According to Desmond, 'It was never supposed to be a hit. 'Strange Meadow Lark' begins with a piano solo that exhibits no clear time signature, but then settles into a fairly ordinary 4Ĥ swing once the rest of the group joins. 11, and reflects the fact that the band heard the rhythm while traveling in Turkey. The title is a play on Mozart's 'Rondo alla Turca' from his Piano Sonata No. ' Blue Rondo à la Turk' starts in 9Ĩ, with a typically Balkan 2+2+2+3 subdivision into short and long beats (the rhythm of the Turkish zeybek, equivalent of the Greek zeibekiko) as opposed to the more typical way of subdividing 9Ĩ as 3+3+3, but the saxophone and piano solos are in 4Ĥ. It produced a Top 40 hit single in ' Take Five', composed by Paul Desmond, and the one track not written by Dave Brubeck.Īlthough the theme of Time Out is non-common-time signatures, things are not quite so simple. It received negative reviews by critics upon its release. On the condition that Brubeck's group first record a conventional album of traditional songs of the American South, Gone with the Wind, Columbia president Goddard Lieberson took a chance to underwrite and release Time Out. The album was intended as an experiment using musical styles Brubeck discovered abroad while on a United States Department of State sponsored tour of Eurasia, such as when he observed in Turkey a group of street musicians performing a traditional Turkish folk song that was played in 9Ĩ time with subdivisions of 2+2+2+3, a rare meter for Western music. The album was selected, in 2005, for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'. The album was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009. By 1963, the record had sold 500,000 units, and in 2011 it was certified double platinum by the RIAA, signifying over two million records sold. The single ' Take Five' off the album was also the first jazz single to sell one million copies. 2 on the Billboard pop albums chart, and was the first jazz album to sell a million copies. The album is a subtle blend of cool and West Coast jazz. Recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City, it is based upon the use of time signatures that were unusual for jazz such as 9Ĥ. Time Out is a studio album by the American jazz group the Dave Brubeck Quartet, released in 1959 on Columbia Records.

Dave brubeck take five album