There are sheet music arrangements of "Take Five" for solo piano, brass band, chorus, accordion, guitar, flute choir, string orchestra, drum and percussion and-I swear-handbells. It would be all but impossible to know how many bands have performed the piece unlicensed and unauthorized. Only a country-by-country survey could confirm the number of authorized foreign versions. Nine-hundred-fifty-nine recorded versions have been licensed in the United States. The single record of the piece from the Dave Brubeck album Time Out was the first jazz instrumental to sell a million copies. It is ubiquitous in elevators, dentists offices and restaurants, and on internet and cable-system music channels. During halftime of a high school football game, I heard a band play it while marching in twenty-degree weather. It played the first eight bars of Paul Desmond's "Take Five.” I have heard 'Take Five" from the overhead speakers in a subway station in Mexico City, in the neighborhood Safeway while reaching for the Cheerios, at gas stations when I am filling the tank and from too many sidewalk saxophonists to count. The box did not play a Moravian folk song or a Dvorak melody.
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