Ken Burns Jazz

1	Perdido 7:50
2	Le Souk 4:38
3	Audrey 3:35
4	The Duke 2:48
5	In Your Own Sweet Way 8:42
6	Blue Rondo a la Turk 6:45
7	Strange Meadowlark 7:25
8	Take Five 5:26
9	Allegro Blues 5:35
10	The Real Ambassadors 3:09
11	Koto Song 3:07
12	I Get a Kick Out of You 5:18
13	Sapito / Gerry Mulligan 3:10
14	Mr. Broadway 2:47
15	Stardust / Bill Smith 5:24

Barnes & Noble

The level of success Dave Brubeck attained with his album Time Out was unprecedented in jazz at the time of its release in 1959. Over the decades, for all the subsequent upheavals in jazz, its popularity has never waned -- perhaps because it was such an upheaval for its challenging use of unusual meters. And because Paul Desmond's delicate yet insistent alto saxophone sound was, and remains, so haunting. "Take Five" may be the single most widely recognizable piece jazz has produced. But "Take Five" is so much the work of Brubeck, Desmond, Gene Wright, and Joe Morello that it has never been covered much by other jazz artists. The two most covered, and most exquisite, Brubeck pieces remain "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke", both of whose beauty was appreciated very early by Miles Davis.

All Music Guide

In conjunction with the release of Ken Burns' ten-part, 19-hour epic PBS documentary Jazz, Columbia issued 22 single-disc compilations devoted to jazz's most significant artists, as well as a five-disc historical summary. Since the individual compilations attempt to present balanced overviews of each artist's career, tracks from multiple labels have thankfully been licensed where appropriate. The Dave Brubeck installment is an excellent illustration of how the cool-jazz pioneer had his cake and ate it too. Brubeck was instrumental in popularizing the laid-back cool style, scoring a major hit with the LP Time Out and its ubiquitous standard "Take Five." Yet Brubeck also managed to keep his music challenging and complex despite its mellow melodicism, particularly through his pioneering use of odd rhythmic meters. Drawing selections from throughout Brubeck's career, Ken Burns Jazz provides an excellent introduction to his accessible yet artistically satisfying oeuvre, even if some of Brubeck's individual albums are classics in themselves. Steve Huey