The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out

Released - December 1959

Genre - Jazz

Producer - Teo Macero

Selected Personnel - Dave Brubeck (Piano); Paul Desmond (Saxophone); Eugene Wright (Bass); Joe Morello (Drums)

Standout Track - Take Five

Time Out is another one of those classic jazz records which I've long been aware of, even knowing full well that I love certain bits of it, but that I only really listened to properly this year, and has quickly confirmed the place in my affections I always knew it would have, really. It's one of the all-time best-selling jazz albums, largely due to the presence of the iconic "Take Five," though I was surprised to find on listening to it all the way through for the first time that all three of its opening tracks were already overtly familiar to me - whether or not I could have exactly put my finger on who performed them, they're pieces that have been absorbed into the pop-cultural identity of instrumental jazz, and it's easy to see why. It's also easy to forget, after decades of continued innovation not just in the field of jazz but in the whole wider sphere of popular music in general, quite how radical some of the innovations on Time Out were at the time - they've become such perennial favourites that it's difficult to ever think of a time when this music was fundamentally challenging and difficult rather than just being the pleasant, atmospheric dinnertime music that so much great jazz has sadly been relegated to today. I'm therefore enormously glad to have given this album the time it deserves to fully appreciate it and to ensure I didn't just consign these songs to the back of my mind somewhere.

Brubeck had firmly established himself as one of the great jazz pianists of the 50s over the course of several albums released with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, a group focused very much on the interplay between himself and his saxophonist and long-term musical collaborator, Paul Desmond. Brubeck's style of playing was fairly idiosyncratic and made him stand out from many of the other jazz pianists that surrounded him as he favoured blocky chords over single-note runs due to an ongoing health complaint with the nerves in his hands after a surfing accident in Hawaii. It's a pleasant-sounding affectation or habit, one that means the occasional flutters of single notes become lovely ornamentations on top of the firmer, blockier foundations of the piece that he constructs. The rhythm section of the quartet was on fairly regular rotation, with drummer Joe Morello being drafted in in 1956, and bassist Eugene Wright only joining in 1958, the year of Time Out's release.

Around the time that Brubeck started planning Time Out, jazz music was in a major transitional period - the traditional bebop style was falling out of favour, with more and more musicians attempting to innovate with the form, resulting in the development of cool jazz that had been documented in Miles Davis's 1957 compilation Birth Of The Cool, charting his own pioneering work in the field. Cool jazz generally grounded itself much more in atmosphere and space than in rhythmic impact or energetic soloing. It also tended to innovate more with unusual harmonies and draw more influence from classical music - essentially, it applied the same kind of thinking to traditional jazz as prog rock did to conventional rock music ten years later, attempting to diversify its influences and take it in more complicated, atmospheric directions beyond the more immediately impactful and perhaps more melodic convetions of bebop. Amidst all this, Brubeck developed the idea of trying to make a record built entirely around the idea of unusual time signatures, ones which jazz music was basically never recorded in.

The idea first surfaced on a trip abroad in Turkey, where Brubeck watched a traditional Turkish folk band play a song in 9/8 time, almost never used in western music. Columbia records were excited about the idea, seeing its potential to be something very different and brave, but were fairly reserved at the same time, nervous about Brubeck potentially spoiling his commercial standing by doing something so unusual. Virtually none of the songs on Time Out are in conventional time, although "Strange Meadow Lark," after its rhythm-less, drifting piano introduction, settles into a traditional 4/4, but the place where it feels the most obviously unusual are on the piece that drew direct inspiration from that Turkish folk song, album opener "Blue Rondo A La Turk." Its 9/8 time means it constantly lurches back and forth, never settling into what the general western audience at the time would have recognised as a comfortable rhythm, always being pulled from one place to the other by the unusual shifts in its tempo, making it just as unpredictable and rhythmically punchy as any more traditionally uptempo bebop piece without the need for fiery solos or pounding rhythm sections. It's able to confound and delight the listener merely with its rhythmic innovations.

"Strange Meadow Lark" is an absolutely beautiful piece, its rippling, glacial piano introduction one of the loveliest instrumentals of its kind, before settling into a more conventional jazz piece over which Desmond's sax dives and swoops. Desmond's real chance to shine, of course, is on "Take Five," his one compositional contribution to the album and ultimately the Brubeck Quartet's biggest hit, as well as one of the most instantly recognisable jazz piece of all time. Desmond's sax melody is instantly memorable, one of the catchiest jazz instrumentals, and Brubeck modestly chimes away in the background, never pulling focus from Desmond or from Morello, who gets his own big moment with the piece's extended drum solo. Indeed, Desmond has commented that "Take Five" was only ever written as a framework for a Morello drum solo, and had no idea it would become a hit. Whether he's being slightly coy here is anyone's guess - surely he must have been aware of what a gift of a melody he'd written.

Time Out as a whole is in fact very generous to the supporting players, and there's no sense that the Quartet was purely a vanity project by Brubeck. Morello gets moments to shine, and there are plenty of moments where Brubeck is happy to fade into the background and let the rhythm section have prominence, and the moments where he hands the focus over to Desmond to exercise one of his light, flitting sax solos over the top of everything crop up every few minutes. Perhaps Eugene Wright doesn't get much of a chance to stamp his own personality on things, but he's certainly not rendered irrelevant or invisible.

The record perhaps struggles to live up to the early promise of those first three tracks, with the latter four not quite being able to immediately lodge themselves in your head the second you hear them like the first three do, but they're still enormously enjoyable and pleasant to listen to. "Kathy's Waltz" is a lovely, breezy waltz piece dedicated to Brubeck's daughter, while "Everybody's Jumpin'" repeatedly jumps between time signatures and almost succeeds in repeating the trick of the lurching, unpredictable feel of "Blue Rondo A La Turk." Ultimately, though, even if it were just those first three songs and then a load of rubbish, Time Out would easily have ensconced itself as one of the great jazz albums, being able to be catchy, mesmerising, unpredictable, confounding, beautiful and deeply peaceful all within half an album. One of those albums that even people claim not to like jazz should listen to just to impress upon them how much they're missing out on.

Track Listing:

All songs by Dave Brubeck except where noted.

1. Blue Rondo A La Turk

2. Strange Meadow Lark

3. Take Five (Paul Desmond)

4. Three To Get Ready

5. Kathy's Waltz

6. Everybody's Jumpin'

7. Pick Up Sticks