AOTW August 26-September 1

[felser]

The Max Roach Memorial rightly continues. This 1968 gem on Atlantic records was made by Roach, former Jazz Messengers bassist Jymie Merrott, and a collection of supremely gifted young lions - trumpeter Charles Tolliver, altoist Gary Bartz, and pianist Stanley Cowell. A beautiful and beautifully paced album. The first side is stunning, the way "Abstrutions" leads into "Libra", which leads into the majestic "Effi". The second side has "Equipoise", the title track (sung by Andy Bey), and "Absolutions". Every cut memorable in context, most memorable even standing on their own. This album introduced Cowell to a (relatively) wider audience - he wrote "Abstrutions", "Effi". and "Equipoise". Bartz, of course, wrote his memorable anthem "Libra", Roach wrote the title cut, and Merritt wrote "Absolutions", redone so memorably (along with Merritt's "Nommo") on Lee Morgan's 'Live at the Lighthouse" three years later. The only complaint about this album is it's brevity - the running time is less than 33 minutes. No need for that, as Tolliver, Cowell, and Bartz all alredy had memorable tunes written which could have been used on the album. For instance, no performance of Tolliver's great "On The Nile" had been released on any records. A 10 minute verion of that tune would have easily fit onto this album. As wonderful as the other cuts are, the lynchpin for me is "Effi". Every other version I have ever heard of this plays up it's undeniable loveliness. This version, while keeping the beauty of the composition, breathes fire. Roach totally steals the show. This is the cut I use to teach interested neophytes how to listen to jazz, telling them to concentrate on the bass line, as they then can hear the drums playing off the bass and the other instruments following the lead of Roach's drums. The tension and release in the drumming dynamics is breathtaking. I'm not as gifted in technical jargon as the musicians and professional critics on the board, so I'm hoping someone else can explain better what I'm trying to say about the drumming on this cut - I know others must be able to hear it, it's so stunning. Mr. Roach was one of a kind, and his music and contributions should live forever.

Edited August 26, 2007 by felser

[JSngry]

...the majestic "Effi"....As wonderful as the other cuts are, the lynchpin for me is "Effi". Every other version I have ever heard of this plays up it's undeniable loveliness. This version, while keeping the beauty of the composition, breathes fire. Roach totally steals the show. This is the cut I use to teach interested neophytes how to listen to jazz, telling them to concentrate on the bass line, as they then can hear the drums playing off the bass and the other instruments following the lead of Roach's drums. The tension and release in the drumming dynamics is breathtaking. I'm not as gifted in technical jargon as the musicians and professional critics on the board, so I'm hoping someone else can explain better what I'm trying to say about the drumming on this cut - I know others must be able to hear it, it's so stunning. Mr. Roach was one of a kind, and his music and contributions should live forever.

You said it just fine. That cut has so much power and majesty, and it all stems from and runs through Max. No other drummer could have made that piece sound like it does on this record with these players. No one.

I still play this on LP. and I strongly prefer Side One to Side Two. But that first side grabbed me by the cojones the first time I heard it, and still hasn't let go. BTW - The CD Age was a blessing, as this one used to be a bitchandahalf to find on vinyl. It was on Extreme High Priority for several years after first hearing, and finally finding a copy of my own was cause for both deep gratitude and massive celebration.

Some have talked about Max around this time and about this album in particular as having "fallen behind" or some such and trying to catch up in a less-than-successful manner. Whatever. If that's what you hear, fine, I guess. I don't hear it, not even a little. I hear Max still being Max (I mean, shit, who else would have had the nerve to come out of the breaks on "Abstrutions" the way Max did?), and apparently having learned from both Satchell Paige & Wile E. Coyote, looking neither back nor down.

To my ears, Max never "changed". But he did contiue to evlove, to grow to find new stimuli to be challenged by and to challenge in return. Apparently he left different people behind at different times by doing so, but one person he never left behind was Max Roach.

All love & fullest props to the music of Max Roach. All of it.

