SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2015
VOLUME TWO NUMBER ONE
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2015
VOLUME TWO NUMBER ONE
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
LAURA MVULA
October 10-16
DIZZY GILLESPIE
October 17-23
LESTER YOUNG
October 24-30
TIA FULLER
October 31-November 6
ROSCOE MITCHELL
November 7-13
MAX ROACH
November 14-20
DINAH WASHINGTON
November 21-27
BUDDY GUY
November 28-December 4
JOE HENDERSON
December 5-11
HENRY THREADGILL
December 12-18
MUDDY WATERS
December 19-25
B.B. KING
December 26-January 1
http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/maxroach
MAX ROACH
Primary Instrument: Drums
Born: January 10, 1925 | Died: August 16, 2007
Maxwell Lemuel Roach is a percussionist, drummer, and jazz composer. He has worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins. He is widely considered to be one of the most important drummers in the history of jazz.
Roach was born in Newland, North Carolina, to Alphonse and Cressie Roach; his family moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was 4 years old. He grew up in a musical context, his mother being a gospel singer, and he started to play bugle in parade orchestras at a young age. At the age of 10, he was already playing drums in some gospel bands. He performed his first big-time gig in New York City at the age of sixteen, substituting for Sonny Greer in a performance with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
In 1942, Roach started to go out in the jazz clubs of the 52nd Street and at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay's Taproom (playing with schoolmate Cecil Payne). He was one of the first drummers (along with Kenny Clarke) to play in the bebop style, and performed in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis.
Roach played on many of Parker's most important records, including the Savoy 1945 session, a turning point in recorded jazz.
Two children, son Daryl and daughter Maxine, were born from his first marriage with Mildred Roach. In 1954 he met singer Barbara Jai (Johnson) and had another son, Raoul Jordu.
He continued to play as a freelance while studying composition at the Manhattan School of Music. He graduated in 1952.
During the period 1962-1970, Roach was married to the singer Abbey Lincoln, who had performed on several of Roach's albums. Twin daughters, Ayodele and Dara Rasheeda, were later born to Roach and his third wife, Janus Adams Roach.
Long involved in jazz education, in 1972 he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
In the early 2000s, Roach became less active owing to the onset of hydrocephalus-related complications.
Renowned all throughout his performing life, Roach has won an extraordinary array of honors. He was one of the first to be given a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, cited as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, twice awarded the French Grand Prix du Disque, elected to the International Percussive Society's Hall of Fame and the Downbeat Magazine Hall of Fame, awarded Harvard Jazz Master, celebrated by Aaron Davis Hall, given eight honorary doctorate degrees, including degrees awarded by the University of Bologna, Italy and Columbia University.
In 1952 Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus. This label released a record of a concert, billed and widely considered as “the greatest concert ever,” called Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Mingus and Roach. Also released on this label was the groundbreaking bass-and- drum free improvisation, Percussion Discussion.
In 1954, he formed a quintet featuring trumpeter Clifford Brown, tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell (brother of Bud Powell), and bassist George Morrow, though Land left the following year and Sonny Rollins replaced him. The group was a prime example of the hard bop style also played by Art Blakey and Horace Silver. Tragically, this group was to be short-lived; Brown and Powell were killed in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in June 1956. After Brown and Powell's deaths, Roach continued leading a similarly configured group, with Kenny Dorham (and later the short-lived Booker Little) on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor and pianist Ray Bryant. Roach expanded the standard form of hard-bop using 3/4 waltz rhythms and modality in 1957 with his album Jazz in 3/4 time. During this period, Roach recorded a series of other albums for the EmArcy label featuring the brothers Stanley and Tommy Turrentine.
In 1960 he composed the “We Insist! - Freedom Now” suite with lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr., after being invited to contribute to commemorations of the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Using his musical abilities to comment on the African-American experience would be a significant part of his career. Unfortunately, Roach suffered from being blacklisted by the American recording industry for a period in the 1960s. In 1966 with his album Drums Unlimited (which includes several tracks that are entirely drums solos) he proved that drums can be a solo instrument able to play theme, variations, rhythmically cohesive phrases. He described his approach to music as “the creation of organized sound.”
Among the many important records Roach has made is the classic Money Jungle 1962, with Mingus and Duke Ellington. This is generally regarded as one of the very finest trio albums ever made.
During the 70s, Roach formed a unique musical organization--”M'Boom”--a percussion orchestra. Each member of this unit composed for it and performed on many percussion instruments. Personnel included Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain.
Not content to expand on the musical territory he had already become known for, Roach spent the decades of the 80s and 90s continually finding new ways to express his musical expression and presentation.
In the early 80s, he began presenting entire concerts solo, proving that this multi-percussion instrument, in the hands of such a great master, could fulfill the demands of solo performance and be entirely satisfying to an audience. He created memorable compositions in these solo concerts; a solo record was released by Bay State, a Japanese label, just about impossible to obtain. One of these solo concerts is available on video, which also includes a filming of a recording date for Chattahoochee Red, featuring his working quartet, Odean Pope, Cecil Bridgewater and Calvin Hill.
He embarked on a series of duet recordings. Departing from the style of presentation he was best known for, most of the music on these recordings is free improvisation, created with the avant-garde musicians Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, Abdullah Ibrahim and Connie Crothers. He created duets with other performers: a recorded duet with the oration by Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”; a duet with video artist Kit Fitzgerald, who improvised video imagery while Roach spontaneously created the music; a classic duet with his life-long friend and associate Dizzy Gillespie; a duet concert recording with Mal Waldron.
He wrote music for theater, such as plays written by Sam Shepard, presented at La Mama E.T.C. in New York City.
He found new contexts for presentation, creating unique musical ensembles. One of these groups was “The Double Quartet.” It featured his regular performing quartet, with personnel as above, except Tyrone Brown replacing Hill; this quartet joined with “The Uptown String Quartet,” led by his daughter Maxine Roach, featuring Diane Monroe, Lesa Terry and Eileen Folson.
Another ensemble was the “So What Brass Quintet,” a group comprised of five brass instrumentalists and Roach, no chordal instrumnent, no bass player. Much of the performance consisted of drums and horn duets. The ensemble consisted of two trumpets, trombone, French horn and tuba. Musicians included Cecil Bridgewater, Frank Gordon, Eddie Henderson, Steve Turre, Delfeayo Marsalis, Robert Stewart, Tony Underwood, Marshall Sealy, and Mark Taylor.
Roach presented his music with orchestras and gospel choruses. He performed a concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He wrote for and performed with the Walter White gospel choir and the John Motley Singers. Roach performed with dancers: the Alvin Aily Dance Company, the Dianne McIntyre Dance Company, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
In the early 80s, Roach surprised his fans by performing in a hip hop concert, featuring the artist-rapper Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. He expressed the insight that there was a strong kinship between the outpouring of expression of these young black artists and the art he had pursued all his life.
