Max Roach was not one to fuck around, but he was never fucking around less than on this album, recorded in August and September 1960 and released that December. The cover photo depicts three Black men sitting at a (presumably segregated) lunch counter, two of them staring defiantly into the camera and the third keeping a wary eye on the horizon, perhaps looking out for police; behind them, a white counterman looks on, unhappy but not quite willing to kick things off. The core band consisted of Booker Little on trumpet, Julian Priester on trombone, Walter Benton on tenor sax, James Schenck on bass, Roach on drums, and Abbey Lincoln on vocals. On the opening track, “Driva’ Man,” Coleman Hawkins delivers a guest tenor solo, and on the second side, three percussionists — Babatunde Olatunji, Raymond Mantilla, and Tomas du Vall — join the ensemble.

The album’s first side consists of “Driva’ Man,” “Freedom Day,” and the trilogy “Prayer/Protest/Peace”; the second offers “All Africa” and “Tears for Johannesburg.” The first two pieces, which flow together, deal with the horrors of slavery and the joy of emancipation; throughout “Driva’ Man,” Roach’s snare cracks like a whip as Lincoln spits out tales of torment, her voice seething with contempt. The trilogy is a vocal/drums duo that begins with wordless gospelized ululations, moves into genuinely terrifying screams of rage and pain as Roach explodes with near blast-beat intensity, then gradually descends to earth once more. 

“All Africa” is a thrilling diasporic fusion — Lincoln recites the names of African tribes, as Olatunji chants proverbs about freedom in Yorùbá, and the percussionists play rhythms that crossed the ocean from West Africa and the Caribbean to New Orleans. This piece bleeds directly into the album’s final track, a hypnotic modal groove with fierce horn solos from Little, Benton and Priester, with percussion solos after that. Militant and humanist (the two are far from mutually exclusive), this is a stunning album: nakedly, uncompromisingly political and avant-garde but steeped in the blues and ancient rhythms. (The mono mix, reissued in 2024, will take your head off.)