Max Roach

The second Max Roach box gathers six more albums he made for Soul Note, recorded between 1979 and 1985 and all but one built around his quartet with trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater and tenor saxophonist Odean Pope. Where the first volume is built on duos and percussion, this one follows a working band, from studio dates in Milan to a live date in Munich, and its widening into the Double Quartet, the quartet plus strings.

Pictures In A Frame was recorded in Milan in September 1979 with Calvin Hill on bass, Pope doubling on flute and oboe and Roach adding piano and voice to nine short pieces such as Mwalimu and Japanese Dream. The same line-up made In The Light in July 1982, released the next year, with Straight, No Chaser, Ruby, My Dear, Good Bait and Tricotism next to the title piece. Live At Vielharmonie Munich, taped on November 7, 1983, brings in the Swedenborg String Quartet, with Dayne Armstrong on tenor and Phil Bowler on electric bass, for two long readings of A Little Booker and Bird Says. With Tyrone Brown now on electric bass, the quartet recorded the two twenty-minute halves of Scott Free in Milan on May 31, 1984. A month later, in June 1984, came It's Christmas Again, whose Christina adds Lee Konitz on alto, Tony Scott on clarinet and guitarist Tommaso Lama. Easy Winners, recorded at The Platinum Factory in Brooklyn in January 1985 with the Uptown String Quartet, returns to Bird Says and A Little Booker in the studio and adds Sis and the title track.

The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note Volume 2, CAM Jazz box BXS 1044 from 2016: six CDs remastered from the original master tapes, reissuing albums recorded between 1979 and 1985.