This album came out a year after I'd caught Rich with Sinatra, a period when, above all, the great drummer wasn't afraid to swing! Beginning in 1968 Rich, like so many other jazz musicians, practically became paranoid of the walking-bass 4/4 swing pattern that had served everyone from Basie to Charlie Parker to Bill Evans so well. A pulse as fundamental to life as a heart beating or a lung breathing was no longer sufficiently "emphatic" to be heard, or understood, by the '60s generation. Rich tried to "connect" with the Beatles-Stones audience by going to a quasi-rock repertory along with the addition of electric bass. Fortunately, this phase lasted for only several years, and by 1974 Rich was once again validating the swing tradition of Basie, Goodman, Dorsey and his own roots.