Time Out routinely appears in polls among the top five jazz albums of all time and of those five the only one that is distinctly "West Coast". The main reason is the uber-standard "Take Five", a song that is guaranteed for all time to haunt every artist and band on their fifth take of any song. The main appeal of Time Out is its use of unusual time signatures, with "Take Five" being so ingrained in the zeitgeist that I dare anyone to try writing a song in 5/4 time that does not sound like "Take Five".
However, there's some other cool songs here too. The first track, "Blue Rondo a la Turk" (9/8 time), has become very well known as well, even transforming into a blistering rock song by the Nice called "Rondo" (but in 4/4 time). "Strange Meadow Lark" dispenses with time signatures altogether for its opening.
Time Out paved the way for jazz to expand far beyond a popular music form and helped move the genre closer to classical than rock during the next decade. Within ten years an album like this wouldn't have been considered all that groundbreaking, but for 1959 it challenged the status quo like no other album.
It should be no surprise that I bought Time Out years and years ago, when my interest in jazz was still downright embryonic. It's not a bad place to start even though Brubeck & Co. were often isolated personnel-wise from their East Coast peers.
No comments:
Post a Comment