Take Five

"Take Five" is a jazz piece composed by Paul Desmond and performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet on their 1959 album Time Out. Recorded at Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio in New York City on July 1, 1959, fully two years later it became an unlikely hit and the biggest-selling jazz single ever. Included in numerous movie and television soundtracks, it still receives significant radio play. "Take Five" was for several years during the early 1960s the theme music for the NBC Today program, the opening bars being played half a dozen times or more each day.

Written in the key of E-flat minor, it is known for its distinctive two-chord piano vamp; catchy blues-scale saxophone melody; inventive, jolting drum solo; and use of the unusual quintuple (5
4) time, from which its name is derived.

Brubeck drew inspiration for this style of music during a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of Eurasia, where he observed a group of Turkish street musicians performing a traditional folk song with supposedly Bulgarian influences that was played in 9
8 time (traditionally called "Bulgarian meter"), rarely used in Western music. After learning about the form from native symphony musicians, Brubeck was inspired to create an album that deviated from the usual 4
4 time of jazz and experimented with the exotic styles he had experienced abroad.

Take Five (disambiguation)

"Take Five" is a jazz piece composed by Paul Desmond for the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Take Five or Take 5 also may refer to :

Music

Television and radio

Other uses

Here's to You (radio program)

Here's to You was a Canadian radio program, which aired on CBC Radio 2 from 9 a.m. to noon. The program, hosted by Catherine Belyea, combined the network's focus on classical music with audience interaction through stories and music requests in a format similar to CBC Radio One's The Roundup. Here's to You was previously hosted by Shelley Solmes, whose contract was not renewed in 2007. Here's to You was discontinued in September 2008 after a major overhaul of Radio Two, making way for new programming.

Take Five, based on a similar theme, was the predecessor of Here's to You on CBC Radio 2 and aired in the time slot 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m.