{"title":"Tony Williams","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eTony Williams grew up in Boston, studied with drummer Alan Dawson from age eleven, was playing professionally with Sam Rivers at thirteen, joined Jackie McLean in New York at sixteen, and was sitting behind Miles Davis at seventeen. Davis later wrote in his autobiography that Williams was \"the centre that the group's sound revolved around,\" and that hearing him play for the first time made him \"excited all over again.\" That is not a small thing to say about a teenager. The Second Great Quintet, with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter alongside Williams and Davis, made a sequence of records between 1964 and 1968 that remain the most studied rhythm section recordings in jazz history, not for their conservatism but for the opposite: Williams played behind the beat, ahead of it, across it, treating the ride cymbal and the snare as melodic instruments rather than timekeeping devices, and pulling the entire band with him. He also found time to make his own Blue Note records during those years: \"Life Time\" (1964) and \"Spring\" (1965), both recorded while still a Davis sideman. In 1969 he formed the Tony Williams Lifetime with guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young, releasing \"Emergency!\" on Polydor, a double album of blown-out guitar, organ and drums that the jazz community largely rejected and that Miles Davis found so compelling he asked to lead the group himself. Williams declined. The Lifetime ran through several incarnations before disbanding, and Williams spent the 1980s and early 1990s leading a working quintet that included Wallace Roney and Donald Harrison, recording a series of Blue Note albums beginning with \"Foreign Intrigue\" (1985). He died on 23 February 1997, aged 51, weeks after completing his final album \"Wilderness,\" which featured Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny and Stanley Clarke.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"anthony-williams-spring-1971-us-blue-note-bst-84216-vinyl-lp","title":"Anthony Williams - Spring (1971 US Blue Note BST-84216 Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnthony Williams - \u003cem\u003eSpring\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP - 1971 US Blue Note Reissue (BST-84216, United Artists era)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilliams had been playing professionally since he was thirteen and had joined Miles Davis's quintet at seventeen. By August 1965 he had already appeared on Eric Dolphy's \u003cem\u003eOut to Lunch!\u003c\/em\u003e, Andrew Hill's \u003cem\u003ePoint of Departure\u003c\/em\u003e, Jackie McLean's \u003cem\u003eOne Step Beyond\u003c\/em\u003e and Herbie Hancock's \u003cem\u003eEmpyrean Isles\u003c\/em\u003e, made his own debut with \u003cem\u003eLife Time\u003c\/em\u003e in 1964, and cut \u003cem\u003eE.S.P.\u003c\/em\u003e with Davis in January. Fourteen Blue Note sessions in two and a half years, and this was the last of them. What makes the record hold up is that it is not a drummer's showcase. Williams wrote all five pieces and then built them so that everyone has somewhere to go. The traditional roles come apart: Peacock's bass roams rather than walks, Hancock comps percussively and pushes into the upper register, the two tenors weave around each other rather than trading in the usual sense, and Williams keeps the propulsion going without holding a time signature down. It sounds like 1965 in the best way, with the structures loosening and nobody quite sure yet what the music was becoming.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSam Rivers is the reason to hear it as much as Williams. He was 42, considerably older than everyone else in the room, and had spent the previous year playing with Davis before Shorter took the chair. His playing here is free and hard and completely unlike Shorter's more oblique approach, and the contrast between the two tenors is what gives the album its charge. \"Extras\" opens with both horns and runs past eight minutes. \"Echo\" follows as a solo drum performance, five minutes of Williams alone working a tiny theme into what amounts to an improvised composition. \"From Before\" brings Hancock in. \"Love Song\" is the piece most often singled out, an eight-minute performance in shifting meters that sounds fluid rather than mathematical. \"Tee\" closes the album at over ten minutes with everyone playing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the 1971 US pressing on Blue Note BST-84216, from the United Artists era, with the blue and white divisional label.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blue Note","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43860964933691,"sku":null,"price":60.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/IMG_7887.jpg?v=1784884814"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/tony-williams.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}