Billboard : 12/01/1958
Three stars

The “amazing” Bud Powell is still one of the best of the hard-playing pianists. This set features him in a series of ballads, swingers and Latin-temp themes with Sam Jones on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Selections include Time Waits, a pretty ballad. All of the tunes are Powell originals. Album can move well with exposure.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 12/02/1958
An Incredible Breadth of Sound from Drums

There’s more to being a good drummer than hitting the sticks or the brushes on the snare or the cymbal in the right pattern of contacts to make a good swinging beat.

A good drummer, like a good horn player, has to get a good sound out of his drums. If this seems surprising to you, remember that the drummer sits before several pieces of equipment which, depending on the manner in which he touches them, the strength he uses, the type of stick, mallet or brush and many, many more factors, can be made to vary in pitch and in overall sound to a considerable degree. Jo Jones, for instance, used to get an almost continuous sound, when he was with the Count Basie band, from the high-hat cymbal with the certain pattern of strokes. Dave Tough had a Chinese cymbal with rivets in it which gave out a continuous sizzle with a pitch that could be raised or lowered almost four full tones. Other great drummers of the past and present have developed tremendous variations in tone on their drums. Jo Jones has claimed to play six tones on the bass drum depending on the way he hit the pedal with his foot. The possibilities may appear to be limited, but that is only superficial; in actuality the possibilities are almost unlimited on drums but many drummers never get past the superficialities.

For drummers who wonder if the brushes are worth using and for laymen who would like an illustration of what good brush work sounds like, may I recommend the new Bud Powell Time Waits? Philly Joe Jones (to differentiate between the two, the younger is called Philly Joe) is the drummer and his work is a major artistic triumph.

When Philly Joe plays brushes, the resulting sound is a full-bodied, throbbing whoosh! which can be controlled by his skilled hands and made to function as a continuing life-pulse to the music. It has strength and it has definition. It is never tentative nor is it ever intruding. It is as if the brushes created a magic carpet on which the music rose.

Not only is Philly Joe a master of brushwork but his solo on Buster Rides Again is quite possibly the most melodic and inventive of any drummer’s recorded work. It’s a Latin blues and in his solos Philly Joe keeps a multitude of rhythms progressing concurrently and changes the tone of his tom-tom and snare by running his elbow across them. There are incredible changes from tom-tom to snare to tom-tom in descending tones at the conclusion of phrases. It’s the most fascinating jazz drumming I’ve ever heard on record.

This is also Bud Powell’s best LP in several years and I will discuss that in this space on Thursday.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 12/04/1958
The Unfortunate Plight of Jazzist Bud Powell

At the age of 31, Earl “Bud” Powell is in the position of being the Nijinsky of jazz, his mind shattered at the height of his creative period.

In recent years, Powell has made numerous attempts at reorganizing himself with the help of psychiatrists and other doctors, but his recordings, with rare exception, and his personal appearances both here and abroad have been disastrous.

His managers and advisors have been bitterly criticized for his continued public appearances and defended themselves with the statement that his psychiatrists believe work to be the best therapy for Powell. Those who witnessed his pitiful, and brief, appearance with the Birdland concert here two years ago may wonder if this therapy was really what was needed.

At any rate, Powell has now made an LP which seems to have been recorded in a period of calm in his turbulent mental history. We discussed some aspects of it Tuesday in this space. Called Time Waits it is undoubtedly the best work Powell has recorded in several years.

When he was at his creative peak, Powell was the most astonishing piano virtuoso to appear in jazz since the late Art Tatum. He had uncanny technique and a rapidity of improvisation that was all but unbelievable. One of the major contributors to the post-war bop movement, Powell almost completely revolutionized the jazz piano playing, being in the main responsible for the style in which long, hornlike intricate improvisations of the right hand were played over the occasional single chord of the left.

In this new album, there are several good examples of the Powell familiar style – tunes like Marmalade, and John’s Abbey and these are done with an even and cleanly swinging organization that has been missing from a good deal of Powell’s recent work.

