1956? This compilation of singles released by the Dave Brubeck Quartet actually begins in 1951, with the quartet's second outing in a recording studio. Jasmine have also muddled the personnel – Brubeck and Desmond were joined by Wyatt Ruther (bass) and Herb Barman (drums), not Bob Bates and Joe Dodge, as they recorded Dave's crisply polytonal, rhythmically Cubist rethinks of ‘Me And My Shadow’, ‘Mam'selle’, ‘Frenesi’ and his own ‘At A Perfume Counter’. After the quartet had signed to Columbia in 1954, the fascination, largely, is in hearing how familiar album tracks were edited, or entirely remade, for the 45rpm single. That widely held assumption that the single of ‘Take Five’, released in 1961, was sieved from the version on Time Out is mistaken. The single utilised a different take, with a slighter peppier vamp from Brubeck, a briefer drum solo from Morello – and with Desmond flirting with the melodic shapes that would find their ultimate form on the album. To make a single from ‘Blue Rondo à la Turk’, Columbia simply slashed all the solos, crippling the piece's structure; and whether ‘Take Five’ (also ‘It's A Raggy Waltz’) benefitted much from the add-on lyrics that Carmen McRae recorded with the group in 1961 is questionable. Pieces like ‘Unsquare Dance’ (Time Further Out) and ‘Short‘nin’ Bread’ (Gone With The Wind) were compact enough to appear as singles without editorial intervention; ditto the gorgeously whimsical ‘Eleven Four’ (Countdown – Time in Outer Space). But ‘Tangerine’ (In Europe) suffered the indignity of having all its audaciously labyrinthine solos cut – that's showbiz, folks.