During all these years, while he ventured into new territory during a lifetime of innovation, he kept his contact with his musical point of origin. His last recording, “Friendship”, was with trumpet master Clark Terry, the two long-standing friends in duet and quartet.
MAX ROACH
Primary Instrument: Drums
Born: January 10, 1925 | Died: August 16, 2007
Maxwell Lemuel Roach is a percussionist, drummer, and jazz composer. He has worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins. He is widely considered to be one of the most important drummers in the history of jazz.
Roach was born in Newland, North Carolina, to Alphonse and Cressie Roach; his family moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was 4 years old. He grew up in a musical context, his mother being a gospel singer, and he started to play bugle in parade orchestras at a young age. At the age of 10, he was already playing drums in some gospel bands. He performed his first big-time gig in New York City at the age of sixteen, substituting for Sonny Greer in a performance with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
In 1942, Roach started to go out in the jazz clubs of the 52nd Street and at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay's Taproom (playing with schoolmate Cecil Payne). He was one of the first drummers (along with Kenny Clarke) to play in the bebop style, and performed in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis.
Roach played on many of Parker's most important records, including the Savoy 1945 session, a turning point in recorded jazz.
Two children, son Daryl and daughter Maxine, were born from his first marriage with Mildred Roach. In 1954 he met singer Barbara Jai (Johnson) and had another son, Raoul Jordu.
He continued to play as a freelance while studying composition at the Manhattan School of Music. He graduated in 1952.
During the period 1962-1970, Roach was married to the singer Abbey Lincoln, who had performed on several of Roach's albums. Twin daughters, Ayodele and Dara Rasheeda, were later born to Roach and his third wife, Janus Adams Roach.
Long involved in jazz education, in 1972 he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
In the early 2000s, Roach became less active owing to the onset of hydrocephalus-related complications.
Renowned all throughout his performing life, Roach has won an extraordinary array of honors. He was one of the first to be given a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, cited as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, twice awarded the French Grand Prix du Disque, elected to the International Percussive Society's Hall of Fame and the Downbeat Magazine Hall of Fame, awarded Harvard Jazz Master, celebrated by Aaron Davis Hall, given eight honorary doctorate degrees, including degrees awarded by the University of Bologna, Italy and Columbia University.
In 1952 Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus. This label released a record of a concert, billed and widely considered as “the greatest concert ever,” called Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Mingus and Roach. Also released on this label was the groundbreaking bass-and- drum free improvisation, Percussion Discussion.
In 1954, he formed a quintet featuring trumpeter Clifford Brown, tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell (brother of Bud Powell), and bassist George Morrow, though Land left the following year and Sonny Rollins replaced him. The group was a prime example of the hard bop style also played by Art Blakey and Horace Silver. Tragically, this group was to be short-lived; Brown and Powell were killed in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in June 1956. After Brown and Powell's deaths, Roach continued leading a similarly configured group, with Kenny Dorham (and later the short-lived Booker Little) on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor and pianist Ray Bryant. Roach expanded the standard form of hard-bop using 3/4 waltz rhythms and modality in 1957 with his album Jazz in 3/4 time. During this period, Roach recorded a series of other albums for the EmArcy label featuring the brothers Stanley and Tommy Turrentine.
In 1960 he composed the “We Insist! - Freedom Now” suite with lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr., after being invited to contribute to commemorations of the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Using his musical abilities to comment on the African-American experience would be a significant part of his career. Unfortunately, Roach suffered from being blacklisted by the American recording industry for a period in the 1960s. In 1966 with his album Drums Unlimited (which includes several tracks that are entirely drums solos) he proved that drums can be a solo instrument able to play theme, variations, rhythmically cohesive phrases. He described his approach to music as “the creation of organized sound.”
Among the many important records Roach has made is the classic Money Jungle 1962, with Mingus and Duke Ellington. This is generally regarded as one of the very finest trio albums ever made.
During the 70s, Roach formed a unique musical organization--”M'Boom”--a percussion orchestra. Each member of this unit composed for it and performed on many percussion instruments. Personnel included Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain.
Not content to expand on the musical territory he had already become known for, Roach spent the decades of the 80s and 90s continually finding new ways to express his musical expression and presentation.
In the early 80s, he began presenting entire concerts solo, proving that this multi-percussion instrument, in the hands of such a great master, could fulfill the demands of solo performance and be entirely satisfying to an audience. He created memorable compositions in these solo concerts; a solo record was released by Bay State, a Japanese label, just about impossible to obtain. One of these solo concerts is available on video, which also includes a filming of a recording date for Chattahoochee Red, featuring his working quartet, Odean Pope, Cecil Bridgewater and Calvin Hill.
He embarked on a series of duet recordings. Departing from the style of presentation he was best known for, most of the music on these recordings is free improvisation, created with the avant-garde musicians Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, Abdullah Ibrahim and Connie Crothers. He created duets with other performers: a recorded duet with the oration by Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”; a duet with video artist Kit Fitzgerald, who improvised video imagery while Roach spontaneously created the music; a classic duet with his life-long friend and associate Dizzy Gillespie; a duet concert recording with Mal Waldron.
He wrote music for theater, such as plays written by Sam Shepard, presented at La Mama E.T.C. in New York City.
He found new contexts for presentation, creating unique musical ensembles. One of these groups was “The Double Quartet.” It featured his regular performing quartet, with personnel as above, except Tyrone Brown replacing Hill; this quartet joined with “The Uptown String Quartet,” led by his daughter Maxine Roach, featuring Diane Monroe, Lesa Terry and Eileen Folson.
Another ensemble was the “So What Brass Quintet,” a group comprised of five brass instrumentalists and Roach, no chordal instrumnent, no bass player. Much of the performance consisted of drums and horn duets. The ensemble consisted of two trumpets, trombone, French horn and tuba. Musicians included Cecil Bridgewater, Frank Gordon, Eddie Henderson, Steve Turre, Delfeayo Marsalis, Robert Stewart, Tony Underwood, Marshall Sealy, and Mark Taylor.
Roach presented his music with orchestras and gospel choruses. He performed a concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He wrote for and performed with the Walter White gospel choir and the John Motley Singers. Roach performed with dancers: the Alvin Aily Dance Company, the Dianne McIntyre Dance Company, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
In the early 80s, Roach surprised his fans by performing in a hip hop concert, featuring the artist-rapper Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. He expressed the insight that there was a strong kinship between the outpouring of expression of these young black artists and the art he had pursued all his life.
During all these years, while he ventured into new territory during a lifetime of innovation, he kept his contact with his musical point of origin. His last recording, “Friendship”, was with trumpet master Clark Terry, the two long-standing friends in duet and quartet.
Drummer Max Roach broke new ground in jazz
Max Roach
Birthdate: January 10, 1924
Max Roach was born on this date in 1924. He was an African American bebop/hard bop percussionist, drummer, and composer.
