Max Roach Members, Don't Git Weary 180g LP (Mono)

Arc Records are overjoyed to reissue pioneering jazz drummer Max Roach's legendary 1968 album, Members, Don't Git Weary. This album marks the second installment in a series of special reissues from the storied Atlantic Jazz archives, 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 U.S. history, in the aftermath of the assassinations of U.S. 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 endeavor 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-color, four-page insert with brand-new sleeve notes featuring Charles Tolliver and Gary Bartz, as well as never-before-seen images of Max Roach in 1968 from the Warner Archive. The entire release is presented with the original artwork printed on heavyweight card with a matte finish and wrapped in the signature Arc Records bellyband.