Dave and Iola Brubeck on the album Time Out

SS: So, I want to talk a little bit about Time Out, which is your best selling album, and again is notable because of its use of unusual time signatures instead of the usual 4/4 time. How did that concept come about? I understand it\u27s not something that the record company was exactly thrilled about. Was that something that your experiences with other cultures and other types of music came forth out of? Or, how did you come up with the idea of this album that had all these unusual time signatures? DB: Yeah, I wanted to do an album with different time signatures because I often would slip into complicated times that were just on the job. So, I was thinking that way. There\u27s some examples of complicated things, especially in the old octet book. I wrote one section of some piece in 5, and a two piano piece in 5 at a section. I often was playing waltzes when they weren\u27t played too much. In fact, I thought I was the only guy playing waltzes until I heard Fats Waller\u27s Jitterbug waltz that predated me. So, I wasn\u27t the first one (laughter). But, I\u27m the first one to play Alice in Wonderland, which later Bill Evans recorded, and Someday My Prince Will Come, which Bill recorded, and Miles Davis recorded. And now, almost everyone in that period was playing Someday My Prince Will Come. So, I was introducing new things, playing 4 when it was in 3, which is very simple now. But at that time, people couldn\u27t understand it. Some groups just couldn\u27t get into playing in 5. It\u27s very hard to switch into improvisations in 5 when you\u27ve played most of your life in 6/8 or 4/4 or 2/4. And, so it became kind of natural for us to start playing in these time signatures. So, I wanted to put out an album. I decided to call it Time Out, where I\u27d use different ways of approaching time. Then I did Time Further Out, Time in Outer Space -- there were four of those Time albums, which have influenced a lot of guys. They\u27ve gone on from there to much more complicated things. But, invariably, I\u27ll meet guys when I\u27m on the road almost everyday who go back to the Time Out album as having influenced their use of time. IB: And also, at the time you wanted to bring more emphasis on rhythm into jazz from its African roots, where I remember you talking about you felt it had strayed from the African roots which had such complicated rhythms. So, that was part of the motivation I think. DB: And I had listened to the Denis-Roosevelt Expedition into the Belgian Congo where he would have taken one of these old machines that you cut on wax or acetate. SS: Wax recordings in the field, literally. DB: Yeah, and he did that. And when I heard that, I knew jazz was not reflecting its roots, not enough, and hardly at all. It was more like a European march, which some the tunes like Tiger Rag were European marches -- syncopated. SS: It\u27s interesting, too, with the album Time Out in particular the single Take Five, both of which became very, very popular. Certainly Take Five is the best selling single in jazz history. Why do you think these unusual tunes in the form of the album, and in particular the single Take Five became so popular if they\u27re not what people really were used to hearing in 4/4 time signatures? DB: That\u27s right, and it was a total surprise to the record company. They didn\u27t even put it out as a single for, I would say, a year or more when we knew it was being played across the country and in Europe -- very strong. But they just didn\u27t want to admit that they were wrong. You know, they had tried to block. The reason they didn\u27t like the album is I used a painting on the cover, which they said you can\u27t do that. They\u27re all originals on one album. You can\u27t do that. Different time signatures that you can\u27t dance to -- you can\u27t do that. And, I\u27d broken all the unwritten laws. And, they were just against it, except the president of Columbia, Goddard Lieberson loved it. From the beginning, he had to fight the sales department and everybody else to get it out. Now look, it\u27s still selling, and it\u27s how many years later, 50 years? IB: Almost. DB: Almost 50 years