Quiet As It's Kept [Digipak]

Performer: Max Roach
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Max Roach (drums); Tommy Turrentine (trumpet); Julian Priester (trombone); Stanley Turrentine (tenor saxophone); Bob Boswell (bass). Recorded at Capitol Studios, NYC, July 21, 1959. This is an interesting 1959 date with Max Roach leading a piano-less quintet. The airy voicings for the horns, which include the Turrentine brothers (Tommy on trumpet and Stanley, of course, on tenor saxophone) and Julian Priester on trombone, approach a West Coast cool jazz-like texture, the kind of jazz abstractions which have worn very well over the years. "To Lady" is the most formally pleasing of these charts but the group gets to stretch out in hard bop style on "Lotus Blossom." All in all, an intriguing session before Roach committed himself to the even more politically oriented aesthetic in his later music.

One of the most technically gifted musicians in the history of jazz, Max Roach helped establish a new vocabulary for jazz drummers. A member of the house rhythm section at Monroe's in New York, Roach backed all the leading practitioners of the emerging bebop scene. In 1948 he participated in Miles Davis' seminal Birth of the Cool sessions before forming his own quintet with Clifford Brown. Later, Roach's work, most notably We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, reflected his own commitment to the civil rights movement. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Roach continued to associate with musicians of the avant garde, including Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor. In the '90s Roach was teaching at the University Of Massachusetts but continued to perform, including 1995's M'Boom with Ginger Baker and Tony Williams.

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