Apprehensive about supporting an ambitious and financially risky project, Columbia Records backed the production and release of Time Out but first asked the Quartet to record an album with a more digestible appeal for American audiences. The amalgamation of international styles influenced the group to experiment with unfamiliar sounds, unconventional pacing and uncommon time signatures for an upcoming album. Even so, the band marveled at local musicians while overseas - particularly Turkish street performers playing traditional folk songs in varying rhythms. The tour’s mission was to showcase American ideals and its racially inclusive sentiments - a falsity the band would come to experience while traveling domestically in the early ’60s. Only a year prior Brubeck, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello had completed a world tour funded by the United States Department of State, performing 80 concerts in over 14 countries, including Turkey, Poland, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Prior to recording Time Out in the summer of 1959, Brubeck and his bandmates had no intention of creating a commercially viable record. Brubeck refused to use race as a safety net, however he never stopped working with both white and black musicians for the duration of his career, despite industry pushback. His appearance - that of a middle-class, well-groomed white male - provided him with a wider appeal to the predominantly white mainstream than leading African American jazz artists like Miles Davis or Duke Ellington. Uncomfortable with his fame, Brubeck felt he was only receiving the adoration due to his skin color. After a handful of moderately successful releases throughout the first half of the decade, mostly targeted toward college students, Brubeck found himself on the front of Time in 1954, making him only the second jazz artist behind Louis Armstrong to grace the cover. 14, 1959, Time Out wasn’t 39-year-old Brubeck’s first album nor was he an unknown at the time of its release.

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Jazz take five