Percussion Bitter Candy, initially launched in 1961 on Mercury Data, is one in all Max Roach’s most politically charged and musically expansive recordings. The album is about to be reissued on all-analog 180-gram vinyl in December, as a part of the Verve Vault Collection.
Recorded over two days in September 1960 at Common Studios in Chicago, Percussion Bitter Candy displays Roach’s deepening engagement with themes of social justice and Pan-African id. The ensemble options trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, and tuba innovator Ray Draper, alongside Roach’s personal commanding mix of cymbal textures, mallets, and explosive rhythmic element. The inclusion of vocalist Abbey Lincoln — Roach’s inventive and political companion on the time — provides urgency and emotional energy to the mission’s most pointed statements.
Whereas not formally structured as a set, the album’s six tracks transfer fluidly between non secular lament, militant swing, and improvisational abstraction. The opening piece, “Garvey’s Ghost,” units the tone with Afro-Caribbean rhythmic undercurrents, whereas “Mendacity” takes intention at hypocrisy with biting horn traces and Lincoln’s dramatic supply. Elsewhere, “Mama” and “Praise for a Martyr” discover private and collective grief via dynamic interaction and modal depth.
The Verve Vault Collection presents all-analog 180-gram vinyl reissues of important albums from the Verve, Impulse!, Mercury, and related catalogs. Mastered by Ryan Okay. Smith from the unique analog tapes and pressed at Optimum, every launch combines distinctive audio constancy with meticulous consideration to element — from mastering to jacket copy. The sequence goals to spotlight each iconic titles and ignored gems from the Fifties via the Nineteen Seventies.
Earlier releases within the sequence embrace Sonny Aspect Up by Dizzy Gillespie and The Composer of Desafinado Performs by Antonio Carlos Jobim, each launched in October.
Store the Verve Vault sequence on vinyl now.
