purchase [Time Out]
In 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet did a tour of EurAsia that was sponsored by the State Department. Their trip included a stop in Istanbul, from where I write my posts to SMM. I was only 3 back then, but some time in the mid 1960s, my parents added <Time Out> to their record collection, so I would have been listening to it at around age 10 (in Istanbul even back then).
Brubeck was affected by the music he heard in Istanbul such that their 1959 <Time Out> album makes much use of time signatures that could be Turkish. Not only does music from Turkey (and points east) use "non-standard", tricky time signatures, but also a musical scale that is based on Arabic music, where - instead of the 12 notes of a Western octave- there are 53 "koma". For most of us, music in school taught us about standard Western time signatures like 6/8 or 3/4 or 4/4 - what dominate rock and pop and even much jazz in addition to classical music. Turkish music makes use of these, but also more complex rhythms like 5/4 or 7/4 and 9/8 and more.
It was this influence that powered Brubeck and Paul Desmond when they wrote Blue Rondo a la Turk and Take 5. The 5 in the name is the 5 from the 5/4 rhythm.
Wikipedia informs me that Take 5 is "the biggest-selling jazz single ever", so it's no surprise that there are more covers than you can shake a stick at. The article also notes that the song brings in royalties of over $100,000 a year.