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was born in Newland, N.C., to Alphonse and Cressie Roach. His family moved to Brooklyn, when he was 4 years old. A player piano left by the previous NY tenants gave Roach his musical introduction and he started to play bugle in parade orchestras at a young age. His mother was a gospel singer, which led to Roach, at 10, to play drums in some gospel bands. Roach performed his first big-time gig in New York City at the age of 16, substituting for Sonny Greer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
In 1942, Roach started to go out in the jazz clubs of the 52nd Street and at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay's Taproom (playing with schoolmate Cecil Payne). He was one of the first drummers (along with Kenny Clarke) to play in the bebop style, and performed in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis. Roach played on many of Parker's most important records, including the Savoy 1945 session. He continued to play as a freelancer while studying composition at the Manhattan School of Music, where he graduated in 1952.
He had two children, Daryl and Maxine, from his first marriage with Mildred Roach. In 1954, he met singer Barbara Jai (Johnson) and had another son, Raoul Jordu. In 1960, he composed the “We Insist! - Freedom Now” suite with lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr., after being invited to contribute to commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Using his musical abilities to comment on the African-American experience was a significant part of his career. Because of this, Roach was blacklisted by the American recording industry for a period in the 1960s.
Roach was also married to the singer Abbey Lincoln, who had performed on several of Roach's albums. Twin daughters, Ayodele and Dara Rasheeda, were later born to Roach and his third wife, Janus Adams Roach. In 1966, with his album "Drums Unlimited,” he proved that drums can be a solo instrument able to play theme, variations, and rhythmically cohesive phrases. Another important record Roach made is the classic “Money Jungle,” 1962, with Charley Mingus and Duke Ellington.
During the 1970s, Roach formed a unique musical organization, "M'Boom," a percussion orchestra. Each member of this unit composed and performed on many percussion instruments. Members included Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain.
In 1972, he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Not content to expand on the musical territory he had already become known for, Roach spent the decades of the 1980s and 1990s continually finding new ways to express his musical expression and presentation. In the early 1980s, he began presenting solo concerts, proving that this multi-percussion instrument, in the hands of such a great master, could fulfill the demands of solo performance and be entirely satisfying to an audience. He created memorable compositions in these concerts. A solo record was released by Bay State, a Japanese label. One of these solo concerts also includes a filming of a recording date for "Chattahoochee Red," featuring his working quartet with Odean Pope, Cecil Bridgewater, and Calvin Hill.
In the early 2000s, Roach became less active owing to the onset of hydrocephalus-related complications. Renowned all throughout his performing life, Roach won many honors. Some of them include a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, cited as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, twice awarded the French Grand Prix du Disque, elected to the International Percussive Art Society's Hall of Fame, and the Downbeat Magazine Hall of Fame.
He was awarded the Harvard Jazz Master, given eight honorary doctorate degrees, including degrees awarded by the University of Bologna, Italy, and Columbia University. He worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians in the world. He is widely considered one of the most important drummers in the history of jazz. Max Roach died on August 16, 2007 at his home.
http://www.biography.com/people/max-roach-9459691#evolving-career
Max Roach
Max Roach Biography
Drummer, Educator, Civil Rights Activist, Songwriter (1924–2007)
Quick Facts
Name
Max Roach
Occupation
Drummer, Educator, Civil Rights Activist, Songwriter
Birth Date
January 10, 1924
Death Date
August 16, 2007
Education
Manhattan School of Music
Place of Birth
New Land, North Carolina
Place of Death
New York, New York
AKA
Maxwell Roach
Max Roach
Full Name
Maxwell Lemuel Roach
Synopsis
Early Life
Jazz Success
Evolving Career
Later Years
Cite This Page
A pioneer of the bebop style, drummer Max Roach spent decades creating innovative jazz.
IN THESE GROUPS
1 of 6
quotes
“You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historic musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.”—Max Roach
Max Roach was born on January 10, 1924, in New Land, North Carolina. He was raised in Brooklyn and studied at the Manhattan School of Music. One of the great jazz drummers and a pioneer of bebop, he worked with Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown. Roach was also a composer and a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts. He died in New York City in 2007.
Early Life
Maxwell Lemuel Roach, generally known as Max Roach, was born on January 10, 1924, in New Land, North Carolina. He was raised in Brooklyn and played in gospel groups as a child. Though he started on the piano, Roach found his instrument when he began playing the drums at age 10.
Jazz Success
Growing up in New York City exposed Roach to an exuberant jazz scene. In 1940, 16-year-old Roach filled in with Duke Ellington's orchestra. During the 1940s, he played with jazz greats like Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Benny Carter and Stan Getz. Roach further developed his skills by studying at the Manhattan School of Music.
Roach joined with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and others to help bebop—a form of jazz that featured more intense rhythms and sophisticated musicality—come into being. He soon gained a reputation as a virtuoso bebop drummer, one who could enhance a song with his musical choices. From 1947 to 1949, Roach was part of Parker's trailblazing quintet.
Roach's drumming could be heard on many recordings, starting with his debut with Hawkins in 1943. His other albums include Woody 'n' You (1944)—considered one of the first bebop records—and Davis's Birth of the Cool sessions in 1949-50. In 1952, Roach co-founded Debut Records with Charles Mingus. The label released a recording of a seminal jazz concert held at Massey Hall in 1953, where Roach performed with Mingus, Parker, Gillespie and Bud Powell.
In 1954, Roach and Clifford Brown formed a quintet that became one of the most highly regarded groups in modern jazz. Unfortunately, their collaboration ended when Brown and another member of the group were killed in a 1956 car accident. The loss was a depressing blow for Roach; he began drinking heavily, but eventually sought professional help to regain his footing. He also continued creating music, taking on projects with Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins.
Evolving Career
With We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (1960), Roach used music to address the need for racial equality. Despite the risks that taking an outspoken political stance posed to his career, Roach continued to support the Civil Rights Movement. He later created a drum accompaniment for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
In 1972, Roach was named as a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His career accomplishments were further recognized when Roach was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1982, and when he was selected as a 1984 Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1988, Roach received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," the first given to a jazz musician.
Roach's adaptability and inventiveness spurred him to work on an increasingly diverse list of projects. In 1970, he founded M'Boom, an all-percussion group. Roach also composed for choreographer Alvin Ailey and created music for plays written by Sam Shepard (his work with Shepard garnered Roach an Obie Award). His other collaborators include hip-hop artists Fab Five Freddy, writer Toni Morrison (Roach provided musical accompaniment at her spoken word concerts), Japanese taiko drummers and avant-garde instrumentalists Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton.
Later Years
Roach gave his last concert in 2000 and made his final recording in 2002.He suffered from a neurological disorder for an extended period before his death in New York City on August 16, 2007, at the age of 83. All three of Roach's marriages ended in divorce, but he was survived by two sons and three daughters.
http://www.biography.com/people/max-roach-9459691Access Date
November 14, 2015
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
http://www.drumlessons.com/drummers/max-roach/
Max Roach Biography, Videos & Pictures
Max Roach
Who Is Max Roach?
