![]() ![]() The album was a gauntlet slammed into the ground of jazz. These are beats you can’t dance to and can’t sing to, or so we’d think. “Blue Rondo à la Turk” in a crazily sliced 9/8 was born there, and so was Brubeck’s lasting popularity. On tour, he heard local musicians playing odd rhythms and decided right there that he’d make a jazz album employing unusual time signatures. It’s found in avant-garde music or in folk traditions tucked away in Hungary, India. “Take Five” added one little beat to the normal 4/4 pulse and made it 5/4, an unheard-of time signature for jazz. People like to look at faces, especially of celebrities, but there were no photos of the popular musicians greeting the public, just egg shapes and abutting slaps of color.īut the biggest risk, of course, was the music. No comforting “standards” were on it to reassure buyers wary of new music.įor another, the cover art was a contemporary, abstract painting. For one thing, it was a jazz album with nothing but original pieces. It broke many conventions in achieving that. Led by the hit single “Take Five,” written by alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, Time Out was the first jazz album to sell a million copies. ![]() Brubeck’s face had been on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, Jailhouse Rock came out in 1957, and it would still be two years before the Quartet had its incandescent burst into the stratosphere-and into jazz history-with the release of Time Out. ![]() The Dave Brubeck Quartet was already one of the hottest ensembles in jazz in the ’50s, playing hundreds of concerts, and releasing multiple LPs, every year. Hollywood knows a good stereotype when it sees one, hick or slick, and “Brubeck” meant cerebral, cool, West Coast. Rather than revealing his ignorance, he barks crudely at her and stalks out. Elvis’s increasing discomfort wells up when the hostess asks his opinion. They toss around lingo like “dissonance” and “atonality,” and the names of some musicians, including that of Dave Brubeck. He’s dragged to a swanky party, where he’s wedged between society snobs who try to look intellectual and hip by discussing modern music. In Jailhouse Rock, Elvis plays an ex-con rube hoping to make it in the music business. ![]()
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