Customer Reviews

Take Five - Live at The Basin Street East

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Maybe you'll dislike this great album if you are a Brubeck fan insisting radically in instrumental takes only.

I tell you you'll be missing something great. Here you'll find Brubeck compositions with lyrics. What such inspired lyrics!

Carmen McRae shows her great ellegant style in Jazz as usual, performing a repertoire hard to sing, maybe more suitable to instrumental approach. To tell you the truth, McRae is unusually great here. She simply makes 'Take Five' her own. She takes full command in 'In Your Own Sweet Way': whoelse could have sung it? She is pure fire in 'It's A Raggy Waltz'. All these three titles came from the 'time out' session when Brubeck offered us a surprisingly beautiful set of jazzy waltzes which became jazz standards.

Great ballads like 'Melanctha' seem to be written for her but the brightest and most beautiful rendition belongs to 'There'll Be No Tomorrow': impressive, sensitive, pure emotion.

This album is a long time desired title in CD format. All live performances with a reasonably good sound.

In a sense, this recording is less about Dave Brubeck & Carmen McRae than it is about Iola Brubeck & her extraordinary talent as a lyricist. It was issued rather grudgingly by Columbia in 1965, 4 years after it was recorded in front of a rude, noisy & in-attentive New York audience. However, all praise goes to Japanese re-mastering engineer Kouji Suzuki for his wonderful work cleaning the thing up & somehow getting rid of a lot of the ambient crowd noise.

Mrs. Brubeck was & is a very sophisticated lady whose work, while not completely unsung, is not sung nearly enough. When she wrote this & quite a lot of other material, she was simultaneously travelling with her husband sometimes & raising 5 children. When I had a chance to meet her a couple of years ago, I was careful to accord her due praise.

The TV Series MAD MEN comes to mind in that the values -- good & bad -- that it sets forth are reflected in this contemporaneous recording. The millions who are of the mindset that Lennon & McCartney are good songwriters are wasting their time here, given that LISTENING to the lyrics is required.

Highlights for me are Carmen`s rendering of TOO YOUNG FOR GROWING OLD, ODE TO A COWBOY, MELANCTHA, IT`S A RAGGY WALTZ, OH, SO BLUE, TRAVELLIN` BLUES, TAKE FIVE & EASY AS YOU GO (I guess I find most of it interesting).

I just ordered this and I'm waiting on it's delivery. I don't have to wait to give my opinion as I had this on LP in my younger days and to be blunt, it's a must have purchase! I only wish I could find and purchase the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Carmen McRae CD TONIGHT ONLY; my collection would be complete as it's the one I really want to have everything I had on LP as a kid.

Only real vocal of Take 5 that I found and its great. Listened to Al Jarreau, but this isn't a song for a scat vocalist. Carmen does a beautiful job.

i am so lucky to have found this cd. thanks guys. take five is a classic song by carmen mcrae. you old school jazz lovers.. this a must.