Timeless All Stars - Timeless Heart (Timeless, 1983)

This post is by Scott and Dan

Harold Land (ts); Curtis Fuller (tb); Bobby Hutcherson (vib); Cedar Walton (p); Buster Williams (b); Billy Higgins (d)

Recorded on April 8, 1983

We both love this group and this album a lot. Not only is it a legitimate group of all-stars, it also uses original compositions from the group's members. 

It's tempting to dismiss this group as a "label band," created for the purpose of promoting the Timeless brand. Actually, the group performed live and recorded at least five albums together between 1982 and 1991. They certainly sound like a working band, and given the compositional skills of Cedar Walton, Harold Land, and Buster Williams, their material is of the highest quality. 

Of the songs on the album, Land's "World Peace" stands out from the rest. It's based on a stately progression of chords over which the band holds long notes comprising the melody. It's not bebop or songlike - just profound as the title suggests. On this tune and others, it's clear why Land and Bobby Hutcherson played as a co-led group for a while. 

The other notable tune is Walton's "Fiesta Español" (spelled "Espagnol" here). All six members of the group execute concise solos - little portraits of all-stars in action. This Walton tune also appears on Junior Cook's Somethin's Cookin' LP also reviewed in this blog. 

The recording was made in Rudy Van Gelder's studio, and it sounds analog instead of digital. It's hard to know exactly when Van Gelder's first digital recording was made but it was around the time of Timeless Heart. To Dan's ears, Buster Williams' rubbery base sounds more wooden and natural than in many subsequent digital recordings. 

There is a minor error in the naming of tunes on the album. The two Williams compositions, "Christina" and "Tayamisha" are not programmed in the order that they appear on the label. Christina comes second and "Tayamisha" comes last. "Christina" appears on so many other albums that it's almost a jazz standard. It does not appear that any of the CD reissues corrected the error.