The Max Roach Trio Featuring The Legendary Hasaan (LP)

[mjzee]

Reissue release date May 31:

[JSngry]

Who's releasing this LP?

[mjzee]

Speakers Corner Records.

[porcy62]

14 hours ago, mjzee said:

Speakers Corner Records.

Their releases are beyond reproach.

[Rooster_Ties]

This is such a phenomenal album, and it's great that it's getting reissued and hopefully some new exposure.

Odd-ball piano trio records like this are kind of a niche area I try and collect, and this is maybe one of the very best of the best.

[mjzee]

https://www.amazon.com/Roach-Trio-Featuring-Legendary-Hasaan/dp/B07Q8Q6P3M/ref=sr_1_111?fst=as%3Aoff&qid=1556301780&refinements=p_n_date%3A1249114011&rnid=1249111011&s=music&sr=1-111

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I don't know that I like this... It's like weird Monk or a cross between Monk and Cecil Taylor.

 

[JSngry]

I know that I do like it!  It's like jazz without the other stuff, not pure, but definitely pure-er. And Max!!!!!!

[mikeweil]

I pull this out every few years ever since I got the Rhino CD reissue, but still don't know whether I like it or not. I dig Max, as always, but the pianist somehow doesn't reach me.

[mjzee]

There is a cheaper way to go: a Collectables two-fer of Hasaan and Roach's Drums Unlimited for $4.98 from oldies.com:

https://oldies.com/product-view/62562.html

[Rooster_Ties]

20 hours ago, mjzee said:

There is a cheaper way to go: a Collectables two-fer of Hasaan and Roach's Drums Unlimited for $4.98 from oldies.com:

https://oldies.com/product-view/62562.html

BEWARE -- the "Collectibles" version is missing a track specifically from the Hasaan date:  "Hope So Elmo" (3:52) -- which, even accounting for that fact that it's the shortest tune on the album, is STILL 9.4% of the man's ENTIRE released output (to date). Here's my math: 232 seconds (just the missing song) out of a total of 2467 seconds (the length of the entire album).  Don't miss out on that 9.4%!!

Edited April 28, 2019 by Rooster_Ties

[Rooster_Ties]

One other thing -- and I just finished listening to the Legendary album a few minutes ago...

I dare say that I honestly prefer this album, and Hasaan's compositional approach (and his playing too), over that of Monk, or any Monk album I can think of.

[JSngry]

I have an actual Atlantic CD reissue dated that's complete in and of itself. That's the way to go, I'd think, if it's still easy enough to find.

I very vividly remember finding the original LP at Record Exchange in Roanoke, VA for $4.50 (mono) and then another one (stereo) a few years later at Vinyl Fever in Tampa(?) for $2.99. Neither store was remotely aware of what a cult record this thing was or how scarce it was. I don't know how many copies Atlantic pressed, but it was OOP almost immediately, if I recall my Schwann research correctly. Atlantic did that with Max for whatever reason. The only one that stayed in print for years and was easy to find was Drums Unlimited. Even Lift Every Voice and Sing, from the 70s, that one was ALL over the cutout bins after not too long.

I really, really like this record. Hasaan was a major local influence around Philly, anybody you ask from Philly in those days damn near reveres him. Whatever personal idiosyncrasies kept him from being "marketable", the musicians themselves valued his music and his teaching quite highly. Leave it to Max Roach who was full frontal We Insist about his recording presentations to use his contract to make this record. He insisted!

As for the music itself, hey, Duke to Monk to Nichols to Hope, there's a continuum there of what "jazz piano" "is" when not forced to engage in the marketplace of "others". It's percussive (since after all, the piano IS a percussion instrument), it's harmonically blunt, it's overtly two-handed, it's as dissonant was it wants to be (because, dissonant to who, and why?), it's very, to use the culturally recognizable label, "Black". This is very "Black" jazzpiano music.

Cecil might have coined the phrase "88 tuned drums", but he hardly birthed the notion.

[Larry Kart]

Then, of course, there's the legendary (unissued, then the tapes were lost in the Atlantic warehouse fire) Hasaan record with Max and Odeon Pope. I asked Max and Odeon about it in the 1980s, and they confirmed that it was made.

[Gdgray]

Was member of Vinyl me please for short time picked this up on vinyl last year. Does sound like cross between Monk and Herbie Nichols. Very enjoyable listen. http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/jazz-pianist-who-made-one-masterpiece-and-disappeared/

[felser]

On 4/28/2019 at 7:44 PM, Larry Kart said:

Then, of course, there's the legendary (unissued, then the tapes were lost in the Atlantic warehouse fire) Hasaan record with Max and Odeon Pope. I asked Max and Odeon about it in the 1980s, and they confirmed that it was made.

Would love to hear that.  No idea what Odean Pope sounded like in 1968, first I heard him was with Catalyst about 4-5 years later.

[Larry Kart]

I would guess he sounded much as he did later on.

[JSngry]

No need to wonder, or to guess:

https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/max-roach-quintet/audio/20020013-50737.html?tid=4850233

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/07/max-roach-quintet-nommo.html

[soulpope]

10 hours ago, JSngry said:

No need to wonder, or to guess:

https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/max-roach-quintet/audio/20020013-50737.html?tid=4850233

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/07/max-roach-quintet-nommo.html

Would love to hear this one ....

[JSngry]

The Paste link gives you a full cut.

Wolfgang's, when they first started, used to offer downloading by show, 5-6 bucks a pop, something like that. But then something happened, squawking about royalties or some such, and now they charge you a flat fee for unlimited downloads. I think I got what I wanted under the old model (Cecil Taylor w/Bill Barron at Newport, Maynard's band with Wayne at Newport - a KILLER set, btw - , maybe a few other things).

They come by the tapes legit. Their royalty payments are sketchy, though, I think that's where they had to pull back from "selling" and pivot to "offering unlimited access".

Anyway, the shit is there.

[soulpope]

19 minutes ago, JSngry said:

The Paste link gives you a full cut.

Thnx for the hint .... didn't trealise that ....

[felser]

On 5/8/2019 at 7:45 AM, JSngry said:

The Paste link gives you a full cut.

Wolfgang's, when they first started, used to offer downloading by show, 5-6 bucks a pop, something like that. But then something happened, squawking about royalties or some such, and now they charge you a flat fee for unlimited downloads. I think I got what I wanted under the old model (Cecil Taylor w/Bill Barron at Newport, Maynard's band with Wayne at Newport - a KILLER set, btw - , maybe a few other things).

They come by the tapes legit. Their royalty payments are sketchy, though, I think that's where they had to pull back from "selling" and pivot to "offering unlimited access".

Anyway, the shit is there.

Looks to be well worth $39/year.

On 5/7/2019 at 6:37 PM, Larry Kart said:

I would guess he sounded much as he did later on.

Yes, he does.