However the tunes which are particularly rewarding on this album are the title song, Time Waits, a lovely ballad in which Powell is quiet and reflective in a rather unusual way; Buster Rides Again, a Latin-tinged blues wherein Powell and Philly Joe Jones, the drummer, engage in some fascinating interplay; and Dry Soul. On the latter, Powell investigates the possibilities of the slow, swinging blues form with some surprising results. On this one and again on Monopoly, Powell seems to be working in some of the areas usually thought of in connection with Thelonious Monk.

This album gives every indication of being an important one in the jazz field. It could mark a renaissance of Powell as a creative artist. Let us hope so. In any case it is a fine jazz effort – one that will be worth hearing for a long, long time.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 01/25/1959

Though this has been highly praised by critics for whom I have the highest esteem, I cannot find it to be other than sterile and meaningless – the product of a once great jazzman who has not yet made it back from the borderline where he lives.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

The line that separates the jazz instrumentalist from the jazz composer is thin, nebulous and easily negotiable. In the chapter of The Book of Jazz devoted to the composers and arrangers I opened with this quotation from Tony Scott: “It all starts with the soloist. What he plays today the arranger writes tomorrow.” Just as the arranger imprints his own musical identify on any work he orchestrates and is thus in effect a composer, it is no less firm a rule that the composer in jazz, more often than not, is simply a soloist documenting his improvisations.

We have seen examples throughout the history of jazz. Early in Ellington‘s career, solos created spontaneously in his band evolved into full-scale compositions. Charlie Parker‘s unforgotten Anthropology started life as the final ad lib chorus on a Bird record of a different tune. By the same standards it is a matter of record rather than of theory that Bud Powell has been essentially composer as long as he has been a creative jazz pianist.

The role of the jazz pianist as composer has been recognized more completely in some performers than in others who may have spent less time composing in the formal sense of the term. Art Tatum, technically the best-equipped pianist in jazz, almost never recorded a composition bearing his own byline, not because melodic invention was outside his scope but because he preferred to improvise within the framework of a known standard theme on which his variations, all melodic entities themselves, thus had an easily discernible point of reference. In the so-called modern jazz era Thelonious Monk was the first to earn dual recognition and is today perhaps even better known as composer than soloist. Horace Silver has worked his way into this twofold acceptance from the other direction; once thoroughly adopted as a pianistic force he was able to stress his writing ability and soon was exercising it with fast-increasing frequency and effectiveness.

Bud Powell, perhaps because of the extraordinary degree of his dominance as a solo influence in the first years of bebop, never was primarily thought of as a writer; yet those who have followed his career and development must know that in two of his most memorable recordings, Un Poco Loco and Glass Enclosure, both on this label, the roles of improviser and composer were invaluably intermingled; in the latter work improvisation was, in fact, only present in the sense that Bud’s personal touch and phrasing lent the performance an extemporized quality; the work was one that he had been preparing and developing for some time.

The present album is the first for which Bud formally composed all the tunes; all the opening-closing themes were set on paper before he entered the studio, though in some cases the harmonic line was given to the bassist verbally. Of course everything in between the slices of prepared toast in these sandwiches is strictly improvised meat.

I have written, in annotating earlier Powell albums for Blue Note, of Bud’s sensitivity, of his emotional problems and of the importance he attaches to every factor attending a recording session – the accompanying musicians, the freedom to choose his own material and take his own time, and perhaps most important of all, the need to feel wanted, understood and appreciated by those for whom he is working. Perhaps it is because the first great solo sessions he recorded, almost a decade ago, were made for Blue Note before the sympathetic ears of Alfred Lion (and the camera eyes of Francis Wolff) that Bud has remained curiously capable of reserving his best efforts for Blue Note.

Of the two musicians working with him on this occasion it need only be observed that this was, for both Philly Joe and Sam Jones, their first recorded date with Bud, an event for which they had waited as a young supporting actor might hope some day to seen on Broadway with the Lunts. Because Philly Joe is a drummer long associated with a highly virile and extrovert style, it is essential to add that his discretion in underlining Powell’s performances do him special credit on these sides.

