Humanizing the hard stuff

Over at Four on the Floor Jon McCaslin has posted several great duo videos featuring Max Roach, including clips with Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, and this with Cecil Taylor:




Max really warms up Cecil's thing, doesn't he? This reminded me of Momentum Space, with Cecil alongside Elvin Jones and Dewey Redman, which gave a similar feeling; and the Tony Williams/Cecil duet on Joy of Flying. And Gary Peacock on Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity. I guess it shouldn't be a huge mystery- you put someone with the greatest drummers in the world and they're going to sound good. But his music is so impenetrable it's hard to imagine Max being able to do anything with it at all...