Dave Brubeck Time Out CD

Dave Brubeck's TIME OUT ranks alongside Miles Davis' KIND OF BLUE as one of the few advanced jazz masterpieces to achieve great commercial success. In fact, the widespread popularity of TIME OUT, with its cool-toned ambience, smooth style, and elements borrowed from classical music, helped make modern jazz a mainstream phenomenon.

The ubiquitous "Take Five" may be overplayed, but that doesn't diminish the joy of its complex melodic hooks, its perfectly executed solos, or the swinging slink of its 5/4 signature. "Blue Rondo a la Turk" collages Mozart, cool swing, and Brubeck's own classically oriented piano style, and the airy, delicate "Everybody's Jumpin'" showcases the lyrical splendor of saxophonist Paul Desmond. With bassist Gene Wright and drummer Joe Morello keeping the tricky rhythms agile and swift, the Dave Brubeck Quartet blended complexity and accessibility for pure jazz pleasure on TIME OUT, an album everyone should own.

Recorded at Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York, New York on June 25, July 1 & August 18, 1959. Includes liner notes by Dave Brubeck and Steve Race.

Dave Brubeck Quartet: Dave Brubeck (piano); Paul Desmond (alto saxophone); Eugene Wright (bass); Joe Morello (drums).Q (3/95, p.112) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...Whilst other jazz innovators mapped out new harmonic and melodic realms, Brubeck and his band were forging time signatures anew, giving the music the wonky grace of a gazelle running the 200 metre hurdles..."
Down Beat (p.61) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Both 'Kathy's Waltz' and 'Strange Meadow Lark' contain melodies and moods that keep one hearing new things time and again..."
Mojo (Publisher) (12/99, p.131) - "...superb remastering puts you in the room and brings out all the shimmer of Joe Morello's drums. Jazz-lite it may be, but jazz-lite has seldom been bettered."
Record Collector (magazine) (p.83) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "Brubeck's music employed unorthodox time signatures that owed more to western classical music, perhaps, than jazz....TIME OUT sounds as fresh and vibrant as it must have done back in 1959."