Buster Rides Again is a Latin-tinged blues, with a melody that evokes the mood of the Afro-Cuban bands, making extensive use of tonic, dominant and flatted seventh. Sam Jones establishes a rhumba beat, Philly Joe makes intricate use of cross-rhythms and in his solo instils something of the occult, mysterious aura of a tribal message. Bud’s blowing on this track maintains a firm grip on two concurrent realities: the necessity to lend authenticity to the Latin flavor and the need to keep swinging.

Sub City, a medium-bright 32-bar theme, uses a pedal point note (on the dominant) as an important accent in the exposition of the melody. On his solo work here Bud maintains a mood of fiery, dynamically subtle single-note lines in which the sense of a process of immediate creativity is constantly present; not only can one not predict where the next note will fall (as one can too often with so many of his imitators) but it is equally impossible to forecast the particular manner in which he will strike it – staccato or legato, syncopated or as part of a group of even eighth notes or of some other rhythmic conformation. Unpredictability may not be an essential of jazz genius, but it certainly helps. In one passage Bud plays locked-hand chords in a manner more often associated with George Shearing (with whom, perhaps surprisingly to some, Bud has a mutual admiration society, each having respected and recorded composition by the other). Actually neither Powell nor Shearing originated the style, which began with Milt Buckner in the early 1940s, but Bud, one need scarcely add, molds it to his own completely personal use.

Sam Jones’ solo is underlined by Philly Joe’s brushes swinging evenly; Philly has a solo, including a striking six-against-four passage, before the theme is brought back.

Time Waits, the title song of the set, is the only ballad of the set, a melodic vehicle played with firm yet somehow gentle emphasis in a manner that draws attention to its attractive chord changes perhaps even more than to the melodic line. This track presents an aspect of Powell as composer that could bear the addition of lyrics and commercial exposure along the lines successfully tackled by Round Midnight, Midnight Sun and other jazz instrumentals.

Marmalade recalls the mood of some of Bud’s earlier efforts as a composer. A boppish 32-bar line, it is a launching-pad for medium-bright cooking on the part of Bud and Sam. Note the tremolo chord effect and the facetious quote from Raymond Scott’s Toy Trumpet in the chorus before the bass solo.

Monopoly, with its repeated tonic against changing chords, somehow reminds of Thelonious in its thematic conception; there is no evidence that Bud was not composing and/or improvising in this manner at least as early as Monk. Bud’s work on this track is a model of rhythmic as well as melodic and harmonic ingenuity; for variety’s sake he even incorporates a brief passage of stride left hand, a gambit to which he has resorted before, but more often when not accomplished by a rhythm section. Sam Jones’ solo, perhaps his mot successful of the whole set, displays smooth continuity of phrasing abetted by facile technique. Philly’s brushes, both in solo and background roles, are an agile asset.

John’s Abbey is a fast-tempo original with lines that recall some of the typical Parker works of the 1940s. The blowing choruses by Bud typify the style of his earlier recordings, his bass line punching out accents, somewhat as one would use the space bar on a typewriter while the upper register spells out the words, in fast-moving clusters of single notes. The tempo is cut in half surprisingly at the end for an eighteenth-century coda complete with final tonic.

Dry Soul, though at times unmistakably Powell, is at once something else again. The tempo is very slow, the theme of a 12-bar blues, and the mood, particularly in the opening and closing theme choruses, may remind some listeners of the Avery Parrish After Hours cut many years ago with Erskine Hawkins‘ band, a blues that predated bop by a few years. Whatever the influence or intent, this one came out strictly funk, all the way to the final blue ninth.

The side closes with a second take of Sub City, shorter than the track on the A side and without the bass and drum solos. Bud was in such exceptionally good shape on the day of this session that the inclusion of another take brings a welcome additional glimpse of his never-static invention and infinite capacity for taking choruses. As the last sustained chord trails off into space to bring the Time Waits album to an end, the listener, along with this writer, will be thankful that time waited to bring Bud, Philly Joe and Sam Jones together, and waited for Blue Note to produce the best Powell performances to be placed between covers in recent years.