Max Roach is regarded as one of the most important drummers in the history of jazz. His contributions to jazz music and modern drumming are invaluable. Max Roach, along with guys like Kenny Clarke, shaped what is now regarded as the standard vocabulary of modern jazz drumming with the invention of bebop.
Maxwell “Max” Lemuel Roach was born to Alphonse and Cressie Roach in the small town of Newland, Pasquotank County, North Carolina. His parents were part of an enclave of black farmers who’d harvest and sell their goods collectively. At the time, black farmers could sell their goods only when the white farmers’ had sold out. This was troublesome for Max Roach’s parents, because when it came their time to sell, the prices had to go down if they wanted to earn any money. This also meant insufficient earnings to cover the costs of their farming activities.
Therefore, Max Roach, his parents and his older brother moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1928 to better their social conditions. They lived in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy). Although poor, Max Roach had high regards for Bed-Stuy’s inhabitants.
“Although the crash came a year later (1929), and although the people were poor and disenfranchised, they had a lot of pride. Nobody was slick, everybody was honest. People went to church.” – Max Roach
Max Roach’s first experiences with musical instruments began in elementary school. The public school he went to had music teachers who taught him and his classmates how to play instruments, allowing them to take musical instruments home.
Max Roach and his family spent most of their time at a neighborhood Baptist church, where his mother sang with the choir. It was in that church that Max Roach’s family was exposed to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). FERA’s philosophy was to put the unemployed back to work in jobs which would serve the public good and conserve the skills and the self-esteem of workers throughout the United States (U.S.) during the crisis.
Amongst other things, FERA provided classes in rural areas and urban neighborhoods with music instruction every week. So Max Roach’s parents would leave their kids in church to learn how to play musical instruments, while they were out working. An 8 years old Max Roach began his musical journey behind a piano. Since Max Roach enjoyed doing everything his older brother did, when his brother decided to learn how to play bugle, Max Roach followed on his footsteps. Seeing he couldn’t deal with the bugle that well, Max Roach’s mother advised him to chose a different instrument. Max Roach returned the bugle to his teacher and decided to take a snare drum home instead.
Max Roach’s first experiences with a drum set came at house rent parties. Those social events were organized by tenants to raise money to pay their rent and food, and featured hired musicians. Max Roach’s first band experiences were as the drummer for a couple of gospel bands, at the tender age of 10.
Even before graduating from high school in 1942, Max Roach was already a well known drummer in the New York jazz music scene. Max Roach performed his first big gig in New York City at the age of 16, substituting for Sonny Greer in a performance with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Paramount Theater.
In 1942, Max Roach began venturing into jazz clubs of the 52nd Street. He also played at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay’s “Taproom”, where he could be found performing alongside schoolmate and jazz baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne. Max Roach played with Charlie Parker at Clark Monroe’s “Uptown House” in Harlem, New York as well. As the a house drummer for the Uptown House, Max Roach took part in late night jam sessions that helped lay the groundwork for bebop.
Bebop is Max Roach and Kenny Clark’s most significant innovation and contribution to music. Bebop was a new form of jazz, a new concept of playing time musically. By moving the time-keeping function from the bass drum to the ride cymbal, Max Roach and Kenny Clarke allowed soloists to play freely. This new approach freed the drummer as well, leaving him enough space to insert dramatic accents on any other instrument on the drum set. Bebop was also a great way of taking full advantage of the drummer’s unique position – a musician who plays music with his four limbs.
Career Highlights And Musical Projects
Besides his work with Charlie Parker, within a few years, Max Roach would be found playing in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, and Bud Powell. Still in his twenties, Max Roach contributed with his extreme musicality to such seminal recordings as Charlie Parker’s The Complete Savoy Studio Recordings (1945 – 1948) and Miles Davis’s Birth Of The Cool, recorded between 1949 and 1950 and released in 1956. This album is the sole responsible for the cool-jazz movement.
In 1952, Max Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus and his wife at the time, Celia Mingus. Debut Records was the label on which the classic live album Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach was first issued. In that same year, Max Roach graduated from the Manhattan School of Music with a major in Music Composition. In 1957, Max Roach made another important contribution to the world of jazz music with the album Jazz in 3/4 Time, where he expanded on the standard form of bebop using 3/4 odd-time signature.
In 1960, Max Roach composed “We Insist!”. This album was Mas Roach’s contribution to the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. In 1962, Max Roach released Money Jungle, one of the best trio-based bands’ albums ever made. The year of 1966 saw the release of the album Drums Unlimited, which unveiled the drum set as a solo instrument capable of creating very musical statements.
In 1970, Max Roach formed a jazz percussion ensemble called M’Boom. The intention behind the project was that of exploring the sound of unconventional and non-Western percussion instruments. Over the years, M’Boom featured percussionists like Roy Brooks, Joe Chambers, Omar Clay, Warren Smith, and Freddie Waits in its ranks. M’Boom released three albums: Re: Percussion (1973); M’Boom (1979); Collage (1984); Live at S.O.B.’s New York (1992). The ensemble disbanded in 1992. In 1972, Max Roach became one of the first jazz musicians to teach full-time at a college, when he was hired as a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Max Roach’s tenure with the university ended in 1979.
In 1983, Max Roach broke new ground when he was joined in concert by a rapper, two DJs and a team of break dancers. In 1984, Max Roach composed music for a couple of Sam Shepard’s Off-Broadway productions. In 1986, a park in Brixton, London was named after Max Roach. In 1988, Max Roach was given a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. The following year, Max Roach was cited as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.
Max Roach’s long list of awards includes two French “Grand Prix du Disque” and the “Harvard Jazz Master”. Max Roach was awarded eight honorary doctorate degrees and was inducted into the International Percussive Art Society’s and the Downbeat magazine’s Hall of Fame. In his later years of life, Max Roach’s musical achievements were honored with a proclamation by Brooklyn’s president Marty Markowitz.
Max Roach died on August 16, 2007 in Manhattan. He was survived by his six children: sons Daryl and Raoul, daughters Maxine, Ayo and Dara, and bebop.
What Can We Learn From Max Roach?
Max Roach was one of the most musical drummers to ever grace our planet. A good way to sum up his drumming abilities on the drum set is to look at his improvisational skills and ability to create exquisite sounding drum solos.
Max Roach’s approached improvisation as free as possible. He didn’t spend any time prepping his improvisational sections beforehand. Max Roach enjoyed dealing with his musical thoughts on the spot, allowing the moment to create itself. This enabled him to take more enjoyment out of what he was playing on the drum set, since it was a natural response to the moment he was in. Having a lot of technique at his disposal, like high levels of independence, hand technique, and foot technique enabled him to do so. However, Max Roach’s incredible set of tools served only his ability to communicate different ideas.
Although Max Roach enjoyed coming up with new patterns within a single piece, he made sure he returned to ideas that were still within the structure of his drum solos. He would do so by repeating those ideas throughout certain sections of the solo. This concept of design within solos and improvisational pieces were more important to Max Roach than melodic or harmonic content. This concept is an integral part of his very popular drum solos, like “Big-Sid” for instance, which he wrote in honor of Big Sid Catlett, one his favorite drummers. This also gave his drum solos and improvisational pieces an awesome sense of musicality and theme.
