The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out: 50th Anniversary Legacy Edition

A jazz classic never dies – it just gets expanded

“It was never supposed to be a hit – it was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo.” So said alto saxophonist Paul Desmond about Take Five, the jaunty tune he wrote in 5/4 time that became a hit single for the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1960. Its success directly aided the commercial fortunes of the parent album, Time Out – which celebrates its 50th birthday this year – turning it into jazz’s first million-seller.

That it achieved such monumental sales and global renown was ironic given the experimental nature of the album. Though Time Out wasn’t as radical as Ornette Coleman’s iconoclastic The Shape Of Jazz To Come (released the same year), Brubeck’s music (he wrote six of the album’s seven tracks) employed unorthodox time signatures that owed more to western classical music, perhaps, than jazz. One of the tracks, Blue Rondo A La Turk (which ended up as the flipside to the Take Five 45) even drew on Middle Eastern folk rhythms for its inspiration.

Many jazz critics at the time cynically dismissed the album’s time-tinkering as a gimmick but, half a century down the line, its durability proves that the doubters were wrong. Newly remastered and bolstered with a DVD documentary as well as a second CD of previously unissued live cuts taken from the Brubeck Quartet’s performances at the Newport Jazz Festival between 1961 and 1964, Time Out sounds as fresh and vibrant as it must have done back in 1959.

5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars

SonyBMG/Legacy | 88697398522 (2-CD+DVD)

Reviewed by Charles Waring
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