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Features Disc of the day
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
Time Out
(CBS, 1959)
From a year of giant leaps in jazz, could this be the most underrated?
Fifty years ago, Charles Mingus released Mingus Ah Um, Ornette Coleman's The Shape Of Jazz To Come shook the genre's foundations, and Miles Davis minted Kind Of Blue, another jazz template still in use today and which, as Richard Williams' excellent recent book explains, spread its influence far beyond the hip and the hep. But of all the jazz releases in that epochal year the LP which spread the word the widest most immediately was The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out. The album would reach Number 2 on the US pop charts, Number 11 in the UK and the defining single, Take Five, the first instrumental jazz single to sell a million, reached 25 (US) and 6 (UK). Time Out's commercial leanings have risked excommunication by the wrathful jazz cognoscenti, but Brubeck's masterwork has stood the test of time precisely because it makes sense of jazz for the common weal. That it remains so likeable, listenable and approachable while using metres outside the standard 4/4 swing is remarkable.
Time Out's rhythmic daring is bound up in two tracks: opener Blue Rondo A La Turk and the aforesaid Take Five. The former would later be appropriated by The Nice, but in its original state the meld of chattering 9/8 rondo, first led by pianist/composer Brubeck, and the 4/4 choruses shared by Brubeck and altoist Paul Desmond, never loses focus. Desmond it was, too, who wrote Take Five, although the tune's unsung hero is drummer Joe Morello, who lucidly sets out the unusual rhythm before moving again to the fore with an erudite drum solo (honestly, they exist) before Desmond's final chorus. Morello's drive is again in evidence on Three To Get Ready and his cleverness (tempered by discretion) on Pick Up Sticks, but the steadying influence of Eugene Wright's old-school time-keeping bass is fundamental to every track's success (in rock terms, think John Entwistle keeping time while Keith Moon and Pete Townshend lock lead drums and lead guitar). Clearly, Time Out was not as all-embracing a statement as Kind Of Blue - few albums were. Yet its two iconic tracks, its supporting cast of appealing material and an ensemble that overcame early tensions to forge a lasting partnership turn what might appear to be an intellectual enterprise into a bright, inventive, thoroughly delightful experience.
Geoff
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 18/09/2009
Further Listening
Thelonious Monk - The Thelonious Monk Orchestra At Town Hall (Riverside, 1959)
Charles Mingus - Blues And Roots (Atlantic, 1959)
Duke Ellington - Anatomy Of A Murder soundtrack (CBS, 1959)
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