Another one of Max Roach’s cool concepts when it came down to soloing, was his use of feet-ostinato vamps. Drum solos like “The Third Eye” and “Drum Waltz” are great examples of that. While keeping a steady ostinato going with his feet, Max Roach played the main statements and themes on top of the vamps.
Max Roach’s approach to improvisation can teach us quite a lot of things. First, Max Roach shows us that technique is paramount for artistic expression on the drum set. The more things you’re able to play, the better you’ll be at expressing yourself on the drum set. This is, of course, a direct result of the bebop style he enjoyed playing so much, which demanded high levels of independence, hand technique and foot technique. So working on drum set independence, hand technique, drum rudiments, and foot technique can, and will make you a lot more expressive during solos and help you write cooler sounding and original drum beats and drum fills.
Second, the way Max Roach approached soloing pretty much took drum solos in a whole new direction. Instead of bashing and unleashing a series of notes on the drum set just for the sake of it, Max Roach worked on different themes and ideas. That, coupled with the names he baptized them with, gave his solos a strong identity, almost like if they were songs. This way of approaching soloing is very interesting and original, resembling the way stories are written for books and movies. Max Roach builds on the emotion of his drum solos as he goes along, using different textures, rhythms, and dynamic levels.
Incorporating this type of concepts to your drum solos will make you a better listener, since you’ll have to remember the main themes of your solos as you go along. This will also have you working in an more organized framework. Max Roach’s soloing concepts are way different what a lot of drummer do when told to solo, like unleashing loud and fast strokes around the kit. This comes to show how creative one can be with drum solos.
http://jazzhistoryonline.com/Clifford_Brown_Max_Roach.html
Clifford Brown/Max Roach: "Historic California Concerts' (Fresh Sounds 377)
by Thomas Cunniffe
Starting in 1945, Los Angeles was a hotbed of bebop. While Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were recording their classic Guild and Musicraft sides in New York, Coleman Hawkins was in LA with a modernist band including Howard McGhee and Sir Charles Thompson. By the end of the year, Parker and Gillespie traveled west for a gig at Billy Berg’s in Hollywood. Parker stayed behind after the rest of the band went home. Following a disastrous breakdown and temporary cure for his heroin habit, he recorded with McGhee, Wardell Gray, Erroll Garner and Dodo Marmarosa before returning east. Meanwhile, in the clubs along Central Avenue, jam sessions featuring McGhee, Gray, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Criss and Hampton Hawes had the audiences cheering on their favorite players. Within a few years, the scene waned, and many of the clubs either closed or were converted into strip joints. The primary musicians went on tours with major bands or were off the scene because of drug addictions. By 1952, through the successes of Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Shorty Rogers, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Howard Rumsey, Shelly Manne and others, California jazz was generally synonymous with cool jazz.
When Manne left Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars to join Rogers’ new cool quintet, he recommended Max Roach
to fill his position. Roach and Manne had been friends since their days
in New York, and Roach had played the cool style in broadcasts and
recordings with Miles Davis and Lee Konitz.
During his six months with the Lighthouse group, Roach created a local
sensation with his drumming, and played on several live Lighthouse
recordings as well as studio sessions like the Cooper/Shank LP, “Oboe/Flute”.
The California gig allowed Roach to show his adaptability, but he never
stopped listening to the harder-edged music from New York, including Art Blakey’s “A Night at Birdland” and “The Eminent J.J. Johnson”. Both of those albums featured a remarkable young trumpeter named Clifford Brown.
When Brown arrived on the scene in 1953, he seemed to be just what jazz
needed: an imaginative young trumpeter with a full brilliant sound and
remarkable technical prowess. Those who knew him personally also praised
his sunny disposition and his aversion to alcohol, tobacco and
narcotics. As Roach’s Lighthouse contract was ending, concert promoter Gene Norman
talked to the drummer about forming his own group. Roach
agreed—provided that Norman would give them gigs to play—and immediately
sought out Brown to be his co-leader. Norman was good to his word,
providing a long-standing engagement at Pasadena’s California Club, and
setting up a West Coast tour. He also featured the Brown/Roach Quintet
in concerts at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium and LA’s Shrine Auditorium.
Those concerts were recorded and later issued on Norman’s GNP label,
but their best presentation is on the Fresh Sound CD “Historic California Concerts”, which restores the recordings to their full length and improves the sound.
The
Pasadena concert was recorded in April 1954. The band had only been in
existence for about two months, but had already played a few weeks at
the California Club. The fine and under-rated tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards shares the front line with Brown. The piano chair was filled by Carl Perkins—not the “Blue Suede Shoes” singer, of course, but a bopper who played with his left arm parallel to the keybo
ard
(owing to a battle with polio). The bassist was the steady but
unremarkable George Bledsoe. None of the pieces recorded in Pasadena
found a place in the group’s permanent repertoire, but the performances
are spirited and the audience clearly appreciated the energy of this
driving bebop group. After an introduction featuring brief solos by each
member of the group (omitted from the GNP 12” LP), the group launches
into a medium-up version of “All God’s Children Got Rhythm”. Edwards
starts the solos with a beefy tenor solo that is abruptly cut off after
one chorus. Brown is next and Roach’s ongoing rhythmic commentary spurs
the trumpeter through a brilliant extended solo. Perkins’ fleet piano is
also cut off after one chorus (these edits were on all previous
editions and could not be restored for the CD), but Roach’s complex drum
solo is kept intact. Gillespie’s strong influence on Brown can be heard
in the opening phrases of Brown’s ballad feature, “Tenderly”, but one
can also hear the subtle half-valved effects and the fluidity in all
ranges of the horn that became part of his mature style. “Sunset Eyes”
predicts the group’s use of tidy and effective arrangements. The A
sections of Edwards’ composition feature a sensuous tune over a single
chord, and the bridge has an exuberant melody over a standard ii-V-I
bebop progression. Edwards also wrote an out-chorus over the A section.
