Roach, Max – We Insist Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite [IMPORT] – New LP

Thom Jurek: The cover art for 1961's We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite is a grainy black-and-white photo of three Black men at a lunch counter looking on. There is a white man wearing a soda jerk's uniform apprehensively looking at the camera too. During the heyday of the civil rights era, this was an incendiary comment directed at a still-segregated U.S. that arrived just after the Montgomery Bus Boycott and student lunch counter sit-ins. Roach was a bebop innovator who had recorded several standard-setting outings with trumpeter Clifford Brown, and he was a longtime civil rights activist. He is accompanied on this five-track, 36-minute opus by a cast of assenting musicians including singer Abbey Lincoln, tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Walter Benton, trumpeter Booker Little (a teenaged Roach protégé), trombonist Julian Priester, bassist James Schenck, conguero Babatunde Olatunji, and percussionists Ray Mantilla and Tomas DuVall. The suite is divided into sections: "Driva' Man" and "Freedom Day" (both with lyrics by Oscar Brown, Jr.) are set during the Civil War -- although the latter makes room for future struggle. "Triptych" is a three-section duet by Lincoln and Roach rooted in the present-day struggle at home, while the final two movements, "All Africa" and "Tears for Johannesburg," reflect the fight for equality on the African continent. "Driva' Man" commences with Lincoln singing Brown's lyrics as a deep blues, accompanied only by intermittent snare. The horns enter along with Schenk. Hawkins delivers an uncharacteristically gritty, almost guttural, angular solo, instrumentally expressing the blues sung by Lincoln to highlight the harsh realities and indignity endured by Black people since slavery. "Freedom Day" offers the three-horn frontline introducing Lincoln with a hard bop vamp. Little claims the foreground with a commanding solo rooted in color and sorrowful melodic invention, followed by impressive solos from Benton, Priester, and Roach. "Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace" is a centerpiece duet between the drummer and Lincoln, and one of the most abstract tunes either artist ever cut. She intones wordlessly before the intensity ratchets, and begins screaming to meet the drummer's frenetic rolls, fills, and accents before coming full circle. Lincoln sings Brown's words again on "All Africa," driven by Olatunji and the other percussionists. The lyric "It began with a beat and a hum" introduces an exposition on Black music and culture's central place in the development of history and civilization. Roach's closer "Tears for Johannesburg" also offers bluesy, wordless singing from Lincoln. Driven by the composer's and Schenk's taut vamps, the frontline horns meld Latin and African folk music, modal jazz, hard bop, and even classical music in a swinging, incantatory flow underscored by fluid, fiery improvising from Roach and the percussionists. We Insist! remains urgent, relevant, and provocative. Its assertion that freedom and equality are necessary for society to function and thrive resonates as poignantly and intensely amid the global civil rights struggles of the 21st century as it did in the 20th.

Max Roach Biography by Thom Jurek Birth of the Cool One of the most gifted musicians in jazz history, Max Roach helped establish a new vocabulary for jazz drummers during the bebop era and beyond. He shifted the rhythmic focus from the bass drum to the ride cymbal, a move that gave drummers more freedom. He told a complete story, varying pitch, tuning, patterns, and volume. He was a brilliant brush player, and could push, redirect, or break up the beat. In 1948 he participated in Miles Davis' seminal Birth of the Cool sessions before forming his own quintet with iconic bop trumpeter Clifford Brown. In 1953, he served as drummer in "the quintet" for the historic Jazz at Massey Hall concert, alongside Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Charles Mingus. Later, the drummer's seminal 1961 We Insist! Freedom Now Suite set the tone for Civil Rights activism among his peers. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Roach continued breaking new ground. He formed the percussion ensemble M'Boom in 1970, issuing a handful of acclaimed albums including 1973's Re: Percussion, M'Boom in 1979, and To the Max in 1991. He worked with vanguard musicians including storied duos with Anthony Braxton (The Long March) and Cecil Taylor (Historic Concerts). During the '90s Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts and continued to perform. He never stood still musically: he worked in trios, with symphony orchestras, backed gospel choirs, and with rapper Fab Five Freddy. Friendship, his final album in collaboration with trumpeter Clark Terry, was issued in 2002. Roach was born in rural North Carolina in 1924. His mother sang gospel. His family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York in 1928. Roach began his musical vocation as a child playing bugle in parades. He started playing drums at seven, and at ten, he was playing drums in gospel bands. He started playing jazz in earnest while in high school. In 1942, as an 18-year-old graduate, he received a call to fill in for Sonny Greer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Paramount Theater in