CDs by Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach

We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite /  It’s Time  /  Straight Ahead  / A Turtle’s Dream  /  When There Is Love / You Gotta Pay The Band /

 Abbey Sings Billie  /  The Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker  / Charlie Parker The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948

Abbey Lincoln Songbook (1994)   / Burt Korall, Drummin' Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz The Bebop Years. Oxford University Press, 2004

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Track 1 Driva' Man Track 2 Freedom Day Track 3 Triptych: Prayer, Protest, Peace Track 4 All Africa Track 5 Tears for Johannesburg

“Triptych: Prayer / Protest / Peace”

This is the kind of music that can scare you into a new life. In terms of messing with your head, “Triptych” in particular is more potent that three tabs of uncut LSD. But let me back up to the late Fifties. Back to when sit-ins and Freedom Rides were forcing America to live up to the credos of democracy rather than persisting in ipso facto apartheid.

What did it take to face down a snarling police dog, a fire hose, a three hundred pound redneck deputy swinging an oak billy club, the Klan bombings and shootings? What it took to go toe-to-toe with that required a bravery that was way beyond the norm. Where did that strength come from? The music knew. Jazz musicians in particular were at the forefront of trumpeting this fierce freedom declaration. They knew that bravery was our birthright.

Even though many of us have never investigated this revolutionary music in any depth and most of never even heard of it, let alone actually listened to it, this is the music of our lives, our daily lives over a 400-year history. Hopefully this week’s Breath of Life can aurally illuminate this wondrous sound of freedom.

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Anna Marie Wooldridge was born in Chicago on August 6, 1930. She grew up in rural Michigan. Started playing the piano as a precocious five-year-old. Eventually decided to pursue music and moved to Los Angeles where she met Bob Russell who eventually became her manager and was responsible for giving her the stage name of Abbey Lincoln. Actually Abbey was her second stage name. The first one had been Gaby Lee.

In her early twenties, Abbey hit the jackpot. Big time! She was on the cover of Ebony magazine. It was the Fifties. Marilyn Monroe was the hottest star in Hollywood. Abbey had a figure to match Monroe’s, curve for curve and then some. Abbey had a cameo in the 1956 Jayne Mansfield movie The Girl Can’t Help It for which Abbey wore the flaming red Monroe dress.

Abbey’s performance in the independent 1964 film Nothing But A Man was widely acclaimed. She followed up with top billing in 1968’s For Love of Ivy opposite Sidney Poitier, the most famous and influential Black actor of his era. The rest would have been history had not Ms. Lincoln decided stardom as a sexy siren was not her calling. Ms. Lincoln decided to respond to the freedom movement. In the Sixties, she opted out of the sex kitten/vixen role. She was among the first to wear her hair natural and probably the only person to consciously abandon a lucrative career in the entertainment industry.

"I was innocent and inexperienced, and in Hollywood there were people who were interested in selling me," Abbey Lincoln told Jill Nelson for an April 1992 article in Essence magazine. "People make you over, the give you other songs to sing, you wear the clothes they choose, they find you a personality they think will sell. It’s all about prostitution, when you come down to it."

Abbey credits Max Roach as the person who introduced her to new ideas, new people, new experiences, all of which had a strong political bent.

In an interview conducted in the 1970s in Los Angeles, Abbey told Gallery 41, “I was in New York, miserable because I was working supper clubs but I wasn’t expressing myself. I was really unhappy with my life. I saw [Max] again and he told me I didn’t have to do things like that. He made me an honest woman on the stage. I have been performing in that tradition since. I feel that I’m a serious performer now whereas then I wanted to be but I didn’t know how.”

By the early Sixties, Max and Abbey married and toured extensively. Even though their ten-year marriage did not last—Max never again worked in tandem on a long term basis with a vocalist, nevertheless Lincoln’s commitment to producing meaningful music has persisted throughout her fifty-plus year career.