On the final chorus of the Brown/Roach arrangement, the band plays 16
bars of the out-chorus, then jumps back to the bridge and closes
with 8 bars of the original A section. The syncopated pick-up to the
bridge gives a dramatic lift to the arrangement, and it’s surprising
that Edwards never used this arrangement in his own recordings. Edwards
plays a fine solo here, and both he and Brownie explore the harmonic
contrasts between the main strain and the release. Edwards lays out on
the last track, “Clifford’s Axe”, which is a relaxed long-meter jam on
the changes of “The Man I Love”. The masterly sculpting of his
improvised lines and the steady pacing of the solo belies Brown’s age
(23), and the interplay with Roach—which would develop to amazing
heights over the next two years—is already quite stunning.
ard
(owing to a battle with polio). The bassist was the steady but
unremarkable George Bledsoe. None of the pieces recorded in Pasadena
found a place in the group’s permanent repertoire, but the performances
are spirited and the audience clearly appreciated the energy of this
driving bebop group. After an introduction featuring brief solos by each
member of the group (omitted from the GNP 12” LP), the group launches
into a medium-up version of “All God’s Children Got Rhythm”. Edwards
starts the solos with a beefy tenor solo that is abruptly cut off after
one chorus. Brown is next and Roach’s ongoing rhythmic commentary spurs
the trumpeter through a brilliant extended solo. Perkins’ fleet piano is
also cut off after one chorus (these edits were on all previous
editions and could not be restored for the CD), but Roach’s complex drum
solo is kept intact. Gillespie’s strong influence on Brown can be heard
in the opening phrases of Brown’s ballad feature, “Tenderly”, but one
can also hear the subtle half-valved effects and the fluidity in all
ranges of the horn that became part of his mature style. “Sunset Eyes”
predicts the group’s use of tidy and effective arrangements. The A
sections of Edwards’ composition feature a sensuous tune over a single
chord, and the bridge has an exuberant melody over a standard ii-V-I
bebop progression. Edwards also wrote an out-chorus over the A section.
On the final chorus of the Brown/Roach arrangement, the band plays 16
bars of the out-chorus, then jumps back to the bridge and closes
with 8 bars of the original A section. The syncopated pick-up to the
bridge gives a dramatic lift to the arrangement, and it’s surprising
that Edwards never used this arrangement in his own recordings. Edwards
plays a fine solo here, and both he and Brownie explore the harmonic
contrasts between the main strain and the release. Edwards lays out on
the last track, “Clifford’s Axe”, which is a relaxed long-meter jam on
the changes of “The Man I Love”. The masterly sculpting of his
improvised lines and the steady pacing of the solo belies Brown’s age
(23), and the interplay with Roach—which would develop to amazing
heights over the next two years—is already quite stunning.
By August 30, when the group performed at the Shrine, the personnel had stabilized to include Harold Land on tenor, Richie Powell on piano and George Morrow
on bass. The band had abundantly recorded in the intervening months,
including its own debut album for EmArcy, and studio jam sessions
featuring Dinah Washington, Maynard Ferguson, Clark Terry, Herb Geller, Walter Benton and Curtis Counce. Just how Gene Norman 
obtained
the rights to record the already-contracted Brown and Roach at the
Shrine has never been fully explained, but the recording offers one of
the earliest examples of this group in a live context. Three of the four
songs from that night had been recorded by the quintet for EmArcy
earlier in the month, and the group seems very comfortable with the
tunes and the arrangements. “Jordu” features relaxed solos by both Brown
and Land, with both soloists effectively punctuating their lines with
sharp rhythmic motives. Powell tries to spice up his solo with a few
quotes, but he was still an immature player and a mere shadow of his
brother Bud. Roach astonishes with another brilliant display of
polyrhythmic expertise (Land and Powell’s solos only appear on the GNP
10” LPs and on the Fresh Sounds CD). Brown’s ballad feature this time is
“I Can’t Get Started”, a tune which he never recorded again. This
version is hampered by PA feedback that distorts Brown’s rich trumpet
sound. A pity, since this is one of Brownie’s most understated ballad
performances. Next up is the band’s tricky mixed-meter version of “I Get
a Kick out Of You” (arranged by either Sonny Stitt or Thad Jones).
Roach sets an extremely bright tempo, but Brown sounds quite
comfortable playing at this quick pace, laying out long phrases over
several bars. Land is a little more frantic, but generates a lot of
excitement. Powell tries to mix the approaches of the horn men, but his
underdeveloped melodic imagination makes the effort sound disorganized
and chaotic. Roach’s solo brings things back to normal with a dense
thunder of percussion. The final track is Bud Powell’s “Parisian Thoroughfare”, complete with instrumental imitations of a French traffic jam. While
the opening is at an even faster tempo than “Kick”, it settles into a
medium-up groove for the melody and solos. Land’s sound is as warm as a
wool jacket, and his off-hand quote of Offenbach’s can-can theme works
very well. Brown is wonderfully melodic in his solo, and the legato in
his tone seems to reflect Roach’s smooth ride cymbals in the background.
obtained
the rights to record the already-contracted Brown and Roach at the
Shrine has never been fully explained, but the recording offers one of
the earliest examples of this group in a live context. Three of the four
songs from that night had been recorded by the quintet for EmArcy
earlier in the month, and the group seems very comfortable with the
tunes and the arrangements. “Jordu” features relaxed solos by both Brown
and Land, with both soloists effectively punctuating their lines with
sharp rhythmic motives. Powell tries to spice up his solo with a few
quotes, but he was still an immature player and a mere shadow of his
brother Bud. Roach astonishes with another brilliant display of
polyrhythmic expertise (Land and Powell’s solos only appear on the GNP
10” LPs and on the Fresh Sounds CD). Brown’s ballad feature this time is
“I Can’t Get Started”, a tune which he never recorded again. This
version is hampered by PA feedback that distorts Brown’s rich trumpet
sound. A pity, since this is one of Brownie’s most understated ballad
performances. Next up is the band’s tricky mixed-meter version of “I Get
a Kick out Of You” (arranged by either Sonny Stitt or Thad Jones).
Roach sets an extremely bright tempo, but Brown sounds quite
comfortable playing at this quick pace, laying out long phrases over
several bars. Land is a little more frantic, but generates a lot of
excitement. Powell tries to mix the approaches of the horn men, but his
underdeveloped melodic imagination makes the effort sound disorganized
and chaotic. Roach’s solo brings things back to normal with a dense
thunder of percussion. The final track is Bud Powell’s “Parisian Thoroughfare”, complete with instrumental imitations of a French traffic jam. While
the opening is at an even faster tempo than “Kick”, it settles into a
medium-up groove for the melody and solos. Land’s sound is as warm as a
wool jacket, and his off-hand quote of Offenbach’s can-can theme works
very well. Brown is wonderfully melodic in his solo, and the legato in
his tone seems to reflect Roach’s smooth ride cymbals in the background.
Soon
after the Shrine concert, the Brown/Roach quintet relocated on the East
Coast, but its formative months on the West Coast helped revitalize
California’s modern jazz scene. Within a year, a steady stream of
hard-edged bebop emerged from the West Coast. When Harold Land left
Brown/Roach in late 1955, he joined the Curtis Counce Group,
which became one of the finest bop groups in LA. Both Land and Teddy
Edwards remained important players on the LA jazz scene for the rest of
their lives, and they played together in the Gerald Wilson big band. Carl Perkins was an early member of the Counce Group, but died of a drug overdose in 1958. Sonny Rollins
replaced Land in the Brown/Roach quintet, and the resulting chemistry
made the group one of the finest exponents of the bebop style. It all
ended tragically when Brown, Powell and Powell’s wife died in an
automobile accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on June 26, 1956. It
took Roach several years to fully recover, but eventually he came back
with a powerful new group (ironically featuring another short-lived
trumpeter, Booker Little) that recorded classic albums like “Freedom Now Suite” and “Percussion Bitter Sweet”.
