Max's Musings

Soundtrack, Feb 15, Take Five

Today's song, "Take Five," is the best-selling jazz recording of all time. It was written in 1958 by Paul Desmond and released in 1959 by the Dave Brubek Quartet. It's quirky rhythms evoke thoughts of smoky coffee houses in Greenwich Village and beat poets like Allen Ginsberg. Hearing it, I imagine what it must have been like to sit in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's coffee house, City Lights, reading Kerouac.

It's an odd song to have become a hit. The key--E-flat minor--isn't what makes it strange. It's the meter. It's written in 5-4 time. Pick almost any song in the Western canon for the last, say, four hundred years, and you'll tap your toe to two, three, or four beats per measure, or some multiple thereof. (I know, there's Stravinsky and Le Sacre, but even Stravinsky reverted to conventional meter in his later years. Please don't bring up John Cage's piece 4'33” ) The song's name comes, in part, from the rhythm. But it's also a reference to "taking a break," i.e., taking five.

My novella, "Dreamin' Life Away" , involves a character named Dante finding a subway in his basement that takes him back in time to 1950s Tulsa. To launch his trip, I wanted a song emblematic of the 50s. Of course, "Rock Around the Clock" might have been choice, both for it's importance in launching rock music and because "clock" would have been a nice reference to time travel. But...this is a slipstream story with a surrealist tone, so I wanted something unsettling. What could be more unsettling than a 5-4 beat that evokes Ginsberg and Kerouac?

The song appears at the end of the second chapter, "Chapter 2. Take Five" , when Dante finds the door to the basement subway.

Here's the link to the song;