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I saw Ms. Lincoln a number of times over the years. The first was at the 1968 Dillard University Black Arts Festival in New Orleans. Max’s band was a piano-less, sax-trumpet-bass-drums quartet plus Abbey Lincoln on vocals. The band challenged every preconception I had about how much music four instruments and a voice could make. It was akin to a heart transplant. When they finished, I was not the same. I had new ideas swirling in my head. I stood taller, my stride was more deliberate. I believed I could do and be anything, and more importantly I could now truly imagine a brave new Black world. I was ready to do battle, emboldened. The air tasted fresher. Everyone who was there in that gymnasium that night was thoroughly moved—you should have heard the thunder of the ovations that Max, Abbey, and the other musicians received. We clapped so loudly and so strongly you not only heard us, you literally felt the physically vibrant force of our applause.

Particularly when Max and Abbey did the tour-de-force “Triptych,” (from We Insist!) I just stood next to the stage, holding my camera in my hand but not raising it to shoot. I was mesmerized. Abbey Lincoln was riveting. I was stunned. I literally just stood there. I’m sure my mouth was hanging agape.

I knew about vocalese, the fitting of lyrics to famous jazz solos, but “Tryptich” was several levels beyond because there are literally no words in English to describe specific aspects of our historic and contemporary experiences. Abbey and Max made me believe in time travel, believe in the power of a secular Holy Ghost, a terrible Shiva-force that destroyed you to renew you. I was afraid for her—and for myself also. It seemed as though she might hurt herself. It seemed as if I should do something helpful and not just be a stationary stump while she was going through this. This was not just jazz. This was a religious experience. A new way to live.

Whether wordlessly emoting or crafting incredibly moving readings of standards, Abbey Lincoln had a way with sounds and words that went far beyond what the majority of singers were doing. This was not birds and bees. This was Sankofa, Signifying Monkeys, and a Brer Rabbit band of underground guerillas. My Lord, what a music!

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Max Roach’s “Lonesome Lover” was used as the closing theme song for Larry McKinley’s Saturday afternoon This Is Jazz program on WYLD, at the time the leading Black radio station in New Orleans. Max mixed the political force of jazz with the spiritual force of gospel, producing a music you immediately recognized and related to but nevertheless a music you had never experienced before, a music that helped transform you into a you that had never existed before.

Max Roach was an awe-inspiring innovator and Abbey Lincoln in all her beauty was right there giving fierce feminine voice to the freedom we all yearned for. Just the title, “Lonesome Lover,” was a commentary befitting times when beatings, jail and sometimes death was a common response to expressions of opposition to the palpable oppression and seemingly endless exploitation of status quo segregation. We were certainly in love with ourselves and each other but we were often also isolated as any vanguard is; self-proclaimed “Blacks” struggling to swim within a sea of Negroes, struggling not just to survive but struggling also to transform the sea itself into a mighty social force, a Black tide rising. Max and Abbey were producing a soundtrack for revolution. “Lonesome Lover” was a cut from an album whose title confronted you if you were inactive, urged you on it you were in motion. The album was simply called  It’s Time.

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At the turn of the 20th century, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the Black poet of America. Vocalist/composer Oscar Brown Jr. put music to the Paul Laurence Dunbar poem "When Malindy Sings." Abbey Lincoln, who published essays championing Black power, embraced Dunbar’s dialect lyrics and gave a totally sincere and serious interpretation whose subtext is a philosophical championing of Black music. This is from Abbey’s fourth solo album, which announced her new found direction: Straight Ahead.

These are classic jazz recordings not usually taught in general college (not to mention high school) level music appreciation courses. But if the mainstream can keep reviving Showboat and other racist memorabilia of that ilk, we damn sure need to get on top of our own alternative creations. Consider this week on BoL a ladder to climb up to a higher level. Stand on the sound shoulders of 20th century revolutionary Black music.
—Kalamu ya Salaam

P.S. For $4.95, iTunes offers a download of the whole We Insist album. No excuses. Get it!

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Definite classics        

Man, it’s hard to even know how to respond to all of this. I had no idea that Abbey could’ve been a movie star. I mean, I have eyes—I knew she was pretty enough; I just didn’t know she’d gone in that direction. So mostly, I’m thankful for all of the background information on Abbey and I’m thankful for Kalamu’s personal story about listening to Abbey and Max and their band tearing it up live.