Manhattan. He starting hanging out and sitting in at the jazz clubs on 52nd Street, and at 78th Street & Broadway. His first professional recording took place in December 1943, backing saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. While serving as house drummer at Minton's Playhouse, he fell in with saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and others at the famed locale. He was a frequent participant in after-hours jam sessions. Roach played brief stints with Benny Carter and Duke Ellington's band, then joined Gillespie's quintet in 1943 and served in Parker-led bands in 1945, and from 1947 to 1949. Roach traveled to Paris with Parker in 1949 and recorded there with him and others including Kenny Dorham. He also played with Louis Jordan, Red Allen, and Hawkins. He participated in Miles Davis' historic Birth of the Cool sessions in 1949. Clifford Brown & Max Roach Roach enrolled in a classical percussion degree course at the Manhattan School of Music in 1950. He picked up with Parker again in 1951, and remained with him until he left school in 1953. During that tenure he served as drummer in "the quintet," and played at the historic Jazz at Massey Hall concert in Toronto with Charles Mingus, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bird. These concerts marked the final time that the latter two would play together. During the early 1950s, Roach also toured with the Jazz at the Philharmonic revue, and recorded with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars, replacing Shelly Manne. During the mid-'50s, he was a sideman with Sonny Rollins for several years and co-led the Max Roach/Clifford Brown orchestra, with Powell's brother Richie on piano and saxophonists Harold Land and later, Rollins. Roach's frenetic, yet precise drumming laid the foundation for Brown's amazing trumpet solos. This group made landmark records during its short tenure, among them Clifford Brown & Max Roach (1954), Study in Brown and Brown and Roach Incorporated (1955), and At Basin Street (1956). Brown and Powell were tragically killed in a car crash on the way to a gig in Chicago in 1956. A devastated Roach tried to keep the group alive with Dorham and Rollins, and later with trumpeter Booker Little and saxophonist George Coleman. He became involved in a record label partnership with Charles Mingus, forming Debut Records in the mid-'50s. The label issued Jazz at Massey Hall in 1958 and Percussion Discussion (considered an avant-garde release at the time). Roach also appeared with Dorham, pianist Ramsey Lewis, saxophonist Hank Mobley, and bassist George Morrow. Later, he led another influential band, this time with Little, Coleman, tuba player Ray Draper, and bassist Art Davis. They cut seminal dates for Riverside and Emarcy, among them Deeds Not Words. Money Jungle After playing with pianist Randy Weston on Uhuru Afrika, Roach, a deeply committed Civil Rights activist, composed and recorded We Insist! Freedom Now Suite in 1960. A multi-faceted work, it featured vocals by his then-wife Abbey Lincoln and lyrics by Oscar Brown, Jr. It vehemently confronted racial injustice in America, and its influence endures in the 21st century. In 1962, he recorded Money Jungle, a collaborative album with Mingus and Ellington. It is regarded as one of the finest trio albums ever put to tape. Roach and his various bands recorded and toured frequently. He released the collaborative Much Max with Stanley Turrentine in 1964 and the now-classic Drums Unlimited in 1966. In 1968 Roach and the Turrentine Brothers released Let's Groove for Time Records. Lift Every Voice and Sing In 1970, Roach formed his long-lived percussion ensemble M'Boom. Its original members included Roy Brooks, Warren Smith, Joe Chambers, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, and Freddie Waits. The following year, he led a sextet that included saxophonist Billy Harper, trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, pianist George Cables, electric bassist Eddie Mathias, and percussionist Ralph MacDonald. This group collaborated with gospel singers J.C. and Dorothy White, Ruby McClure, and a 22-voice choir to record the enduring jazz/gospel fusion outing Lift Every Voice and Sing for Atlantic. The six-track set offered sometimes radical rearrangements of gospel standards arranged by William Bell, Lincoln, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Streams of Consciousness Re:Percussion, the debut album by M'Boom, was released by Strata East in 1973 and reissued by Japan's Baystate the following year. Roach continued recording prolifically for various labels. In 1976, he cut the oft-reissued Force - Sweet Mao - Suid Afrika 76 in a duo with saxophonist Archie Shepp, and a year later released The Loadstar for Italy's Horo label, leading a quartet with Harper, Bridgewater, and bassist Reggie Workman. He cut the duo offering Streams of Consciousness with pianist Abdullah Ibrahim in 1977. The drummer's quartet -- with bassist Calvin Hill in place of Workman -- issued Confirmation in 1978, the same year Roach and Anthony Braxton released the duo offering Birth and ReBirth for Black Saint. Pictures in a Frame In 1980, Columbia released M'Boom. Recorded the previous year, this eponymously titled offering is regarded by critics and historians alike as foundational in the evolution of jazz and world music as it wove together strands from jazz, salsa, African and European traditions.