Antes de su muerte en 1977, Desmond ordenó ceder los derechos de autor de sus composiciones, incluyendo «Take Five», a la Cruz Roja norteamericana, la cual ha recibido sumas de aproximadamente cien mil dólares al año.
"Take Five" was the third track on the album Time Out, recorded in 1959. That was the year Miles Davis and Gil Evans introduced the jazz audience to modal music with the landmark album Kind of Blue, John Coltrane released Giant Steps and Art Farmer and Benny Golson formed their first jazztet. A lot of new things were happening in jazz in those days, but rhythmically, the music was still being played mostly in four-four time. Brubeck had always been interested in polyrhythm and polytonality. The first theory is what drives African music; the second is tied closely to classical.
Brubeck had been playing in odd time signatures back in the late 1940s, but it wasn't until he returned from a trip to Turkey in 1958 that he thought about doing an entire album in different time signatures, like six-four, three-four, nine-eight and, in "Take Five," five-four. Brubeck's label at the time, Columbia, didn't know about his plans. When he finally let them in on what he was doing, the marketing department became nervous about releasing the album, and not just because of the strange meters.
