Buddy Rich And Max Roach - Rich Versus Roach (Japanese Mercury Stereo LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Buddy Rich And Max Roach - Rich Versus Roach | Vinyl LP - Japanese Mercury Stereo (SM-7156)

Recorded over two days in April 1959, Rich Versus Roach was Mercury's attempt at a heavyweight drum contest, and the label hyped it accordingly. In practice, Gigi Gryce's tight, swinging arrangements keep the session from becoming a slugfest. The material runs from Louis Prima's "Sing, Sing, Sing" through Charlie Parker's "Big Foot" to "Figure Eights," the sole Rich/Roach co-composition, and it's the ensemble writing that holds everything together. Rich's quintet works the left channel with Phil Woods cutting hard on alto and Willie Dennis pushing the trombone parts, while Roach's group owns the right with the Turrentine brothers (Stanley on tenor, Tommy on trumpet) and Julian Priester trading lines against his snare. The stereo separation is the whole point. Balance your speakers, sit in the middle, and the two bands occupy opposite ends of the room.

What lifts this above a novelty pairing is the quality of the sidemen and how little filler there is. "Yesterdays" stretches out and lets both groups breathe, "The Casbah" (a Gryce original) swings hard without apology, and "Limehouse Blues" moves at a clip that pushes both rhythm sections. Rich and Roach approach the drums from fundamentally different philosophies (Rich the technician, Roach the composer), and those contrasts come through most clearly when you can isolate each channel. This is the Japanese Mercury stereo pressing on SM-7156, with matrix/runout numbers matching the original US stereo issue (SR-60133).