Edited August 26, 2007 by JSngry

[king ubu]

that would have been me... here's my post from the Max Roach corner concerning this album:

Now playing Members, Don't Git Weary - and guess what, this (and also Lift Every Voice) is where for me - unintentionally - the focus while listening shifts away more and more from Max, towards the other musicians. Tolliver is great, Bartz also contributes a few nice solos (and his composition "Libra"), and Stanley Cowell is great to have on any album from that period... I'd have preferred Merritt on double bass, though... his sound on "Nommo" (Drums Unlimited) is so fat and boomy, he'd have had a better groove than on electric bass... and about Roach, I guess this is where the stuff happened, or started to happen, that the grown-ups have talked of at length, above... let me just say with respect to that discussion, that I'm quite clearly on Allen's side... now this doesn't mean "Members" is a bad album, not even a mediocre one, there's plenty of good music on it, but Max' own playing ain't quite so exciting any longer... (even though - I doubt I could, though - some may hear it's Max within one bar from any of the tunes...)

edit: Merritt is partly on double bass (for instance on the title track) - but I'd wished he'd be on it on the funky opening number, for instance!

I'll try and play it again in the next days...

[mikeweil]

that would have been me... here's my post from the Max Roach corner concerning this album:

Now playing Members, Don't Git Weary .....

Merritt is partly on double bass (for instance on the title track) - but I'd wished he'd be on it on the funky opening number, for instance!

I'll try and play it again in the next days...

That bass Merritt uses (on the entire album, btw!) is a so-called Baby Bass made by Ampeg - he was one of the first jazz bassists to use them. An upright with a small body and built in pick-ups, less cumbersome to travel with, but the feel of a double bass for the player. Sound was in between an acoustic and a Fender bass, depending on how you adjusted the controls.

Actually I like that sounds he gets on the first track and think it fits the groove pretty well. Play it loud!!!

Edited August 29, 2007 by mikeweil

[JSngry]

Yeah Mike, as I'm sure you know, the Baby Bass was a staple of Latin/Salsa bands for quite a while. So we're not necessarily looking at any sort of "rock" influence or anything like that here. The landscape was (as it almost always is) broader than that.

And King, I'm not trying to bust your chops about this, nor are you the only one who's expressed reservations about Max's later music(s) over the years. It's just that I so do not hear/feel it that way. Max's playing from that time got to me pretty primally then, and it still does.

[JSngry]

that would have been me... here's my post from the Max Roach corner concerning this album:

Now playing Members, Don't Git Weary .....

Merritt is partly on double bass (for instance on the title track) - but I'd wished he'd be on it on the funky opening number, for instance!

I'll try and play it again in the next days...

That bass Merritt uses (on the entire album, btw!) is a so-called Baby Bass made by Ampeg - he was one of the first jazz bassists to use them. An upright with a small body and built in pick-ups, less cumbersome to travel with, but the feel of a double bass for the player. Sound was in between an acoustic and a Fender bass, depending on how you adjusted the controls.

Actually I like that sounds he gets on the first track and think it fits the groove pretty well. Play it loud!!!

Also, the Ampeg was a solid-body instrument, right?

And yeah, play it loud!

[mikeweil]

Yeah Mike, as I'm sure you know, the Baby Bass was a staple of Latin/Salsa bands for quite a while. So we're not necessarily looking at any sort of "rock" influence or anything like that here. The landscape was (as it almost always is) broader than that.

Agreed - many Latin bassist, like Andy Gonzalez, still use it or newer similar models. But that Ampeg has a certain percussive sound that lends itself well to Cuban style playing.

Don't know if it was solid body - will look it up.

Edited August 29, 2007 by mikeweil

[mikeweil]

Somehow it's hard for me to find the right words about this album.

Originally it was a myth to me - I had found Drums Unlimited and later that Atlantic LP with the choir, but Members, Don't Get Weary was almost like a myth. I knew that only from inner sleeves, found that Max looked great on the cover and felt a strong vibe coming from that LP, since I loved Max, his strength and dedication, and all the players on the album. I found an Italian bootleg issue years later and it fulfilled its promise. The music may sound familiar now, but at the time it was a rather bold statement, especially since Max recorded so little in the 1960's - he paid a high price for his engagement in the civil rights movement.

