Max Roach – Members Don’t Git Weary (Real Gone Music)
Max Roach’s 1968 post-bop classic sees a reissue on Real Gone Music. Featuring Gary Bartz on saxophone, Andy Bey on vocals, Stanley Cowell on keys, Charles Tolliver on trumpet and Jymie Merrit on electric bass, the album is an experimental and emancipating experience and a particularly exciting moment for Jazz, a civil rights era howl and an expressive, dazzling performance that turns your expectations upside down. The instrumentation, for example, is progressively electric, Stanley Cowell opting to play part electric and part acoustic piano Merrit on electric rather than upright bass which gives the tracks a funkier feel and a wider sound. Moreover, the relative youth of the revolutionary young talents enlisted for the session in Cowell, Bartz and Tolliver would have been eyebrow raising picks for a drummer who had his roots in the Jazz tradition, playing on countless sessions with Bird, with whom he played under alongside Miles Davis. Perhaps the album was a purposeful, cognisant attempt to forge a new and forward-thinking path in Jazz that moved away from the overbearing legacy of Roach’s former playing days, unshackling him from the weight of tradition and using a younger and more radical group of musicians to set his music free.
Standouts on the album are the funky and slicked back Abstrutions which nods along deep in the pocket without restraint and Libra which stutters and spurts into life before being brought roaring into full flight with Tolliver and Bartz offering up some fierce horn arrangements. The original Stanley Cowell composition Effi, also recorded by Bobby Hutcherson, shuffles and jitters among a thick brew of minor changes and shifting chromatics, while the spirituality of Andy Bey’s pained vocal on Members Don’t Git Weary cuts through the recording, almost as if he is channelling his message directly to each individual listener. Absolutions, a Jymie Merrit composition, is a golden track, with Stanley Cowells assonant voicings stalking Bartz and Tolliver’s expressive bursts of brass, Roach’s muscular and powerful artillery blasting through the soundscape like a cannon volley. A texturally rich and powerful body of music which tips a fine balance between abstract and spiritual, socially awakened and defiant.
Buy the 180g LP HERE
Check out the tracks HERE
