Recorded Legacy

Once the seven cuts of Time Out had been committed to vinyl, there began a long period in which the Quartet revisited and reinterpreted this repertoire. The “classic” Quartet and its successors recorded many new versions of most of the tunes on Time Out. This chapter first examines a few of Brubeck’s most significant recordings of “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” “Strange Meadow Lark,” “Take Five,” “Three to Get Ready,” and “Kathy’s Waltz” in the thirty-five years after they originally appeared. The latter part of the chapter considers several cover versions of these tunes, which entail radical transformation of Brubeck’s original ideas. These include Anthony Braxton’s rendition of “Three to Get Ready” and Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Rondo.”