In celebration of Black History “Take Five” in Revue: About that All-Time classic considered the World’s Greatest Jazz single; Which Is Viewed as the Best Version? Dave Brubeck’s, Quincy Jones’, Sonny Rollins or Dizzy Gillespie’s?
In celebration of Black History “Take Five” in Revue: About that All-Time classic considered the World’s Greatest Jazz single; Which Is Viewed as the Best Version? Dave Brubeck’s, Quincy Jones’, Sonny Rollins or Dizzy Gillespie’s?
NB: This article was published on Feb. 27 in the Dixon Tribune, the newspaper of record for the city of Dixon. https://www.cityofdixon.us/
Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Desmond, Sonny Rollins, Afrobeat King Fela Kuti’s legendary drummer Tony Allen (Who passed away from Coronavirus in 2020) South African Trumpeter Hugh Masekela (best known for Grazing in the Grass which was part of the musical score for Caiphus Semenya’s epic Lion King Stage Drama) Sonny Stitt, Stardust- Sonny Side Up — they were all part of the “Take Five” original jazz ensemble brew, originally composed by Paul Desmond a member of the Dave Brubeck band in 1959, an important year for historical reasons.
In 1963, the iconic producer Quincy Jones, who I interviewed in 1990 in Los Angeles, also released an album titled “Hip Hits” in honor of Dave Brubeck. It was released by Mercury records and featured soloists Joe Newman, Zoot Sims, and Phil Woods.
Jones’ 12 track compilation included these songs: “Comin’ Home Baby” (Bob Dorough, Ben Tucker) — “Gravy Waltz” , “Desafinado” (Antonio Carlos Jobim, Newton Mendonça), “Exodus” (Ernest Gold) “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” (Vince Guaraldi), “A Taste of Honey” (Ric Marlow, Robert William Scott), “Back at the Chicken Shack” (Jimmy Smith), “Jive Samba” (Nat Adderley), “Take Five” (Paul Desmond, “Walk On the Wild Side” (Elmer Bernstein, Mack David), “Watermelon Man” (Herbie Hancock and “Bossa Nova.
This eclectic compilation from Quincy my big brother — we are also blood relatives — America’s most popular black producer, whose original roots are in Cameroon Central Africa, is a further affirmation that the origin of jazz is indelibly linked to the slave trade traffic and chants and music in the cargo holds of slave ships across the Atlantic.
Further affirmation in celebration of Black History, the great saxophonist Dizzy Gillespie, who also had a Take Five Version, told me in a 1989 interview in a tour of Africa, sponsored by the State Department, that “when I stepped on the soil of Lagos — the commercial capital of Nigeria — I had a feeling that I have been here before … because I really believe that my black ancestors came from here.”
Take Five, which featured Dave Brubeck on piano; Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Gene Wright on bass and Joe Morello — drums is perhaps the biggest-selling jazz single ever, and has been included in numerous movie and television soundtracks and it is perhap’s one song that has inspired so many black jazz artists including Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, a relative, Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong’s whose “What A Wonderful World” was a bedtime lullaby for our son when he was a baby in Fairfield.
The original version of this all-time classic peaked at №2 on the Billboard pop albums chart, and was the first jazz album to sell a million copies.
The single “Take Five” off the album was also the first jazz single to sell one million copies.
“The album was selected, in 2005, for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
In the early 1960’s “Take Five” was the theme music for the NBC Today Talk Show, currently hosted by Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie.
Original composer Paul Desmond was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, best known for his work with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. In addition he led several groups and collaborated with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Jim Hall, and Ed Bickert.
After “Take Five” Brubeck and Paul Desmond were to collaborate on another tune “Stardust,” an extreme jazz classic that has been replicated by Jazz artists such as Sonny Rollins in a duet with Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt.
“Sonny Side Up” is an album by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and the tenor saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins, recorded in December 1957 in New York City.
It was released in 1959 on producer Norman Granz’s newly launched Verve label.
Someone said Barack Obama once had Sonny Rollins’ version of “Stardust” on his playlist? Someday I pray we get to ask Barry whether that is fact or fiction?