Had Clifford Brown survived the accident, he would have been in his
mid-eighties by now. Heaven only knows what directions he would have
taken had his career not been cut off in his twenty-fifth year. Like
JFK, the youth of Clifford Brown is locked forever in a time capsule,
and the hope and optimism he personified will forever be linked with the
sorrow of his early demise.
Content copyright 2015. Jazz History Online.com. All rights reserved.
http://www.jazzhistoryonline.com/Max_Roach.html
“We Insist!: Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (Candid 79002)
by Thomas Cunniffe
“We Insist!: Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (Candid 79002)
by Thomas Cunniffe
By the summer of 1960, the civil rights movement was gathering momentum, albeit in spits and starts. The “sit-in” movement had successfully desegregated the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC by July 25, but when Martin Luther King participated in a sit-in at the all-white Rich’s Restaurant in Atlanta the following October, he and 51 others were arrested as trespassers. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee had met for the first time on April 15, and the Freedom Riders commenced early in 1961. On August 31 and September 6, 1960, Max Roach brought in his quintet and several guest artists to the Nola studios in New York to record his “Freedom Now Suite”, the most overt political jazz recording made to that date.
Roach’s quintet included Booker Little, a phenomenally
talented trumpeter who had discovered his own style under Roach’s tutelage.
Little had come to Roach’s group as a teenager, and his early recordings show
him playing strings of sixteenth-notes with little melodic direction. During
his three years with Roach, he learned how to pick the right notes and remove
all of the excess. Throughout the album, Little’s solos project a deep feeling
of melancholy that is still unique in jazz. Trombonist Julian Priester was an
alumni of Sun Ra’s Arkestra, but was already on the studio scene when he joined
Roach in 1959; bassist James Schenk had only appeared on a 1955 Bobby Banks
date prior to “Freedom Now”, and tenor saxophonist Walter Benton had worked in
Los Angeles from the mid-fifties, and had first recorded with Roach on a
Clifford Brown jam session in 1954. However, the tenor saxophonist that made
the greatest impact with his appearance on “Freedom Now” only played on the
opening track. That was the legendary Coleman Hawkins, and his emotional solo
on “Driva Man” not only added musical credence to the recording, but also added
a multi-generational element to the personnel.
Without a doubt, the focal point of “Freedom Now” was
vocalist Abbey Lincoln. Lincoln
had made a well-publicized leap from the conservative supper clubs of the
fifties to the progressive jazz scene of the sixties. She had removed most of
the love songs and standards from her repertoire, and her voice took on a
coarse tone, with anger that seemed to simmer right below the surface. Singing
the politically charged lyrics of Oscar Brown, Jr., “Freedom Now” represented a
breakthrough for both the vocalist and lyricist.
Thematically, the five movements of “Freedom Now Suite”
divide into three sections. The first two movements, “Driva Man” and “Freedom
Day” are set in the times surrounding the Civil War (although “Freedom Day”
logically extends itself to the present and future times), the third movement
is a three-part duet by Lincoln and Roach (of which more below) and the final
two movements, “All Africa” and “Tears For Johannesburg”—which add
percussionists Michael Olatunji, Ray Mantilla and Tomas DuVall to the
group—deal with contemporary civil rights issues in the African homeland.
Accompanied only by a tambourine, Lincoln bites into the lyrics of “Driva Man”
and when the band comes in, Hawkins is the dominant voice. His intense sound
stands in stark relief against the piano-less background. As Nat Hentoff relays
in his superb liner notes, Hawkins’ solo contained a reed squeak which the
saxophonist insisted be left in the final recording: “When it’s all perfect,
especially in a piece like this, there’s something very wrong”. “Freedom Day”
sounds like it might be jubilant, but the sorrowful edge of Little’s lead trumpet
tempers that feeling. Little’s solo has a lot of notes, but it is uncanny how
the listener retains the striking color tones even amidst a flurry of notes.
After impressive solos by Benton and Priester, Roach plays his only solo on the
band portions of the suite. This solo develops ideas from a basic rhythmic
motive, and seems to fall in line with the chronology of composed drum solos
that Roach played later in his career.
The second side of the LP comprised the final two movements.
As on the first side, the music opens with Lincoln accompanied only by drums. After the
opening chorus, “All Africa” becomes a vocal duet between Lincoln and Olantunji
with Lincoln
singing the names of African tribes and Olantunji responding in the Yoruba
dialect. These names are familiar to us now, but they must have been quite
exotic to 1960 ears! The final three minutes of the movement are given to a
long, but fascinating percussion interlude involving Roach and the three guest
percussionists. “Tears For Johannesburg” follows without pause. There are no
words to this final movement—Lincoln
sings a plaintive legato vocalese that speaks volumes about the insanity of
apartheid. I suspect that Little wrote the horn arrangements throughout this
album; they speak with the same harmonic voice as his trumpet, and they are
quite similar to the arrangements on his later album for Candid. His solo on
“Tears” cuts right to the emotional bone, and while Benton’s solo seems rooted in bebop, it is by
far his most emotional solo of the date. The other horns and percussionists
build a frenzied background behind the tenor solo and continue it under
Priester’s extended trombone solo. Finally, the drums and percussion take over,
with Roach dominating the proceedings with impressive pyrotechnics. The horn
line that follows melds into an improvised duet for trumpet and tenor, then
moves back to written lines before the final fade-out.
I’ve saved the central Roach/Lincoln duet for last because
it is the most controversial and the most problematic. Originally conceived and
performed as music for a ballet, the “Triptych” is entirely wordless. The
opening section called “Prayer” features Lincoln
singing long legato lines on an “oo” vowel over Roach’s spare ostinato. As the
lines intensify, Lincoln
changes vowels to an “ee” and finally to “ah” as the section ends. Suddenly,
the tempo and mood changes for “Protest” which consists of Lincoln screaming
(not scream-like singing, real primal screaming) over Roach’s lightning-fast
drums. Lincoln
returns to normal singing techniques in “Peace” where she performs a group of
sighs, laughs and short lines again to Roach’s rhythmic ostinato. Now, I’ve
heard all of the arguments regarding this piece—it’s the central point of the
entire suite and the screaming is the natural release of hundreds of years of racial
inequality; no one but Abbey Lincoln could have performed this with such
conviction; and (the dreaded) “you’re not supposed
to like it”—and I agree with all of them. But no matter how insensitive it
makes me sound, those 75 seconds of screaming have diverted me from listening
to “Freedom Now Suite”. I suspect that there are many others who feel the same
way. I’ve never been a fan of listening to something simply because it’s good
for me. But there is something about making your work so repulsive that you
lose the audience you wanted to address.