Compared to hard bop albums with similar players, this has a groove that's quite unique. Tolliver is more himself here than on Horace Silver's albums. It has black power written all over it in invisible ink. The pieces Tollover, Bartz and Cowell wrote are a new combination of bop and hard bop with free leanings and a harder groove not completely giving in to soul and funk - a higher degree of groove like the transition from bebop to hard bop.

Max' groove to me sounds like the hard times he had to go through made him more self-confident on a different level. Considering he had to see Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, and Booker Little go ..... and then being cut by the white agents ..... I admire him for all that. A survivor of his own kind.

[mikeweil]

It just occurs to me that I felt the influences of that group before I finally got to hear that album: I had heard Tolliver's Quartet on Strata East, Cowell's first, Bartz with Tyner and Miles and on his Prestige LPs before I got a copy of Members - so the feeling was like "Oh, that's where it started!" .....

[mikeweil]

I find a nice listening companion is Roy Ayers' Atlantic LP Stoned Soul Picnic, especially since it also features Bartz and Tolliver:

[king ubu]

No problem, Jim - it is how it is... if one day I'll connect better with Roach's playing here, I'll gladly report it!

Interesting about that bass... I never liked these kind of in-between basses a lot, however... not that it's all bad, necessarily, but I've heard them played in live concerts, too, and it's just sort of a lame excuse, more often than not... (but then there are still nowadays sound men - or bassits who ask them to do so? - who mix the bass like say Buster Williams sounded in the late 70s and early 80s, with that metallic slid-ey twang... doesn't get uglier even on such an in-between thing, so it's not necessarily about the instrument.

[mikeweil]

There are great sounding bass amps and pickups (Schertler, to name just one) by now, but they are rather expensive ......

[mikeweil]

But in the case of Ampeg basses or bass guitar or even most pickups it transforms the bass into a different instrument. The Ampeg is to the bass what the Rhodes is to the piano.

[mikeweil]

Also, the Ampeg was a solid-body instrument, right?

Right!

.... the Baby Bass, an electric upright bass with a full-size wooden neck and a 'cello-sized Uvex plastic body (not fiberglass, as is often stated).

[JSngry]

You know, I just had this thought and would very appreciate some feedback from the drummers here.

It seems to me that Max made a rather unique contribution to the drumset vocabulary in terms of volume in that he pretty much kept the standard bebop tuning of the kit, the goal of which to my ears was to facilitate and accentuate the punch of the accents & not in any real way geared toward volume per se, and found a way to take that tuning and play it loud. Other drummers of Max's approximate generation - notably Blakey & Philly Joe - played loud, but their tuning was slightly more open in timbre, it seems to me. And of course, later generations got louder-by-design harware and tuned accordingly. But Max's tuning/timbre remained tight, yet he pulled so much sound & volume out of it, more than anybody else that I can think of. And in a sense that reflectedd the engery of his music - tightly loud, loudly tight, however you wanna think about it.

Drummers, what y'all say?

[mikeweil]

But Max's tuning/timbre remained tight, yet he pulled so much sound & volume out of it, more than anybody else that I can think of. And in a sense that reflectedd the engery of his music - tightly loud, loudly tight, however you wanna think about it.

Nice way to describe it - yes he was loud, at least when I heard him with Cecil Bridgewater and Odean Pope. Black Power on the drum kit.

It must have been hard to pave your way with so many great drummers around in the 1960's: Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams ..... and they all were loud and powerful, in their way. Besides that sound it was the clear structure that I always appreciated - very well constructed - his solo pieces are great examples, and his solos in band tunes are just the same, where other drummers played just what struck their minds, he always composed, did theme and variations. Since he preferred drummerless bands from the late 1950's on (Coleridge Perkinson or Ronnie Mathews or Stanley Cowell certainly did not get in his way), this tight melodic tuning was a necessity. As someone said: he does the piano player's comping on the drums. He carved his niche, because technically, all the others were as advanced as he was, or more modern, and out came Max' melodies on the drums. Max was much more of a composer, a complete musician, than Blakey or Philly Joe, who were the closest, stylistically. He was much more of a composer than any other bop drummer!

Yes I see Max' solo style go directly back to Baby Dodds and Sid Catlett, where Blakey and Philly Joe took him as a point of departure.

Edited August 29, 2007 by mikeweil

[Adam]

up for the heck of it