Emergency!

Williams Lifetime, The Tony

album cover

The Most Exciting Jazz-Rock Fusion

"Emergency!" begins with a press roll on the snare drum, an age-old device used by jazz drummers to rally the troops. Within seconds, though, the spark-plug percussionist Tony Williams (1945–1997) has wiped out all vestiges of tradition, and we're into some thrashing, whiplashing backbeat that's closer to Jimi Hendrix than anything swing. The electric guitar of John McLaughlin, who first played with Williams in the bands of Miles Davis, slices the air. Lurking in the background is organist Larry Young, whose chords have a clipped, Morse code urgency. For nine thrilling minutes, these three musicians travel through various tempos—some brisk up-tempo jazz, some stomping rock, some outright space jamming—and follow an equal number of moody tangents. When, near the end, there's an audible exclamation, a "whoo!," it's clear that this is not another jazz attempt to "cash in" on rock, it's serious business.

In the liner notes of a Lifetime anthology, Williams says that after leaving Davis's group, he began listening to Hendrix, Cream, and the MC5: "My drumming had become more aggressive and that was the direction that I wanted to follow." This trio quickly became the most vital realization of that sound.

McLaughlin and Young prove excellent companions. Though other power trios followed this one, few ever achieved the sense of commitment, the shared taste for fast-rising and sustained insurrections. Just about every track finds him trampling stylistic barriers, and deploying different types of provocations—Williams's improvisational reflexes are so toned it seems that every moment brings some new rhythmic challenge. Very few titles filed under jazz fusion exceed Emergency! in thrills per minute.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1969, Polydor
Key Tracks: "Emergency!," "Vashkar," "Spectrum."
Catalog Choice: Lifetime; Tokyo Live.
Next Stop: Mahavishnu Orchestra: Birds of Fire
After That: Billy Cobham: Spectrum.
Book Pages: 866–867