This is The Stranglers song Golden Brown as you’ve never heard it before – transformed into a slice of smooth jazz. And it’s wonderful.

You could be forgiven for thinking this is Dave Brubeck having a crack at The Stranglers. Then you’d remember that Golden Brown came out in 1981 and this clip clearly comes from the ’60s.

In fact it’s saxophonist Laurence Mason’s jazz cover of the song set to a video cleverly assembled from footage of the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing their signature tune Take Five.

The funny thing is that the jazz version sounds just perfect for The Stranglers song – its waltz-time rhythm a far cry from their punk beginnings a few years earlier.

Its 13 million YouTube views are more than twice the number for the official video of the original version by The Stranglers.

The original was written by Dave Greenfield, the band’s keyboard player, with drummer Jet Black: both of them deceased over the course of the past five years. 

Mason, who recorded it during lockdown in 2020, made his version in tribute to two of his musical heroes – Greenfield and Brubeck himself – and posted it on YouTube.

He expected very little in the way of feedback but quickly got a million hits and was persuaded to release it on Jazz Room Records as a single, which equally swiftly sold 3,000 copies – earning it a place in the charts.

Because this soulful and funky jazz version is instrumental, it’s sadly stripped of Hugh Cornwell’s lyrics which laud the pleasures of heroin. 

The song, which their new label EMI hated and didn’t want to release, reached No.2 in the charts early in 1982, kept off top spot by The Jam with Town Called Malice.

Singer Hugh Cornwell, who wrote the lyrics, always believed it would have reached No.1 if bass player Jean-Jacques Burnel had not told the press what the “golden brown” of the title referred to, leading to some radio stations banning it from their playlists.

“I would have waited till it got to Number 1 and *then* said it,” he commented wryly.

I’d love to know what he makes of this version, which appeared on a record called The Take Vibe EP and also included a similarly languid jazz version of Walking On The Moon by The Police.