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The top-selling jazz single of all time and an enduring jazz standard is anything but standard. “Take Five,” written by Dave Brubeck Quartet saxophonist Paul Desmond, is played in 5/4 time, not 3/4 waltz time or 4/4, which was so common that it was called just that — common time. Messing around with different time signatures was controversial when the song was released in 1959. Columbia, the record label, fretted that no one could dance to a song in such an odd meter. Hard bop cats complained that it didn’t swing, and to be fair, they had a point. While “Take Five” indeed wasn’t the modern jazz being defined on 52nd Street, it was high modernism, and kids did dance to it. College students pumped dimes into jukeboxes in part because the uneven beats in the measure allowed them to jam together two dances they would have learned to please their parents — the waltz and two-step — into something playfully their own. 

Dave Brubeck didn’t come to the upper echelons of late ‘50s jazz from the boot camp of Basie’s band or all-night jam sessions in Kansas City or Harlem back rooms. He got there from academic music study and Patton’s army. He was the son of a classical pianist who started playing at age four, but at the time he was drafted, was only playing club gigs to help pay for veterinary school. As a private first class rifleman, Brubeck was among a group of replacement soldiers who landed on Omaha beach three months after D Day. The story goes that if the transport train went left at the switching point in Verdun, the troops would serve under Omar Bradley, “The G.I.’s General”; if the train went right, they would be under the command of General George S. Patton, a k a “Old Blood and Guts.” Brubeck’s train, to the despair of those on board, took the right track at the junction. There was a piano on board the train, however, which thanks to an enterprising Army officer, led to Brubeck leading an integrated jazz quartet they called The Wolf Pack to entertain his fellow soldiers; that group grew to a 18-piece band as injured soldiers were identified as musicians joined the band, and after Berlin fell, they played, wearing their Purple Heart medals, in the Nuremberg Opera House and supported Marlene Dietrich. Brubeck was luckier than most, but returned from “The Good War” with a restive streak and no longer interested in veterinary school.

“Blue Rondo à la Turk” is the lead track on Time Out, the 1959 album which, thanks to
“Take Five,” continues to be among the best selling jazz records of all time. Written by Brubeck, the song was inspired by music he heard on the street in Istanbul, played in a fascinating rhythm. In the 2009 Legacy Edition Reissue of Time Out, he explained:

There was a Turkish musician. I remember his name. His name was June Eighth – he was born on June Eighth, so that was his name. I asked June Eighth, “What was that rhythm: 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3.” June Eighth said, “That is like the blues to you. We all grew up improvising in that rhythm.” So I said, I’m going to use this rhythm in a tune, and I will call it “Blue Rondo a la Turk.”  

Brubeck later regretted calling the song that. The name is a nerdy play on Mozart’s Piano Sonata 11, 3rd Movement, a k a “Rondo alla Turca,” but Brubeck felt it only confused people. Crucially, it was also a bit too long to fit a jukebox title strip, but in 9/8 time, it wouldn’t have inspired any dance steps that would fit on an Arthur Murray chart anyway.

While “Take Five” has the sort of laidback, sophisticated cool of a tune that would sell the new Infiniti J30 through many TV ads in the ‘90s, the song is really kind of a neat trick. Its weird time signature itches in your brain, but it’s overall so cool and slinky – it feels like jazz in a way you don’t have to be a jazz cat to get. Desmond’s dusky West Coast-style alto weaves through Brubeck’s sauntering vamp alongside the compelling rhythm drummer Joe Morello’s pings off his ride cymbal. Desmond pulls back altogether to give full space for Morello’s exquisite drum solo, which opens so much space in an already exotic-sounding song that it seems like another world.

“Blue Rondo à la Turk,” however, is both exotic (for mid-century American music) and aggressively modern. Brubeck could be a little heavy handed, and here it sounds literal as he pounds out the Turkish Aksak (Turkish for “limping”) rhythm he absorbed thanks to June Eighth. The 9/8 time isn’t a relatively simple 3+3+3/8 but 2+2+2+3/8 —the Turkish musician’s equivalent of the blues. The theme is set by the caffeinated opening 32 bars, with Brubeck and Desmond trading edgy solos through the Aksak rhythm, building on each other until, a minute and a half in, it erupts into a pummeling clash that sounds like where Gershwin might have ended up if Stravinsky had agreed to give him lessons. Then, after that Rites of Spring/Rhapsody in Blue soundclash crescendo, it all evaporates into a lazy sax solo in 4/4 time, before jumping back to the the main theme in 9/8 and then back to an extended solo by Desmond where he traipses after Gene Wright’s walking bassline, again in 4/4. It’s like a car radio caught between stations on the left end of the dial. 

This jumping back between time signatures and styles is where “Blue Rondo à la Turk” really tickles the brain. That main theme is invigorating on its own — it rocks pretty hard — but that nerdy fascination with time signatures, where Brubeck seems intent on wrong-footing his own rhythm section, is a modernist clash between industrialized modernity and folk idioms. In between, we get that extended section of cool jazz that could score a street scene in a hammy film noir, and it’s kind of funny that this section is where Brubeck actually swings the most.  

Dave Brubeck was a nerdy guy. That’s sort of been the knock on his legacy, that of the mid-century jazz greats, he was the whitest guy in the room. That he led an integrated jazz band along the frontlines of the European Theater in WWII, featuring a Black master of ceremonies when the army units themselves weren’t integrated, isn’t in the equation — his image was “college music.” He played cool jazz but his image wasn’t the kind of cool that sells jazz as well as his music sold cars. He was, however, fearlessly venturing out in his own direction. He did what few thought possible in that he made songs with five beats and nine beats popular. On Brubeck’s passing, Herbie Hancock, whose resume of cool is unimpeachable, said “so many of us sprang from his incredibly creative and daring work,” but also hastened to note “his kindness, generosity, and smile,” which suggests that being cool isn’t the be-all end-all it’s made out to be. 

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Blue Rondo à la Turk, plus a short selection of choice cuts from Brubeck, mostly with Desmond and the classic Quartet. I think it’s cool, anyway.

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