"Take Five" (Dave Brubeck Quartet)

"Take Five" is one of those curious songs that seems to cross every boundary.  Even people who claim to not like jazz will embrace "Take Five" as one of their perennial favorite songs.  Personally, I think it has as much to do with its eternal cool factor as it does with its indelible saxophone melody.  Saying that you're a fan of "Take Five" is like casually flashing your membership card to the avant-garde.
Brubeck and his band had come back from a 1958 U.S. Department of State-sponsored world tour, where they had acted as "jazz ambassadors," sharing the uniquely American art form with developing nations and countries that had been cut off from the West by the Iron Curtain.  Along the way, they jammed with local musicians in places like India, Pakistan, and Turkey, where they soaked up the intricate folk rhythms, which often were in time signatures like 7/8 or 9/8—time signatures that were uncommon to jazz in 1958.
All of those experiences were distilled into the album Time Out (1959), which presented a set of seven original compositions, all in time signatures other than waltz (3/4) or common (4/4) time.
During one of the sessions for Time Out at Columbia's famed 30th Street Studio in New York, drummer Joe Morello was playing around with a rhythm in 5/4 time, and Brubeck asked saxophonist Paul Desmond if he could come up with a melody that played off Morello's beat.  Desmond doodled around for a bit and came up with two passages but struggled with how to unite them into a single song.  So Brubeck stepped in and added the staccato piano vamp, creating a foundation for the verse, and then figured out the release heading into the bridge section.  And "Take Five" (named for its 5/4 time signature) was born.
Curiously enough, the song is credited only to Desmond, even though it is the tune most associated with Brubeck.