Very cynical that. Were there any full LPs dedicated to exploring exotic time signatures before Time Out, genuine question? I definitely think the album influenced a lot of prominent English prog rockers, whether it was a 'game changer' or not, I'll leave up to the experts. I certainly enjoy it as a musical statement.
Still in the airport lounge w fog delay hour 3 NP Herbie Hancock Mwandishi 1971 ( after all this 70s talk here) I tend to find the very early seventies cross over some of the best of the decade
Whether one calls it a game changer or not, I think Brubeck brought time signatures to the forefront of the average listener/consumer. He certainly wasn't the first use time signatures beyond 4/4 and 3/4 as there are many samples from classical to ethnic folk music not to mention classical Indian music which has many components foreign to European based music. It became a bit of a selling point for Brubeck though it might have been emphasized by the record company more than Brubeck. He did purposely explore writing in different time signatures but I'm not sure who decided to make it a "thing.
WP Stan Getz and Joāo Gilberto - Keystone Korner 1976 (Resonance) 10" sampler With the under recognized pianist Joanne Brackeen, Clint Houston (b) and Billy Hart(d). Have you ever noticed how much Billy Hart's name comes up on recordings you own? It happens to me a lot. That man has been busy! And still going strong too I might add.
I’m still in a bit of a fusiony mood myself after all this talk about Weather Report, but first I’ll start off with this record that is an excellent fusion of organ, guitar, tenor sax, and drums. Larry Young - Into Somethin’ (Music Matters 45)
Coincidently I am sitting in fog too but I'm not trying to get further than my couch to the kitchen for more tea. Looks like your day may be shot by the time you do get moving. I'm going to take a walk in the park later but it's only across the street so I think I'll be fine.
A little parochial, don't you think? Define 'exotic time signature' , define 'expert'. As I mentioned earlier Max Roach had been playing around with time signatures prior to Brubeck and released his Jazz In 3/4 Time in 1957. That wasn't a game changer either. Cynical? I don't think so. The truth? Yes, as far as being lucrative is concerned. And deservedly so, since it's good music and I enjoy it. But that wasn't my point.
Bingo! Key point being 'the average listener/consumer', i.e. the people who matter most to record companies, - not jazz musicians, not even prog rockers in East Cheam.
Well I’m on the plane now. My meeting will still happen so All is not lost. I just hope to have time to drop by a favourite record shop
NP Hank Jones - Last Recording (Eighty Eight's) Japanese vinyl A beautiful "parting shot" from Hank and the sound on this lp is exquisite.
Yes, I possibly was being a tad parochial although it's only English prog rockers I've noticed wearing the 'Time Out' heart on their sleeve. As for exotic time signatures, anything that isn't 4/4 or a waltz would be in my (Western music based) opinion although I could be wrong. Anyway, we agree that it's a good album so we're all good, the definition of a 'game changer' could be pretty wide reaching at the end of the day so no point dwelling on it.
I was a high school kid in my first bands and I had some money to spend and that was THE axe of the day for a keyboard player. It really wasn't thinking about influences on the instrument, other than influences on acoustic piano at the time as I was just really learning how to be a musician. In fact, in the end I'm much more of a Wurli man in terms of the sound -- I always loved the Wurli on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You and "What'd I Say." The Rhodes was a much nicer instrument physically. But it was the sound of the say, on Stevie Wonder records, on Steely Dan records, on Frampton Comes Alive, and I was playing more in a pop and rock and funk context, not jazz at all. A little later I was getting into the use of effects with it....I never had a ring modulator, but when I heard Chick Corea's stuff on Black Beauty, I realized how much he really developed those ideas in the day, even though back then I was probably receiving them second hand. You know, I has a DX7 in the '80s, it was the instrument of the day then too.
NP Elvin Jones - Elvin! (Riverside) OJC reissued lp This time all three Jones brothers are together for this recording. They are joined by the two Franks, Foster and Wess plus Art Davis on bass. I've never seen an original pressing and I've had this for decades. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to give up their Jones.
Earlier last year I had posed a question, here, to you all concerning your feelings toward trombone (and flute) in jazz, and stated that I couldn’t imagine not liking an entire instrument (a particular performance or, maybe even, a particular player, ok). Several months ago I came to the realization that I had been shying away from recordings led by organists and was worried that the organ may have fallen into this category for me. After testing the waters with some assorted organ dates from Jimmy Smith and Larry Young I found that all is well in organtown, fortunately too, I might add, because whoever named that Larry Young album “Into Somethin’” sure wasn’t lying.
I think I recall reading somewhere that this may have been the first draft of the cover art to Time Out:
I just want to make clear I'm not trying to "negatively describe music," I'm trying to describe the music and then describe my personal reaction to it, which is to some degree "negative." To me, that's a big difference. Musicians make the music they want to make based on their aesthetics (or commercial reasons or whatever), and it is what they want it to be (or maybe sometimes they feel like they came up short of what they intended or exceeded expectations or whatever). And I have nothing but respect and admiration for everyone who does that, and extreme respect for the people who are so enormously successful at it. But certain music we connect with, certain musical gestures and sounds and rhythms we connect with, certain musical personalities and notions we connect with. And certain other ones we don't. With WR I hear a lot of grooving by highly schooled musicians on repeated laid back funk vamps with solos and every now and then some jazzily harmonized melody line over the top and generally that's a sort of thing that I get bored with quickly, both as a listener and a player (and I'm not anti-funk, quite the contrary, I once did a nine hour radio retrospective on PFunk and spend time hanging out with and interviewing George Clinton and Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell and others from the P.Funk universe, produced a concert that brought a lot of the P.Funk family together to raise money for Eddie Hazel's mom when Eddie died; interviewed and wrote stuff about James Brown and Bobby Byrd; I love funk music). And then I hear some of these moody atmospheric pieces, which is also a type of think I tend to get bored with quickly. It's just not music for me. But obviously those elements were then and are now much liked by other people. And I feel nothing close to derision for Weather Report, in fact, I really like the Live in Tokyo record. And I remember back in the day when Jaco joined the band and then when he went out on the road with Joni Mitchell, I and every other musician I knew, were just in shock and awe at the guy's sound and style and creativity with the use of the looper. He was one of the most admired and influential musicians of my formative years as a musician. We all listened to that guy and wanted to hear what he was doing next as a player, not so much as a leader or composer or anything, even those of use who weren't bass players. He was that influential. And I have nothing but respect and admiration for Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul. And there's lots of Shorter music in particular that I love.
