular that the song became mainstream.
The song has been covered dozens of time. In some of the future entrys I´ll look at some of them. Both piano and guitar are popular instruments to play the song, apart from all types of copper instrument like sax, trompet and so on.
The one thing missing on the original track are vocals. Not that music should have vocals, but to make a 5/4 beat work is much more easy withour vocals than with them. To make a popular song work with a lyrics in quintuple beat is much more a challenge. But Dave Brubeck wrote lyrics two years after the song was recorded together with his wife. The first to sing this was Carmen McRae. Al Jarreau had a fabulous live version in 1977.
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar