Prelude

Prelude was recorded on September 12 to 14, 1972 at Van Gelder Studio, produced by Creed Taylor with Rudy Van Gelder as engineer, and arranged and conducted by Deodato. The players were Deodato on piano and electric piano, Ron Carter on bass, Stanley Clarke on electric bass (soloing on "Zarathustra"), Billy Cobham on drums, John Tropea on electric guitar, Jay Berliner on guitar (soloing on "Spirit of Summer"), Airto Moreira on percussion, Ray Barretto on congas, and Hubert Laws on flute and Marvin Stamm on trumpet (soloing on the Debussy piece), with Bill Watrous, Garnett Brown, Harry Lookofsky and Emanuel Vardi also credited. It reached number three on the US pop chart and number one on the jazz chart, number 17 in Australia and number six in Canada, and sold about five million copies worldwide.

AllMusic's Richard S. Ginell gave it four stars, while the Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide (1985) gave it two, and some listeners have heard elevator music with a twist. It was briefly reissued in 1977 as 2001 with a different cover, and Dutton Vocalion put it on SACD with Deodato 2 in October 2017, with quadraphonic mixes.