With Emergency! The Tony Williams Lifetime made its debut as an organ trio: Tony Williams on drums, John McLaughlin on guitar and Larry Young on organ. It is a double album of long pieces, released by Polydor in September 1969, and it is often named as one of the records that started jazz fusion.

The short version

Williams recorded the album in New York in May 1969, after his years in the Miles Davis quintet. Polydor issued it in the United States as a double LP, catalogue number 25-3001, with liner notes by the critic Ralph J. Gleason. The line-up is the trio and nobody else: Williams, McLaughlin and Young. It is the first of the six studio albums the band made between 1969 and 1976, and the only one by the original trio alone.

Two days at Olmsted Sound

The sessions took place at Olmsted Sound Studios in New York City on 26 and 28 May 1969. Monte Kay and Jack Lewis produced the album, and Gene Radice recorded and mixed it; the lacquers were cut by Lee Hulko at Sterling Sound. The original American pressing was auto-coupled, with sides A and D on one disc and B and C on the other, so the record could be played on an automatic changer.

At the time, a large part of the jazz audience did not know what to make of the rock volume and the distorted organ and guitar; the reputation of the album grew later. The band page tells the rest of the story of the trio and of the line-ups that followed.

If this is your scene, my books go deeper →

The songs

Eight pieces across four sides. Side one holds the title track, “Emergency” (9:35), and “Beyond Games” (8:20), both by Williams. Side two opens with “Where” (12:09) and closes with Carla Bley’s “Vashkar” (4:58), the only piece by an outside composer apart from the closer. Side three has “Via the Spectrum Road” (7:50) and “Spectrum” (9:52), and side four the longest track, Williams’s “Sangria for Three” (13:08), followed by Dave Herman’s “Something Spiritual” (5:38).

The original Polydor label data credits “Where”, “Via the Spectrum Road” and “Spectrum” to “A. Hall”, while later reference works give them to McLaughlin. This is not a wordless album from start to finish: the personnel lists credit Williams with vocals, notably on “Via the Spectrum Road”.

Reception and legacy

The later verdicts are strong. AllMusic’s Leo Stanley wrote that the record “shattered the boundaries between jazz and rock”, and Mojo called it jazz-rock’s answer to “Are You Experienced?”. Robert Christgau gave it an A in The Village Voice and called Williams “probably the best drummer in the world”, Pitchfork scored it 9.0 out of 10, and J. D. Considine, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide, credited it with starting jazz fusion. The Chicago Tribune’s Dennis Polkow praised its “energy and spirit”.

Where it fits

This is where the The Tony Williams Lifetime discography begins. The next album, “Turn It Over” (1970), kept the trio and added Jack Bruce on bass. Within two years McLaughlin had moved on to found the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a story I follow on the band page.

Browse my books in the footer →