Arc Records are overjoyed to reissue pioneering jazz drummer Max Roach’s legendary 1968 album Members Don’t Git Weary out 14th July. This album marks the second instalment of a new series of special reissues from the storied archives of the Atlantic Jazz archive and personally curated by DJ and Broadcaster Gilles Peterson. The LP is not only a personal all-time top ten for Peterson, but a hugely significant work in its own right from one of the true icons of modern jazz.
Roach recorded the album during a deeply turbulent time in US history, in the aftermath of the assassinations of US attorney General Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. The record sees the bebop originator lean into the tumult, embracing a broiling churn of modal and post-bop sounds that prefigures the afro-conscious spiritual jazz that would evolve further across the next decade. Roach is joined on this endeavour by a new generation of young future heavyweights; Gary Bartz on sax, Charles Tolliver on trumpet, Stanley Cowell on piano, Jymie Merritt on electric bass, and vocalist Andy Bey on the title track. Tolliver and Cowell would go on to form the seminal Strata-East and in many ways this record embodies the template of that sound. This record marks a pivotal moment in not only Roach’s career but the course of jazz in general.
This Arc Records reissue of Members, Don’t Git Weary is mastered in Mono from the original analogue master tapes by the multi-Grammy winning Bernie Grundman (Steely Dan, Michael Jackson, Prince, Dr Dre), pressed on 180g vinyl and features a full-colour 4-page insert with brand new sleeve-notes featuring Charles Tolliver and Gary Bartz as well as never before seen images of Max Roach from 1968 from the Warners Archive. The entire release is presented with the original artwork printed on heavy-weight card with a matte finish and wrapped in the signature Arc Records bellyband.