Kalamu and I chose to make this a blog about Black music, but I listen to a lot of other music too. I’m bringing that up now because I never would’ve thought that a jazz band could produce the raw sound power of some of the alternative rock bands I like. The middle section of "Triptych" sounds like…. It’s hard to say what, but damn! You know? (Great cover photo too. All three cats looking so clean in their suits and ties, glancing back at the camera like, "What?")

I was already familiar with "Lonesome Lover" and "When Malindy Sings." Both are great records. Definite classics.

It’s funny that I’m the one who actually kicked off this week on Abbey Lincoln. It’s funny because I knew next to nothing about her. That’s one of the advantages of having Kalamu as a father and as a writing partner. If I ever want to know something about a jazz or soul artist, I can just write a half-assed piece on them and he’ll jump in and do the rest. (I’m sitting here already deciding on my next selection. Let’s see: Dexter Gordon? Tania Maria? Choices, choices. We’ll see….)

—Mtume ya Salaam

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"Triptych" Is A Duet!         

Mtume, "Triptych" is just two people, drummer Max Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln. There are no other instruments. And if "Triptych" sounds "damn" on record, you shoulda oughta heard it live. The power of Black beings on fire!

By the way, sometimes we called this music “Fire Music.” I’m sure it is obvious why on an aesthetic level, but there is more. The conscious musicians wanted to do away with the stigma associated with the term jazz, just like we were beating Negro out of our mouths and consciousnesses.

As for the cover of We Insist, here’s the deal: The record came out August 31, 1960. It dropped like a sneak nuclear attack.

February 1, 1960 four young men—Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil—later known as the Greensboro Four—conducted the first sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Within a week, students were sitting-in at lunch counters in over 54 cities all up and down Dixieland. Most of us today have no idea how tumultuous those early days of the non-violent revolution were. Seven months after the first sit-in, Max and Abbey and a crew of cohorts (including Nigerian drummer Olatunji) produced We Insist! This was the soundtrack of social upheaval. The cover commemorates the sit-in movement.

I know Kind Of Blue is the most popular jazz record of that era, but We Insist! was by far the most socially conscious. Moreover, make no mistake, although Max Roach was clearly the leader, Abbey Lincoln was much, much more than simply wifey helpmate. She was a comrade and proud co-conspirator. Without Abbey’s contribution, the session could not have been done. Unlike some other recordings, one can not think of even one other vocalist who could have substituted for her. As we write this history of Black music, we must always be cognizant of the seminal and sine qua non contributions of Black women, both on stage as artists and off-stage as supporters and behind the scenes operatives.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

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Post-Battle, Twilight Reflections

When Abbey Lincoln sings it sounds like she’s crying. She also has the slight slur of someone who’s worked hard to recover from a stroke. Not that I’m saying she’s actually had one (or hasn’t - I really don’t know); if you listen to her classic records, that overly-soft way with consonants was there even then. Singing – the kind of singing I like, at least – is funny that way: perfection is generally unimportant. What is important is soul, and Abbey has that in spades. 

When Abbey sings, you believe the words. When Abbey sings, you sometimes feel things you didn’t know you could feel and think things you’ve never thought about before. Her singing adds dimensions to simple songs and clarifies confusing ones. When Abbey sings, you know what she means even when you don’t know what she means.

I know that Abbey was once associated, both professionally and matrimonially, with jazz drummer Max Roach. I know that she’s held in high regard by critics and fans alike and I know that her voice (supposedly) isn’t what it used to be. Other than that, Kalamu will have to fill in the blanks. The only other things I know about Abbey are the songs I like.
 
I like a lot of her older music, but the three I’m putting in the jukebox are from Abbey’s (relatively) recent albums on Verve. "Throw It Away" and "Storywise" are from her fantastic 1995 album A Turtle’s Dream . “Throw It Away” sounds like a contemplation of the famous saying that begins “If you love something, set it free.”

“Keep your hand wide open,” Abbey says, “if you’re needing anything.”

“Storywise” reminds me of Sun Ra when he covers standards: the song is ostensibly cheery, but there’s a certain melancholy and intelligence in the performance of the lyrics that suggests there’s more going on than the obvious.