Well, Sonny Rollins, who has performed with acts like Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Kenny Doorham, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Babs Gonzales, J.J. Johnson, Jackie McLean, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Modern Jazz Quartet, And Art Blakey whom Allen honored with a unique France appearance in 2016, an epic and frenetic year through Paris, is still a behemoth in the Jazz genre, especially in the New York area.
Rollins, 91, was recently profiled in the Arts and Culture section of The Guardian. The feature in a January 2022 edition is titled “ ‘I was so close to the sky. It was spiritual’: Sonny Rollins on jazz landmark The Bridge at 60.” Exactly ten years after another epic feature on another black trailblazer and Jazz Icon Sade Adu, a special friend, whom I interviewed backstage at the Concord Pavilion in 2000. That review was titled: “ Why Sade is bigger in the US than Adele.”
In 2017, Rollins donated his personal archive to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library.
Later that year, he endowed the “Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble Fund” at Oberlin College, in “recognition of the institution’s long legacy of access and social justice advocacy.”
Were my opinion sought about President Obama’s 2016 summer playlist released through The London Guardian, George Duke’s “No Rhyme No Reason” and Sonny Okosun’s Papa’s Land and “Fire in Soweto ‘’ would have been a top recommendation on his list. My ex met Okosun’s backstage at the Fillmore after a San Francisco performance in the 90’s where I interviewed him. The Nigerian musician was known as the leader of the Ozzidi band.
I do like the fact that “You’re All I Need” by Method Man Ft. Mary J. Blige is on top of Obama’s 2016 summer playlist.
The song is a ballad of hope against all odds and perhaps the best affirmation through music of Obama’s blackness.
Dizzy Gillespie who toured Nigeria after he visited Tunisia, also has an interesting version of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five and five years before I profiled his ’93 death in the Fairfield Daily Republic (DR) I interviewed him in Lagos, Nigeria.
In that dramatic ’89 show Dizzy Gillespie paused beside the red drapes of the National Arts Theater main bowl in Lagos before a grand entrance to a standing ovation by the savvy and eclectic attendees.
I watched as a smile creased his face as he directed his sextet, featuring the celebrated James Moody on saxophone, strike up the tune of Manteca, a song he co-wrote with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo.
On that hot summer day at the Lagos Mainland National Arts Theater, and as the band eased into a rhythmic and pulsating beat, the bebop exponent broke into a nimble shuffle that belied his three score and ten years (Gillespie passed away in 1993) before advancing to join in the performance.
On that epic day in January, Gillespie, saxophonist extraordinaire and one of the most celebrated figures in the entire history of jazz music, had just launched his three-city tour of Nigeria, on his birthday.
Before the performance, there was an event which Gillespie described in an exclusive interview as “a once in ten-lifetimes’ occasion.”
That occasion was the conferment of the 1989 roots international award for jazz music on him and Moody, by the jazz club of Nigeria, further affirmation of jazz roots in west Africa.
A day before the award, Gillespie had also received the chieftaincy title of the Bashere (Yoruba for King of entertainers) of Iperu Oba Ogunfowora Mogunsen, the Alaperu of Iperu, Ijebu-Remo, Ogun State.
Both the jazz club and traditional title conferment obviously inspired Gillespie’s enthusiastic opening of his performance at the National Theater in Lagos.
He had promised to say his “thank you” for the roots award “through my instrument” — the saxophone, and he did not disappoint his fans.
The high priest of jazz, whose collaborative work included sessions with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, sustained and exceeded the pace of his opening number with Birkworks, another original composition.
At that 1989 concert Gillespie revved the interest of the audience when he introduced Round Midnight, a song written by Thelonius Monk, regarded as a “standard for jazz music.”
