Album of the day (#7370): Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quartet
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- Posted: 08/11/2026 20:00
- Post subject: Album of the day (#7370): Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quartet
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Today's album of the day
Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quartet (View album | Buy this album)
Year: 1959.
Country: 
Dave Brubeck discography rank: 1 (out of 47 listed on BEA)
1959 rank: 3
1950s rank: 3
Overall rank: 254
Average rating: 84/100 (from 743 votes).
Tracks:
1. Blue Rondo À La Turk 
2. Strange Meadow Lark
3. Take Five
4. Three To Get Ready
5. Kathy's Waltz
6. Everybody's Jumpin'
7. Pick Up Sticks
indicates a top-rated track.
Top voted comments:
"The music is only part of the package.
"Theoretically it is as if Joe Morello's three beats had ceased to be the basic pulse, and had become triplets in a slow 4-beat blues -- though with Eugene Wright's 1-in-a-bar bass as the constant link between piano and drums. The listener who keeps abreast of the cross-rhythms here can congratulate themself on sharing with the Brubeck Quartet an enlightened rhythmic sense."
That's a quote from the original liner notes, that particular excerpt talking about the tune Kathy's Waltz. But it's the tone--intellectual, technical--that I want to point out. The experience of this album for the original listeners was inseparable from the liner notes, which taught listeners what they should be paying attention to--the time and meter within each song. Each track's metric approach was described, some more precisely than others but all of the descriptions talking about meter, eg for the first track it's "Blue Rondo à la Turk plunges straight into the most jazz-remote time signature, 9/8 - grouped not in the usual form (3-3-3) but in 2-2-2-3." It's inviting the listener to count along and participate in the intellectual side of music, the technical side.
In other words, it's not just saying "trust us, this is very technical, and you'd be impressed if you could understand." It's saying, "here's some technical information that you actually can understand and listen along with." And it promises the reward that you'll be able to "congratulate yourself" for your "enlightened" understanding.
Jazz liner notes were like this, verbose and intellectual, and sometimes they became hits along with the music on the vinyl. Like Kind Of Blue with its notes by Bill Evans, this album's liner notes were a huge part of the crossover appeal. It's no criticism of the music to point out the plain fact that for both albums, take away the liner notes, and they aren't crossover hits, no way. It's non-jazz listeners being instructed by the liner notes how to listen, and feeling clever and "enlightened" when they do so.
To get what this album was understood to be, you really do need to read the original liner notes (they're online) while listening, like 100% of the original listeners did."
- User not found
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"I like the way Steve Huey reviewed this album on allmusic.com. "Dave Brubeck's defining masterpiece, Time Out is one of the most rhythmically innovative albums in jazz history, the first to consciously explore time signatures outside of the standard 4/4 beat or 3/4 waltz time. Buoyed by a hit single 'Take Five,' Time Out became an unexpectedly huge success, and still ranks as one of the most popular jazz albums ever.""
- @So_MucH_Critics
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About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.
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