The instrumentation of both songs is strong enough that they’d work even without Abbey’s superb vocals. “Throw It Away” floats in and out of your consciousness like the soundtrack to a dream. “Storywise” flits along happily—a butterfly in Dixieland—before suddenly shifting to a bluesy half-time groove. Listening to these tunes I have to keep reminding myself that the composer is the singer and the singer is the composer. In the world of jazz, that usually isn’t the way it works.

There’s one more tune I want to include this week and it’s "I Should Care" from Abbey’s 1994 release When There Is Love, a recording of duets with pianist Hank Jones. "I Should Care" isn’t an Abbey Lincoln original. It’s a standard and as such, it’s written in the old style: a story disguised as a song. There’s a set-up, a conflict and a pay-off and Abbey takes her time with all three, especially the pay-off…even if it is only three short words long.
—Mtume ya Salaam

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Down Here Below         

I drink A Turtle’s Dream . It’s medicinal.

On the 24th of March 2007 I make 60 years old. I move much more slowly thru the ruins and rough weather of post-Katrina New Orleans. But I have to shine, be firelight, a beacon for the youth to see, and now follow, but rather be their torch light as they navigate their own journeys forward. My responsibility—or I should say the responsibility I have assumed—is to give to the youth. I have not so much energy left, and only a few years. But there is a truck load of experience rivering my gut and endless compassion palpitating in my chest, both of them supporting a clear-eyed oppositional thought and practice that proffers the often painful mirror of truth to the youth.

A Turtle’s Dream . Literally. This music could be my elder statement if I were as wise and beautiful as Abbey is. I constantly dream of being so. Listen to this music. And dream. And work. To be the beauty of lamplight used by youth as they seek to make sense out of the confusion of 21st century life. Listen to “Being Me.”

One of my former students called me the other day. I joked I must be talking to a clone because this does not sound like the person I know. She replied she had bad news. Her mother died on Mardi Gras day. Thursday, March 1st, my friend Doug had to go to the emergency ward at the hospital. Touro’s waiting room looked like Charity (the pre-hurricane public hospital) used to look, only not as large. People were sprawled throughout the forty-by-twenty foot (or so) room in various states of physical and emotional discomfort. You’d have to leave the city to find another emergency room. That’s right, if you have an emergency you might have to leave town to get treatment. I’m sitting there with my friend Doug and with his primary caretaker, Carol. The three of us. And I look around. I’m emotionally in an utter funk. I try to make jokes to keep Doug from feeling too weary and whipped. All the time I’m hearing Abbey singing: “Down Here Below.” Down. Here. Below.

Damn. It is one of life’s great mysterious miracles how we can make pain sound so beautiful. How we can hammer the syllables of “hurt” and literally beat them into “hope.”

You might not understand my words, but listen to the music and you’ll catch my meaning. Thank you Abbey Lincoln. Asante sana (thank you very much).
—Kalamu ya Salaam

P.S. (I’m writing this one day after writing the above.) I really should say a bit more—not that it will be any easier to comprehend, but there is another facet I think I ought to focus on.

Like a coterie of conscious jazz musicians before her, America forced Abbey into exile. She changed her name for a third time and became Aminata Mosaka. I don’t know if you have ever talked with some of the folk whose lives depended on fleeing these shores but it is a sobering conversation.  There is nothing romantic about going into exile. Especially when racism and capitalism runs you out of America and, in order to continue your career, you end up in Europe. It is a really, really complex reality, not easily talked about, not easily understood. Do you know what it means for a person born in diaspora to be forced from a country where they were born but a country that has never fully been their homeland? The diasporan double displacement!

That’s why it is miraculous when any Black someone survives exile with their body, mind and soul intact, not to mention survives it and returns to tell the tale. You will notice that roughly half of the music in this week’s jukebox comes from one album: A Turtle’s Dream . (Do I need to say more?) OK? Do you understand?

A Turtle’s Dream  comes from the tail end of Abbey’s career. We Insist!  is from the early years. Insist is about urging on the warriors. Dream is post-battle, twilight reflections. I think we all need both. We do. We need to fight forward. We need to reflect on the past. We need all of that.

