So you were present for the most famous and recognised piece of jazz music ever made.
Take Five?
Take Five. What was it like watching it being recorded?
Well, it caused something a sensation which was all a total mystery to me at the time because I’m a total duffer when it comes to music. I’d played piano for a year or two at Bedford*, and I dabbled in the bassoon for a while, but didn’t everyone? Who hasn’t had a bassoon dabble? But time signatures and the like were all a mystery to me. I wouldn’t recognise a 4/4 piece from a 5/8 or 9/3 or whatever. So the fact that Take Five is in 4/5-
5/4.
5/4? I’ll defer to your superior knowledge in these matters. Because the piece is in 5/4 there was something of a sensation in the studio. Technicians were all a twitter telling Mr Brubeck that he couldn’t record a piece of music in 5/4 because it would signal the end of civilization up to that point. A studio head came down from the offices upstairs where he’d presumably been counting his money or organizing the purchase of further luxury vehicles to add to his collection, and became incensed at the very notion. He was able to quote the largest selling Jazz records of the past five years by heart and knew that none of them were in 5/4 time.
And did Brubeck care?
Not in the least. The main thrust of their argument was that the average person in the street wouldn’t stand for it so Mr Brubeck pointed to me and asked: “What do you think of it?”
What did you do?
Well, I was a bit taken aback, I don’t mind admitting. One doesn’t enjoy limelight of any kind and prefers to dwell discretely in the background whenever possible so having every chap in the studio staring at me in anticipation was intimidating, to say the least. As I recall I said “I think it’s just marvellous really. A jolly nice record.” One of the studio heads tried to point out that I wasn’t really a man on the street because I was British and therefore only an average man in a British street. I wanted to point out that I wasn’t even that because I had gone to Bedford, which prided itself on producing above-average men in all regards. But the point had been made. And here’s a piece of trivia you may not be aware of: for a time they even contemplated “A jolly nice record” as the piece’s title.
Really?
Well, that’s very much the thing with instrumental compositions; one can effectively call them whatever one chooses. Hayden would have called it Concerto number 5 or something chronological, but jazz chaps didn’t think along those lines. They required a title and without lyrics were given free rein to select a name of their choosing. I think A Jolly Nice Record has a ring to it. Don’t you?
Take Five is quite clever, it sounds like a group taking a break and it’s in five/four time so…
Yes… well… I’ll always think of it as a jolly nice record.
1. Simon attended the exclusive Bedford school near London, something he mentions regularly. I haven’t researched their school motto but I assume it’s the Latin for “Never miss an opportunity to tell someone you attended Bedford.”
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