Max Roach Quiet as It's Kept

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.