Emergency! | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | September 1969 [1] | |||
Recorded | May 26 & 28, 1969 | |||
Genre | Jazz fusion, jazz-rock | |||
Length | 70:24 | |||
Label | Verve, Polydor, PolyGram | |||
Producer | Monte Kay, Jack Lewis | |||
Tony Williams chronology | ||||
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Emergency! is the debut double album by the American jazz fusion group The Tony Williams Lifetime featuring Williams with guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young. It was recorded and released in 1969 and was one of the first significant fusion recordings. [2] The album is commonly regarded as an influential album in the jazz, rock, and fusion genres. [3]
According to jazz scholar Christopher Meeder, the Lifetime eschewed the funk influence of Miles Davis' early fusion music with a mixture of heavy rock drumming and the "light, rapid swing" that was Williams' signature. "Emergency! synthesized the best elements of free jazz, modal jazz, and British rock", Meeder wrote, "and added a rhythmic complexity in tracks like 'Via the Spectrum Road,' a blues of sorts in the unusual time signature of 11/8." [4] In Paul Hegarty's opinion, the music was more oriented with progressive music's rock side rather than its jazz, fusing psychedelic elements while featuring "reprises, crescendos, an oscillation between the simpler time signatures of rock and the more progressive metres of jazz". He cited "Via the Spectrum Road" as an example of how Williams' singing approached the "non-rock, non-jazz softness" of progressive rock pioneer Robert Wyatt. [5]
"Via the Spectrum Road" was viewed by Stuart Nicholson as one of the album's most blatant explorations of rock rhythms. "Spectrum", on the other hand, utilized rhythms from post-bop. Composed by McLaughlin, it was first recorded for his 1969 Extrapolation debut and was regarded by Nicholson as an extension of that album's "free-flowing approach ... but reinforced by the volume and energy associated with rock". [6]
A mistake during Emergency's production led Meeder to believe it helped lend a "raw power" to the music: "A cynical engineer used to recording mainstream jazz recorded the band carelessly, allowing the tape to distort, unintentionally adding satisfyingly raw edges to the album." [4]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [7] |
Chicago Tribune | [8] |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz | [9] |
Pitchfork | 9.0/10 [10] |
Record Collector | [11] |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [12] |
Sputnikmusic | 5/5 [13] |
The Village Voice | A [14] |
Emergency! was originally released in 1969 by Polydor/PolyGram Records, [15] receiving widespread acclaim from major American publications. [16] In a contemporary review for The Village Voice , Robert Christgau hailed Williams as "probably the best drummer in the world" and was astonished by the album, [14] calling it "a frank extrapolation on the most raucous qualities of new thing jazz and wah-wah mannerist rock". [17] Coda was less enthusiastic, finding it "intriguing" with some "substantial" pieces of music but not as much as other hard rock bands attempting the same kind of music, nor as imaginative and coherent as the music Williams, McLaughlin, and Young had made outside the group. [16] The album was later issued on CD by Polydor/PolyGram Records in 1991 but with a "restoration" remix by Phil Schaap to overcome "Marked sonic problems". The original album mix was reissued on CD for the first time by Verve/PolyGram Records in 1997. [15]
According to J. D. Considine in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (1992), jazz fusion started on Emergency! where McLaughlin was first given the chance to combine jazz and rock. [12] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Leo Stanley said that it "shattered the boundaries between jazz and rock" with its "dense, adventurous, unpredictable soundscapes". [7] Dennis Polkow of the Chicago Tribune wrote that in spite of the album's questionable sound quality, the music has an "energy and spirit" that has never been surpassed in fusion. [8] According to Nicholson, recordings like Emergency! and the 1975 Miles Davis LP Agharta showed jazz rock paralleling free jazz by being "on the verge of creating a whole new musical language in the 1960s", suggesting the genre's "potential of evolving into something that might eventually define itself as a wholly independent genre quite apart from the sound and conventions of anything that had gone before." This development was stifled by commercialism, he said, as the genre "mutated into a peculiar species of jazz-inflected pop music that eventually took up residence on FM radio" at the end of the 1970s. [18] Mojo regarded it as "jazz-rock's equivalent of Are You Experienced? ". [19]
1969 LP (Polydor)
1991 CD (Polydor) remix by Phil Schaap
1997 CD (Verve) original album mix
Anthony Tillmon Williams was an American jazz drummer. Williams first gained fame as a member of Miles Davis' "Second Great Quintet," and later pioneered jazz fusion with Davis' group and his own combo, the Tony Williams Lifetime. In 1970, music critic Robert Christgau described him as "probably the best drummer in the world." Williams was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1986.
Jazz fusion is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.
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In the Court of the Crimson King is the debut studio album by English progressive rock band King Crimson, released on 10 October 1969 by Island Records. The album is one of the earliest and most influential of the progressive rock genre, where the band combined the musical influences that rock music was founded upon with elements of jazz, classical, and symphonic music.
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Welcome is the fifth studio album by Santana, released in 1973. It followed the jazz-fusion formula that the preceding Caravanserai had inaugurated, but with an expanded and different lineup this time. Gregg Rolie had left the band along with Neal Schon to form Journey, and they were replaced by Tom Coster, Richard Kermode and Leon Thomas, along with guest John McLaughlin, who had collaborated with Carlos Santana on Love Devotion Surrender. Welcome also featured John Coltrane's widow, Alice, as a pianist on the album's opening track, "Going Home" and Flora Purim on vocals. This album was far more experimental than the first four albums, and Welcome did not produce any hit singles.
The Tony Williams Lifetime was a jazz fusion group led by drummer Tony Williams. The band was pivotal in the development of fusion and featured various noteworthy jazz and rock musicians throughout its history, including guitarists John McLaughlin and Allan Holdsworth, keyboardists Larry Young and Alan Pasqua, and bassists Jack Bruce and Ron Carter.
Ginger Baker's Air Force is the debut album by Ginger Baker's Air Force, released in 1970. This album is a recording of a sold-out live show at the Royal Albert Hall, on 15 January 1970, with the original 10-piece line up. The gatefold LP cover was designed left-handed, i.e., the front cover artwork was on what traditionally would be considered the back and vice versa.
Water Babies is a compilation album by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. It compiled music Davis recorded in studio sessions with his quintet in 1967 and 1968, including outtakes from his 1968 album Nefertiti and recordings that foreshadowed his direction on In a Silent Way (1969), while covering styles such as jazz fusion and post-bop. Water Babies was released by Columbia Records in 1976 after Davis had (temporarily) retired.
Devotion is the second album by the English jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin, released in 1970. It was recorded while McLaughlin was a member of Tony Williams Lifetime. McLaughlin was joined by his Lifetime bandmate, organist Larry Young, bass guitarist Billy Rich and former Electric Flag and Jimi Hendrix drummer Buddy Miles. McLaughlin was unhappy with the finished album. On his website, he wrote, “In 1969, I signed a contract in America for two records. First is 'Devotion' that is destroyed by producer Alan Douglas who mixes the recording in my absence.”
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