2001 · Album
¾ for Peace
Recorded 1993 · Red Records · Produced by Information not verified — omitted
Billy Higgins Keeps the Time, and the Peace
Higgins was one of the most joyful drummers alive, and this album makes that plain.
Most drummers who front their own albums spend the whole record proving they can lead. Billy Higgins was never that guy. He'd been behind the kit for so many essential sessions — with Ornette Coleman, with Lee Morgan, with Cedar Walton — that he had nothing left to prove. ¾ for Peace, recorded in 1993 and released on Red Records, feels less like a statement of ambition and more like a really good afternoon of playing with people he liked. That's not a knock. That's actually the appeal.
The title tips its hand about the feel of the record. Three-quarter time, waltz time, has a lilt to it that swings differently than straight-ahead 4/4 — it breathes, it circles back on itself. Higgins was always known for playing with a light touch, and in this setting that quality is front and center. He's not overpowering anything. The album has a conversational quality where you can hear everyone thinking, which is rarer than it should be in a studio jazz date.
This isn't the kind of album that rewrites anything. It's a session by a great musician who was deeply comfortable in his own skin, playing music he loved. If you already know Higgins from his sideman work and want to hear what he sounds like when he's running the room, this is a good place to go. Red Records was putting out a lot of solid Italian-produced jazz dates around this period, and ¾ for Peace fits comfortably in that catalog — well-recorded, unhurried, made by people who cared about the music more than the market.
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