Max Roach + 4 (1973 US EmArcy Mono Vinyl LP)

Max Roach - Max Roach + 4 | Vinyl LP - 1973 US EmArcy/Mercury Mono Reissue (MG 36098, Phonogram)

Max Roach + 4 is the sound of a great band picking itself up. In June 1956 Roach lost the two men at the heart of his quintet, trumpeter Clifford Brown and pianist Richie Powell, in the same car crash, and this September 1956 date is the first thing he recorded afterwards. He kept the two survivors, Sonny Rollins on tenor and George Morrow on bass, and brought in Kenny Dorham on trumpet and Ray Bryant on piano, though the original liner notes are careful to insist these were not replacements, since nothing could replace what was lost. The music is defiant rather than mournful. Rollins is superb, one of his best recorded showings of the period, trading with Dorham's bright, clean trumpet across George Russell's "Ezz-Thetic" and Dizzy Gillespie's "Woodyn' You". Roach wrote two of the tunes and plays timpani on one, "Dr. Free-Zee", a reminder of how far he pushed the drummer's role. The standards, "Just One Of Those Things" and "Body And Soul", are taken at pace and dispatched with authority.

For Sonny Rollins the record sits at a hinge point. Within a year he would leave to lead his own groups and record Saxophone Colossus and the rest of his run of classics, and Max Roach + 4 catches him on the way out of the sideman years, already sounding like a leader. Roach carried the quintet forward for years after this, but the band never quite lost the shadow of what had happened, and the best of these EmArcy sides are quietly among his finest work, overlooked mostly because they came after the more famous Brown-Roach records.

This copy is the 1973 US mono reissue on EmArcy and Mercury, manufactured by Phonogram, catalogue number MG 36098.