Max Roach was not only one of the best jazz drummers of all time, but also a longtime civil rights activist. The cover for the 1961 LP We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, features a photo of three Black men at a diner counter, accompanied by a white man in a soda jerk's uniform. It was an incendiary image, directed at a still-segregated country.

But the album doesn't stop at the cover. The music is superb and features a number of jazz stars, including vocalist Abbey Lincoln, tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Walter Benton, trumpeter Booker Little, trombonist Julian Priester and Michael Babatunde Olatunji. This was (and is) both a brilliant piece of music and a political and social statement, earning a crown in the Penguin Guide to Jazz and a 5-star rating in Downbeat.

Review

A1 Driva' Man
A2 Freedom Day
A3 Triptych: Prayer, Protest, Peace
B1 All Africa
B2 Tears For Johannesburg
B3 Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah