Joe Morello

Joe Morello, Dave Brubeck's longtime drummer, died this week. Patrick Jarenwattananon eulogized Morello at A Blog Supreme yesterday. Brubeck wrote of Take Five, Morello's greatest contribution to the jazz canon, in the liner notes of the Time Out reissue:

Paul Desmond once said of "Take Five," "It was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo.

Some people may be able to analyze in a scientific way what will "catch on" with the public, but I never could. I think it must be a serendipitous combination of a "catchy" melody, an insistent rhythm, and the general musical climate of the times. Creating a "hit" out of the odd-meter experiments of Time Out was the farthest from any of our minds in 1959 when Paul Desmond, Joe Morello, Eugene Wright and I went into the studio to record.