There were two main sub-gen­res of jazz to emerge in post-war Amer­i­ca, mor­ph­ing out of the big band swing era that had dom­i­nat­ed in the 1930s and 1940s: they were bebop and cool jazz. Now, where­as bebop was “hot,” i.e. loud, excit­ing, and loose, cool jazz was “cool,” i.e. soft, more reserved, and con­trolled. In bebop, the empha­sis was on impro­vi­sa­tion; in cool jazz, the empha­sis was on arrange­ment. Bebop was East Coast, night­club-ori­ent­ed; cool jazz was West Coast and took jazz out to the col­lege cam­pus­es. For bebop, think Char­lie Park­er, Dizzy Gille­spie, and Thelo­nious Monk; for cool jazz, think ear­ly Miles Davis, Chet Bak­er and Dave Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck was one of the most active and pop­u­lar musi­cians in the jazz world from the late 1940s for­wards. Hav­ing served in Patton’s army in Europe dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, he enrolled at Mills Col­lege in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia to study com­po­si­tion with French com­pos­er, Dar­ius Mil­haud. It was Mil­haud who encour­aged him to pur­sue a career in jazz and to incor­po­rate jazz ele­ments into his com­po­si­tions, and this cross-genre exper­i­men­ta­tion with like-mind­ed Mills stu­dents led to the for­ma­tion of the Dave Brubeck Octet in 1947.

It was, how­ev­er, the small­er incar­na­tion formed in 1951 that would become the “clas­sic” Brubeck out­fit — the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet — fea­tur­ing Brubeck on the piano, the leg­endary Joe Morel­lo on drums, Eugene Wright on bass, and long-time Brubeck col­lab­o­ra­tor Paul Desmond on alto sax. In 1959 they released the album Time Out, fea­tur­ing the song that would become a jazz stan­dard and the biggest-sell­ing jazz sin­gle ever, Take Five. Writ­ten by Paul Desmond, Take Five rapid­ly became Brubeck’s best-known, and sig­na­ture, tune, famous for its dis­tinc­tive, catchy sax melody and use of the unusu­al 5/4 time from which its name is derived. It’s been used in count­less movies and tele­vi­sion sound­tracks, so if you think you don’t know it, I’m pret­ty sure you will!

Here’s a won­der­ful record­ing of the quar­tet play­ing Take Five live in Bel­gium in 1964. Enjoy these mas­ter musi­cians on top of their game…it’s cool, man!