Dull Mail

Paul Desmond wrote Take Five.  What can you expect from a pop music scribbler. 

Update:  I'd figured everything he knew about anything but pop-crap he learned from liner notes.  

The quartet achieved their greatest commercial success in 1960 with the Desmond composition “Take Five,” a widely acknowledged jazz classic and the best-selling jazz single of all time. A perennial crowd-pleaser, “Take Five” became de rigueur in the group’s concert performances, during which band members would leave the stage one at a time after their respective solos until only drummer Morello was left.  Encyclopedia Britannica online:  Dave Brubeck

At the time, I thought it was kind of a throwaway. I was ready to trade in the entire rights of “Take Five” for a used Ronson electric razor.—Paul Desmond

Desmond changed his mind about swapping the “Take Five” royalties for a shaver. Following his death in 1977, his will directed gifts of personal items and bequests of cash to a number of relatives and friends. The royalties went elsewhere. As recounted in the Coda chapter of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond:


The balance of Desmond’s residuary estate, after payment of debts and taxes, went to The American Red Cross. “Residuary” is the fateful word in that provision of Desmond’s will. Every year since his death, through his royalties from “Take Five,” his other compositions, his recordings and his share of the Brubeck Quartet recordings, Desmond has kept on earning. Noel Silverman (the executor of his estate) sends the Red Cross the money in increments of $25,000 as it accumulates in the estate’s account. In 1991 the total reached more than a million dollars. . . 


[Section critical of the mismanagement of the Red Cross under a regime of incompetent Republican heads, though it doesn't mention their partisan affiliation.]

. . . I spoke with Noel Silverman this morning. He told me that Desmond’s contributions to the Red Cross, largely by way of “Take Five’s” royalties, are now “well north of six million dollars.”

(1) Desmond On “Take Five.” (2) A Financial Report
April 15, 2011 by Doug Ramsey

Update 2:  No, it never surprises me when some of the other kewel-kids at Duncan Black's blog agree with widely held misconceptions, other than about five of those I recall whose names were showing up when I used to look at it were emotionally and intellectually still in high school.   You know, if you and he didn't send me notices I wouldn't even notice what was said there.  What a truly pathetic thing it is for people going into the twilight of their lives to still be in that mindset. What TV and movies and pop kulcha have done to people.