Max Roach - Max Roach + Four / More (1984 Japanese EmArcy 195J-39 Vinyl LP)

Max Roach - Max Roach + Four / More | Vinyl LP - 1984 Japanese EmArcy/Mercury Reissue (195J-39, Max Roach Original EmArCy Collection)

• Two different bands from two key moments in 1957, with Kenny Dorham and George Morrow as the constants. Side A: the quintet with Sonny Rollins and pianist Billy Wallace, recorded in March. Side B: the pianoless quartet with Hank Mobley replacing Rollins, recorded in December.
• The transition from quintet to pianoless quartet, captured across seven tracks that document the moment Roach dropped the piano chair from his working group and opened up the harmonic space for the horns.
• 1984 Japanese compilation in the Max Roach Original EmArCy Collection. Side A in mono, Side B in stereo. Liner notes by Ira Gitler. Manufactured by Nippon Phonogram.

Side A catches the quintet in March 1957 at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. Rollins is still in the band, playing tenor alongside Dorham’s trumpet, with Billy Wallace on piano and Morrow on bass. Wallace is one of the more mysterious figures in hard bop. He replaced Ray Bryant in the piano chair, made a handful of recordings that showed a genuinely ambidextrous bop technique, then disappeared into the lounge circuit. His work here is sharp and inventive, particularly on the nearly nine-minute “Love Letters”. Rollins, who was simultaneously cutting records for Prestige and Blue Note that would define the tenor saxophone for a generation, plays with the same restless authority he brought to everything that year. “It Don’t Mean a Thing” opens. “Minor Trouble”, a Ray Bryant composition, closes the side.

By December 1957, two things had changed. Rollins left. And Roach made the decision to drop the piano entirely. Hank Mobley took over the tenor chair and the group became a quartet: trumpet, tenor, bass, drums. The pianoless format, recorded at Fine Recording in New York, forces Dorham and Mobley to do more harmonic work and gives both players room to stretch in ways the quintet format wouldn’t allow. “Tune Up” opens Side B at nearly eight minutes. “Raoul”, a Roach original, follows. “This Time the Dream’s on Me” is the ballad. “Anthropology”, the Charlie Parker line, closes. Dorham, who had taken the trumpet chair after Clifford Brown’s death in 1956, is the thread connecting both sides: a warm, versatile player who could hold his own in either setting without changing who he was. Ira Gitler wrote the original liner notes. Side A is mono, Side B stereo.