I can see someone shying away from very unusual instruments in jazz like oboe or bagpipes. Some people just don't like the sound of some instruments no matter how well played. It's hard to imagine with standard brass instruments though. I'm someone who is attracted by unusual instruments. I started listening to Yusef Lateef because of his use of oboe. As far as I know, he's the only mainstream bop player to record oboe. Of course, I love his sax and flute playing as well.
Duke Ellington – DETS 47 [(Jun-Jul '53) on Vol. 24 of The Treasury Shows] (Storyville Records—D.E.T.S.) — Willie Cook, Cat Anderson, Clark Terry(t); Ray Nance(t,vl,v); Britt Woodman, Quentin Jackson,Juan Tizol(tb); Jimmy Hamilton(cl,ts); Russell Procope(cl,ss,as); Rick Henderson(as); Paul Gonsalves(ts); Harry Carney(cl,as,bar); Duke Ellington(p); Wendell Marshall(sb); Butch Ballard(d); Jimmy Grissom(v); live NBC broadcast from the Blue Note, Chicago Duke Ellington – Hurricane NYC [(Apr 1, '44) on Vol. 24 of The Treasury Shows] (Storyville Records—D.E.T.S.) — Shelton Hemphill, Rex Stewart, Taft Jordan(t); Ray Nance(t,vn,v); Lawrence Brown, Joe Nanton, Juan Tizol(tb); Jimmy Hamilton(cl,ts); Otto Hardwicke(cl,as); Johnny Hodges(as); Skippy Williams(ts); Harry Carney(cl,as,bar); Duke Ellington(p); Fred Guy(g); Junior Raglin(sb); Sonny Greer(d,ch); Al Hibbler, Wini Johnson(v); live NBC broadcast from the Blue Note, Chicago CD 1 of Volume 24. First image is the label from Side A of the original D.E.T.S. LP release.
I wouldn't call it experimental. I don't think they're out there experimenting in front of an audience and subjecting the audience to their testing out of ideas -- vs., say, the Miles Plugged Nickel recordings, were the band was actually experimenting or testing out some kind of idea to play not-jazz or something (without Miles knowing about it). I think they're playing a set, and they're flowing through the pieces in this profound dialog between one another in a spirit of group improvisation and in a lot of ways it builds on what Shorter and the Miles band did at the Plugged Nickel half a decade or so before and even what the Miles band was doing in '69 just before Shorter left. But I dunno, maybe they thought they were experimenting and finding their way. I think it sounds more self-assured than that. I find it very exciting, that intense dialog between the musicians.
It was a super popular album, but I dunno about "game changer." It was 1959, and it's not like in 1960, '61, '62 jazz was suddenly full of albums that deliberately called attention to uncommon and uneven time signatures. In '60, '61, '62, the impact of Coleman and Cecil Taylor and the "New Thing" seemed to change the game -- people felt like they had to take sides for or against, there were albums imitating the styles, more established cats like Coltrane and Sonny Rollins make albums with Coleman's players, etc. There wasn't anything like that with time signatures in the years after Time Out and Brubeck didn't just become the player who played in 5/4 or something. Of course, these days, everybody in jazz plays in all kinds of uncommon and uneven time signatures (uncommon in jazz when it was in large measure dance music), and often swings hard doing it without deliberately calling attention to the time signatures. Put on one of the Dave Holland Quintet or Big Band albums of the last 20, 25 years and you're likely to hear all kinds of uncommon or uneven or compound meters and you might not even notice it. But that was 40 year later, and many decades after jazz stopped being dance or pop music, and after it was full of lots of conservatory trained musicians for whom playing in these time signatures or reading scores that consisted of pictures, or other sorts non-folk kind of stuff was not so out-of-left-field. The Brubeck record is beautiful, the songs are great, the sound is great, Paul Desmond is great, and the use of these elements, not just the time signature thing from outside of jazz, is great, I wouldn't quite call it a shtick, but kind of a novelty concept element more that a "game changer" that came along and everyone in jazz had to kind of confront it and deal with it and respond to it in some way.
If nothing else, Brubeck's "Time Out" brought widespread attention to the art of Paul Desmond. Now Paul Desmond was himself (with his alto) a movement, a school, and a man who changed public perceptions of jazz. Ever since Brubeck started, a portion of the jazz audience (and critics) refused to give him the recognition he deserved. As to why, that could be an entire discussion. But Brubeck successfully expanded the audience for jazz itself, for many other artists through many years, especially with his Long Playing 12 inch albums that established the heart of recorded jazz for many decades.
Big fan of the the Wurli on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You and What'd I Say also. I can listen to early Atlantic records Aretha and Ray all day.
