Expectations

Expectations is an album recorded by Keith Jarrett in 1972 and released on Columbia Records the same year. In addition to Jarrett, musicians on the recording include his "American quartet": Dewey Redman on tenor saxophone, Charlie Haden on bass, and Paul Motian on drums. Also featured are Sam Brown on electric guitar, Airto on percussion, as well as brass and string sections whose members are not credited in the album information. Expectations was produced by George Avakian, Jarrett's manager since 1966. In January 1999 Jarrett wrote that "Expectations is a very special recording for me, and the only release that ties so many of the feelings I had about music together in such a rich, varied and coherent weave." The album was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in 1972. Background: Jarrett and Columbia In late summer 1971, while Jarrett was still a member of the Miles Davis band, he was dropped by Atlantic Records due to a declining market for jazz, and also because Atlantic producer Nesuhi Ertegun disliked Jarrett's album Restoration Ruin. Avakian approached Columbia, with whom Davis had a contract, and proposed a double album. Jarrett was given a contract, and in April 1972 went into the studio to record Expectations. However, a few weeks after the album's release, Columbia suddenly dropped Jarrett in favor of Herbie Hancock. Jarrett was stunned, stating that he did not receive any communication from Columbia, and thus did not know he had been dropped. The label's actions later became known as "The Great Columbia Jazz Purge" (or "Bad Day at Black Rock"), during which Jarrett, Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans and Charles Mingus were all given contracts by Columbia only to be let go shortly afterwards (on the same day, according to some involved), as the company moved increasingly toward jazz fusion. (One writer commented that Columbia's decision was "rather like the 1961 New York Yankees suddenly placing Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle on waivers.") Accordingly, Expectations remains Jarrett's only Columbia album under his own name.