Abbey Lincoln is an amazing woman. She has been steady forward for over fifty years. Fifty years of tender fierceness. Please, please listen to her.

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Abbey Lincoln Is Essential

Abbey interprets others, starting with a Depression Era song, “Brother? Can You Spare A Dime?” I had heard the song numerous times but it was only when I heard Abbey’s version that I really, really heard and understood the song—especially the anti-war sentiment. Also of note: Stan Getz reveals himself here as his own man, not a wispy ghost nor a lightweight version of Lester Young, but instead a full flesh and blood man with great vision and generous warmth. If only for Stan’s tenor solo this version is noteworthy, but given that this is an Abbey Lincoln recording there is much, much more, namely a peerless albeit painful presentation that eschews self-pity and instead is almost accusatory in its reminisces, like pointing to a criminal and saying, “You shot me! Do you remember? I remember.” Today, “Dime’s” subtext is easily read as a demand for reparations rather than a servile request for a handout. As if to underscore her intentions, the title of Abbey’s album is You Gotta Pay The Band.

“Blue Monk” is Abbey fitting her words to a Thelonious Monk classic and it is an excellent fit. This time the horn soloist is eminence grise Coleman Hawkins, the progenitor of the tenor solo in modern jazz. Trivia note: Hawkins was the first to bring Thelonious Monk to national attention. The arrangement saunters along at a half-fast strolling pace almost as if the musicians had no particular destination in mind, but that is just the cool exterior on an intense blue flame of a blues.  After Hawkins’ masterful solo, Abbey does her wordless thing—not quite scatting, more like oohhhing and aahhhing her way up and down the scale. It’s a quintessential blues performance. This is from Abbey’s early solo recording Straight Ahead .

“Crazy He Calls Me,” is Abbey’s respectful tribute to Billie Holiday, the singer who first inspired Ms. Lincoln.

Abbey does Billie better than anyone in the business. Abbey’s got the behind-the-beat phrasing down pat, plus Abbey knows how to invest great meaning into simple syllables. Abbey understands her function as a diasporan griot. “Crazy” is from Abbey Sings Billie.

We close with “Nature Boy,” a philosophical song popularized by Nat ‘King’ Cole. This one is also from A Turtle’s Dream. Repeatedly over her career Abbey’s presence brings out the best in others. To share the stage with her is to be elevated, is to be inspired to go beyond your usual goings. The encouraging force of her gentle personality is massive.

Well, that’s it. An introduction to Abbey Lincoln. If this is your first time hearing Abbey’s music, hopefully it will not be the last. If you find out that you like this music, please share it with others. If you don’t like it, please listen again. Abbey Lincoln is essential.
—Kalamu ya Salaam

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Reasons to love Abbey        

Great songs. "Blue Monk" has always sounded like a New Orleans record to me and Abbey’s version is no different. I usually hear it at a faster tempo. At this speed, it sounds like a funeral dirge. (In a good way.) I love the way Abbey sings. It’s like she said in her quote: she’s obviously not even attempting to sound ‘pretty’ or ‘perfect’ or, for that matter, like anyone else she’s ever heard. Abbey sings like Abbey. And what a solo by Coleman Hawkins! His sound comes leaping out of the speakers. (Well, the speaker at least. It sounds like he’s only in one channel.)

"Crazy He Calls Me." Fantastic. I like how you can hear that Abbey’s singing in Billie’s style, but she still isn’t exactly trying to sound like Billie. This one reminds me a lot of "I Should Care." Abbey is excellent at singing those slow, slow torch songs.

Not so into this version of "Nature Boy." I don’t know why. Maybe I’m too used to George Benson’s up-tempo pop/jazz version. That’s the one I grew up with and the one I still like best. (I’m ducking now, ‘cause Kalamu’s about to let me have it.)

Not so crazy about "Brother? Can You Spare A Dime?" either, but I get the feeling that one could grow on me. I don’t have any personal connection with the lyrics—they sound like something indelibly marked as belonging to another era. It’s also hard for me to get into a woman singing the song when it’s obviously written from the point of view of a man (and Abbey even leaves the gender-specific lyrics in there). Anyway, two out of four ain’t bad. That’s just two more reasons to love Abbey Lincoln.
—Mtume ya Salaam

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More on Max Roach

Maxwell Lemuel Roach (born January 10, 1924) is a percussionist, drummer, and jazz composer. . . .Roach was born in Newland, North Carolina, to Alphonse and Cressie Roach; his family moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was 4 years old. He grew up in a musical context , his mother being a gospel singer, and he started to play bugle in parade orchestras at a young age. At the age of 10, he was already playing drums in some gospel bands. He performed his first big-time gig in New York City at the age of sixteen, substituting for Sonny Greer in a performance with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

In 1942, Roach started to go out in the jazz clubs of the 52nd Street and at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay's Taproom (playing with schoolmate Cecil Payne). He was one of the first drummers (along with Kenny Clarke) to play in the bebop style, and performed in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis. Roach played on many of Parker's most important records, including the Savoy 1945 session, a turning point in recorded jazz.

Source: Wikipedia

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A great place to begin appreciating Roach's drumming gifts is with "Koko" on the reissued The Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker (Mercury). "Koko" was the bop centerpiece on the 1945 session Roach appeared with Parker on; you can find it on The Charlie Parker Story (Savoy). There's a 20-second drum solo on that Parker recording that's quintessential Roach: snazzy ride-cymbal splashes, fiery snare-drum rolls, surprising bass accents. As handsomely constructed as that solo was, prepare to be electrified by the drumming on The Max Roach 4's "Koko." In a solo seven times longer than the 1945 version, Roach plays in front of and behind the beat, stops and starts the pulse unexpectedly, and plays melodic variations that counterpoint the quick changes voiced by saxophonist George Coleman (who performs on three of the tunes here; the rest are handled by Hank Mobley) and trumpeter Kenny Dorham. And Roach sounds like an impassioned bandleader, provoking his group to play the hardest of hard bop. When this winning Parker tribute album was originally released, around 1957, the idea of a drummer as towering leader was still a bit outré, with only Art Blakey performing in a like format.

Source: Boston Phoenix

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Jazz Drummer Max Roach Dies -- Maxwell Roach, a  founder of Modern Jazz—born on 10 January 1924, in the small town of New Land, N.C., grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn—died 16 August 2007 in Manhattan. . . . "It all comes down to originality," Roach told jazz critic Leonard Feather some years ago. . . . “There was one unforgettable night when I worked with Pres [Lester Young] at Birdland. Because I was with Pres, and because he and Papa Jo Jones were so close in the Basie band, I played all of Papa Jo's old licks. At the end of the evening, after I said good night to Pres, he gave me one of those succinct lessons in that personal language of his. He said, 'You can't join the throng until you write your own song. . . .That's a great lesson, something that stays with you the rest of your life; this music allows you, prefers you to be an individual, to do your own thing." Revolutionary Black Music: Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln / We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite Funeral -- Friday, August 24th at Riverside Church in Manhattan.  Viewing will be at 9 AM.  Services at 11 AM

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Max Roach 1924-2007: Thousands Pay Tribute to the Legendary Jazz Drummer, Educator, Activist

Monday, August 27th, 2007

Over 2,000 people gathered at Riverside Church in New York on Friday for the funeral of the legendary drummer, educator and activist Max Roach, who died on August 16 at the age of 83. He was credited with helping to revolutionize the sound of modern jazz and for playing a prominent role in the struggle for black liberation at home and in Africa. We speak with two men who have known Roach for decades: Amiri Baraka and Phil Schaap. . . .

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Max Roach on Drumming:

Maya Angelou, Bill Cosby, Amira Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and others credited Roach with helping to revolutionize the sound of modern jazz and for playing a prominent role in the struggle for black liberation at home and in Africa. . . .

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Source: Democracy Now

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"I am an American and the drum set is one of the few instruments native to this country . . . . This is a democratic nation and jazz is a democratic music in which we all express ourselves as individuals and cooperate for the overall good. That's good enough for the bandstand and it is good enough for the world. In music, you can make a dream come to life as a reality of design and feeling. Democracy is a dream of being able to do it better someday. I have never stopped dreaming." —Max Roach

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posted 4 March 2007 / update 3 April 2008