condition (record/cover): NM / NM

1957: Max Roach devotes an entire album to the waltz, years before 3/4 became a jazz commonplace - conceptual daring plus world-class blowing, which was always the Roach formula. Sonny Rollins and Kenny Dorham handle the front line, and hearing Rollins stretch across waltz time in 1957 is its own education: the phrasing relaxed, the ideas endless, the meter treated as invitation rather than obstacle. Roach approached the drums as a composer and the bandstand as a laboratory, and this record is one of his most elegant experiments - rigorous in premise, joyful in execution. EmArcy edition of a genuinely important date.