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Max Roach: Deeds, Not Words
by Richard J Salvucci
Sometimes, someone listens to a recording mostly for one track. This is such a recording. Quite naturally, it involves drummer Max Roach. If he had to stake his reputation on one extended solo, some might say Roach on “Conversation" is the one. Not all drummers, suffice it to say, are melodic. But a first-time listener can be pardoned for being slightly overwhelmed by “Conversation"--and, perhaps, slightly underwhelmed by the remainder of the recording. In a way, ...
Continue ReadingEric Dolphy: At Five Spot to Iron Man Revisited
by Alberto Bazzurro
Riunire in un unico CD di quasi ottanta minuti due capolavori cosa determina? Un capolavoro al quadrato, ovviamente, ed è quanto avviene in questo album semplicemente maestoso, i cui primi tre brani riprendono il live inciso al Five Spot il 16 luglio 1961 dal quintetto da favola riunito per l'occasione da Eric Dolphy, all'epoca trentatreenne, il cui nome iniziava finalmente a circolare con una certa insistenza nel mondo del jazz anche al di là dei colleghi che già ne conoscevano ...
Continue ReadingIntroducing Booker Little
by Robert Levin
[Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Jazz & Pop Magazine, 1970. Little died in 1961, just a few months after this interview was originally published in Metronome]Booker Little, twenty-three year-old composer, arranger and trumpet player (the order is arbitrary, each role has equal importance to him), has lately come to demonstrate, in recordings and as the musical director of the Max Roach group, a talent that promises size.As is true of many jazz players of ...
Continue ReadingMax Roach: We Insist! Freedom Now Suite
by Chris May
Re-released following the passing of drummer Max Roach in August 2007, We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960) remains a work of enduring musical and social importance. Notwithstanding Roach's central role in the creation of bop, or his later hard bop explorations with trumpeter Clifford Brown, it is, by some margin, the most perfectly realised album he recorded. 1960 was the year in which black Americans' struggle for civil rights reached critical mass. In February, anti-segregationist lunch-counter sit-ins ...
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