Hat reissues the historic meeting of two truly influential and individual composers, arrangers, and instrumentalists on The Long March. The album appeared in 1979 on Swiss label Hat Hut. This date pairs Max Roach and Archie Shepp playing both solo and as a duo for one night in 1979 at the Willisau Jazz Festival. Roach's truly astonishing solo "J.C. Moses" is a tribute to Detroit jazz great J.C. Heard. The kinds of rimshots, trap stops and starts, and continuous rolling thunder take the breath away and make the listener wonder if this is really only one drummer. Next up is Shepp's solo tenor reading of Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady," where he coaxes all the ballad's idiosyncrasies and fluidly combines them with his new jazz flourishes, without once disrespecting the integrity of the original. On the title track (the middle part of a three-part suite composed by Roach), the drummer and saxophonist play together and seek the outer edges of jazz. Roach's disciplined, fiery drumming is like great wails of roaring thunder where color, shape, ambience, and dimension take on the quantum dictum of time. Shepp keeps up, unbelievably, by punching through the constant backdrop, repeating lines, recontextualizing them with different embouchures and emphases, then floating new ones through Roach's drums until only sound itself exists.

1		J.C. Moses
2		Sophisticated Lady
3		The Long March
4		U-Jaa-Maa
5		Triptych
6		Giant Steps
7		South Africa Goddamn
8		It's Time

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