I recall on that song, Moody’s solos on the tenor sax, and Cuban Ignacio Berroa’s rhythmic and light tapping on the drums and cymbals, accompanied by John Lees’ masterful strutting on the bass, merged into a harmonious beat that even the late Monk would have been proud of. I also met a younger Berroa backstage. In an All ABout Jazz interview Gillespie described Berroa as “The only Latin drummer in the world, in the history of American music that intimately knows both worlds; his native Afro-Cuban music as well as Jazz…” Highly respected among his peers, Ignacio’s musicianship and versatility have enabled him to build a successful career by gaining the recognition of some of the most important artists in the business. Ignacio Berroa was born in Havana Cuba on July 8,1953
At our National Theater interview Berroa of course was ecstatic at the opportunity to visit the Motherland, where his Cuban ancestors originated from, and the opportunity to explore the roots of Jazz Music which he elaborated on in this Seattle Times interview. https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/ignacio-berroa-formerly-dizzy-gillespies-go-to-drummer-swings-into-seattle/
However that night in Lagos in ’89 was almost ruined by faulty sound production, from Aibtonia Equipment, when the band was midway through Tangier (which is also the name of a Moroccan city) — a Dizzy Gillespie composition.
Somehow Barroa’’s energetic improvisation on the drums and Geovano (late adopted son’s middle name is Jovan) Udagos’ solo on conga and percussion sustained the pace, while Aibtonia technicians scrambled and battled to rectify the equipments, obviously a nightmare for the band.
Udagos’ solo was enhanced by the appearance of five Yoruba bata drummers on stage, and the percussive rhythm that their beat struck with the Puerto Rican’s dexterity on the conga was some kind of confirmation of Gillespie’s definition of jazz as a “marriage of African rhythm and European harmony.”
Moody performed one of his original songs before Gillespie introduced his popular composition, “Night in Tunisia,” which he said had “withstood the vicissitudes of his contingency and moved in an odyssey into the realm of the metaphysical.”
It was on this song that Gillespie’s bebop standards and many years on the jazz circuit were pleasantly enunciated and articulated..
The high priest of jazz spiced his performance with some comic antics as well and a scat-singing duet with Moody. And every time he paused from his scat-solos to blow his uniquely shaped trumpet, Gillespie’s puffed up cheeks that were a universal trademark were an aesthetic marvel.
“Night in Tunisia” was the climax of Gillespie’s 90 minute performance, and his first stop in a Nigerian tour that covered Benin City and Port Harcourt.
Interestingly the show in Benin was not without a terrible and hilarious mix up in travel documents. The jazz artiste left Nigeria with a chieftaincy title and great memories, including the amazing story of a bag with so much money and his passport that was lost in Lagos.
The bag was recovered and delivered to him in Benin. Ironically he experienced something similar, but with a more bitter taste at the 1990 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award In Los Angeles.
The moral of this experience by Gillespie is there are bad people everywhere, right now more bad and intolerant people on this side of the world. The story by his former manager is worth a listen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5VtKVvSFkc
For Gillespie, the Nigerian tour was “the culmination of all my highest ideals” and it was a remarkable career highlight until his passing in 1993. And although it was his first trip to Africa, he said “when I stepped on the soil of Lagos, I had a feeling that I have been here before … because I really believe that my ancestors came from here.”
Gillespie’s African tour, sponsored by the United States Information Service (USIS), also took him to Egypt, Morocco and Senegal.
His last stop during that State Department Goodwill tour was Congo. Gillespie started gallivanting around the World in ’56 as a Cultural and good-will ambassador for the United States Department of State. He received a grammy lifetime-of-achievement award soon after his return from Nigeria.
Gillespie is grouped with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Charlie “Bird” Parker, whose stormy life was chronicled in a CLint Eastwood movie, as having the greatest influence on jazz. But in spite of this jazz, which has its roots in Africa, now has more appeal for whites. Gillespie told Newswatch: “To tell you the truth, my audience in the United States is about 80 percent whites. The reason for that is that our black people don’t support our music. They don’t think it’s important in the cultural advancement of our people. They would rather their children grew up to be a mortician, lawyer, doctor or something of that sort.”
In that 1989 interview the impression was this in no way affected his ingenuity and his striving to make jazz a universal idiom. His 1989 album “Endlessly”, rendered along the lines of American popular music, was an indication of the jazz artist’s intention to keep up with the trends in music. And of the influence the Nigerian tour would have on his music, here is Gillespie: “You are gonna hear it because it will be in my next musical work.” he told me at the Nigerian National Theater in 1989.
