Take Five in fingerstyle

The melody of this song is without a doubt one of the most emblematic melodies of the jazz genre. Composed in 1959 by Paul Desmond on saxophone, it was made to fit a track of the album ‘Time Out’ from ‘The Dave Brubeck Quartet’. The particularity, quite rare at the time, was that the time signature of the track was in 5/4.

The track became a major hit, and became a huge influence for post generations, and mostly what we will cover in this article, a great playground for fingerstyle artists.

Now that you have listened to the original banger, let’s delve into history of different covers before the Chet Atkins area. If you’re only here for fingerstyle, I suggest you jump to Chet Atkins directly. If not, you will hear cool stuff 😉.

Shortly after the release of the hit, vocal covers are emerging, with different titles (not easy to find back without knowing the real title). There are several, I however choose to select a French one from Richard Anthony, called ‘Ne boude pas’, from 1962. I find Richard’s voice rich in nuances and fitting the song.

Of course, there are many other vocals put on this melody, because it’s extremely pleasant and fitting the jazz singing. But they are after 1973 and Chet (for instance, for the most curious of you, AI Jarreau). So we continue our journey to the next year with 2 notable, very different covers.

The first one is made by Quincy Jones and is super cool. That’s extremely swingy. It adds energy to the original song, and therefore deserves to be spoken off.

Now the second one is, we can say, a premise of the fingerstyle versions. This is the one made by Davey Graham, on his acoustic guitar. While the same arrangement today would not be impressive, from the time it was created (1963), it’s very important. Davy has been a huge influence for the fingerstyle universe, and especially on his acoustic guitar, he contributed greatly bringing the genre to how it is today.

So far, we got vocals, energetic jazz, debuts of acoustic guitar fingerstyle. What could we have more that would be cool and still bring value…Do I hear reggae cover in the back of the class ???

I present you here the version made by Val Bennett, in 1968. The title is ‘The Russians Are Coming’. This is crazy to see how the melody can adapt to such various situations. This cover brings a new look on the song, and therefore is a good value.

Ok now we are entering the era of fingerstyle. There are probably a lot of versions of the song you would’ve like to hear about, but I can’t cover the vastness of it, even though there are pieces that I love, like the live of George Benson in Montreux (wink wink). Anyway, we are in 1973, and Chet Atkins is releasing his version of Take Five. In an era where the guitarists are still divided for such complex play, Chet is going in the continuity of the works of Davy Graham and goes as a one-man band. He produces (of course) a clean sound on his electric guitar, showing a very advanced and mature play. He settled the high fingerstyle standards of this song, and generally probably of fingerstyle itself through his whole work

Now there are a looooot of fingerstyle covers of this song after Chet (and more precisely since the venue of internet). As well as acoustic ones in various creative ways (Rodrigo y Gabriela for instance).

I heard countless fingerstyle interpretations. From all of this, I saved 4 of them that for me were the ones that added the most value and originality to the song (better than dozens of copies -as well made as they are- of Chet’s version, or sticking too much to the original song, not taking many risks, …). If you want to do more research by yourself, you will find a lot of different versions, this is after all, an extremely covered song by musicians. So let’s start to present them !

Flint Blade, 2007.

Flint is playing Take Five on a double neck kind of guitar (called the Chapman stick). And it’s all in tapping. I wish that the recording would’ve been better quality because the idea of it and the amount of skill that Flint possesses is insane. It is a very creative cover.

Igor Presnyakov, 2009.

Igor has absolute control over the play. He plays the guitar with such a full control that he gives probably the most ‘in-control’ version of Take Five.

Sungha Jung, 2016.

Sasha brings originality to the covers by tunning his strings lower (especially the low E). This gives a concert effect, of having a real quartet. He nails the double bass.

Filo Machado, 2021.

Filo is not alone, but his playing is in fingerstyle and he provides an insane performance. He plays and sings hard jazz phrases at the same time. He gave a Brazilian touch to Take Five, making it probably the most creative fingerstyle / voice cover of Take Five so far.

That’s it. I hope you enjoyed going into the depths of one song and seeing how much creativity can be done over the decades on it.