Just over a half-century later, we have an African-American
president, and while Barack Obama has not been embraced by some Americans, he
won the election by a substantial margin. If you call Obama’s election “Freedom
Day”, then only Abbey Lincoln, Julian Priester, Ray Matilla (and possibly Tomas
DuVall and James Schenck) lived to see it. Roach died before Obama’s campaign
had gained much steam, Olantunji preceded Roach in death by four years, Benton passed in 2000,
Hawkins in 1969, and Booker Little died just 13 months after recording “Freedom
Now Suite”. The recording stands as a powerful monument to a difficult time
we’d all rather forget.
Content copyright 2015. Jazz History Online.com. All rights reserved.
August 27, 2007
Max Roach 1924-2007: Thousands Pay Tribute to the Legendary Jazz Drummer, Educator, Activist
Over 2,000 people gathered at Riverside Church in New York on Friday for the funeral of the legendary drummer, educator and activist Max Roach, who died on August 16 at the age of 83. He was credited with helping to revolutionize the sound of modern jazz and for playing a prominent role in the struggle for black liberation at home and in Africa. We speak with two men who have known Roach for decades: Amiri Baraka and Phil Schaap. [includes rush transript]
Over 2,000 people gathered at Riverside Church in New York on Friday for the funeral of the legendary drummer, educator and activist Max Roach, who died on August 16 at the age of 83.
Maya Angelou, Bill Cosby, Amira Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and others credited Roach with helping to revolutionize the sound of modern jazz and for playing a prominent role in the struggle for black liberation at home and in Africa.
Max Roach was born in North Carolina in 1924, but he grew up in Brooklyn. His musical career began in the local Baptist church, and by the age of 16 he was playing with Duke Ellington. A few years later he helped lay the groundwork for bebop with Charlie Parker’s group. Over the next six decades he would remain at the forefront of creative music playing with such legendary figures as Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp.
But to many Roach might be best remembered for a record he released in 1960 along with his future wife, the vocalist Abbey Lincoln.
The cover of the record showed a photograph of student activists from SNCC participating in a sit-in at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C.
Max Roach titled the record: “We Insist: Freedom Now Suite.” It remains one of the most moving musical pieces to come out of the black liberation movement.
At the time Max Roach told Down Beat magazine, "I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. ‘We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we’re master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we’ve been through.’’
In 1961, Max Roach staged a one-man protest on stage Carnegie Hall during a Miles Davis performance because the concert was a benefit for an organization supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Roach’s outspokenness led him to being blacklisted by some in the music industry but he continued to perform and compose into the 21st century.
Roach would also became a leading jazz educator and was the first jazz musician to win a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.
Later in the show we will play excerpts of Bill Cosby and Maya Angelou speaking at Max Roach’s funeral but first we are joined by two guests both of whom have known Roach for decades.
Amiri Baraka, Max Roach’s biographer and acclaimed poet, playwright, music historian, and activist. In 1992, Baraka worked with Max Roach to compose an opera called “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson.”
Phil Schaap, award-winning jazz historian, radio host, and reissue producer. He is the host of “Bird Flight,” a daily radio program devoted to the music of Charlie Parker. Birdflight is broadcast on WKCR out of Columbia University at 89.9 FM. Schaap also teaches jazz history at the Lincoln Center in New York.
TRANSCRIPT:
AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of people gathered at Riverside Church in New York on Friday for the funeral of the legendary drummer, educator and activist Max Roach. He died on August 16 at the age of eighty-three.
Maya Angelou, Bill Cosby, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and others credited Roach with helping to revolutionize the sound of modern jazz and for playing a prominent role in the struggle for black liberation at home and in Africa.
Max Roach was born in North Carolina in 1924, but grew up in Brooklyn. His musical career began in a local Baptist church. And by the age sixteen, he was playing with Duke Ellington. A few years later he helped lay the groundwork for bebop with Charlie Parker’s group. Over the next six decades, he would remain at the forefront of creative music playing with such legendary figures as Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp.
But to many, Max Roach might be remembered for a record he released in 1960 along with his future wife, the vocalist Abbey Lincoln. The cover of the record showed a photograph of student activists from SNCC participating in a sit-in at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Max Roach titled the record We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. It remains one of the most moving musical pieces to come out of the black liberation movement.
At the time, Max Roach told Down Beat magazine, “I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we’ve been through,” he said.
In 1961, Max Roach staged a one-man protest on stage, Carnegie Hall, during a Miles Davis performance, because the concert was a benefit for an organization supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Roach’s outspokenness led him to being blacklisted by some in the music industry, but he continued to perform and compose into the twenty-first century. Roach would also become a leading jazz educator and was the first jazz musician to win a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.
Later in the program, we’ll play excerpts of Bill Cosby and Maya Angelou speaking at Max Roach’s funeral, but first we’re joined by two guests, both of whom have known Max Roach for decades. Amiri Baraka is an acclaimed poet, playwright, music historian and activist. He was the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the ‘60s. In 1992 Amiri Baraka worked with Max Roach to compose an opera called The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson. Phil Schaap also joins us. He’s an award-winning jazz historian, radio host and reissue producer. He’s the host of Bird Flight, a daily radio program devoted to the music of Charlie Parker on WKCR out of Columbia University in New York. Schaap also teaches jazz history at Lincoln Center in New York. Welcome, both, to Democracy Now!
Amiri Baraka, talk about the significance of Max Roach and how you came to meet him.
AMIRI BARAKA: Well, my first cousin, coming back from the Second World War, gave me these bebop records when I was about fourteen, I think it was.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what bebop is?
AMIRI BARAKA: Bebob, well, let’s say that’s the—was the change of the music from the old swing era, you know, in the ’30s, and in the ’40s the musicians sort of reemphasized, you know, improvisation and the blues and the whole percussive underbelly of the music, because the music had become very, very—what would you call it—over-arranged. All of the swing bands began to sound the same. And so, small group of musicians began to create forms that, you know, were sort of lines of demarcation from regular swing music. And Max Roach is one of them.
Plus, Max tried to make the drum a uniquely voiced instrument, independent of the ensemble. He wanted to make a solo instrument. He wanted the drums to be part of the front line, rather than being, you know, hidden in the background. So when I first heard Max was a group called Max Roach and the Bebop Boys, which is God knows how long ago that was.
But it was part of this—what impressed me about what was called bebop, although Max used to complain about the terms “jazz” and “bebop” as being media-created, what impressed me is that, as a kid, it made me think of things that I have never thought before. You know, it was a sort of a freeing of your mind or making your mind actually dwell on things you had never even thought existed.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip of Max Roach. This was on WABC’s Like It Is. He was interviewed by Gil Noble, who asked him about his mastery of drumming.
MAX ROACH: Well, Gil, this instrument is totally different from any other percussion instrument on the face of the earth. And the technique for dealing with this instrument has added another dimension to the technique of dealing with percussion instruments generally. For example, this instrument, you deal with all four limbs. Most of these percussion instruments in the world that we see, whether they are in Europe, Africa, the Far East, they all play with just their hands. This instrument has added another dimension, and that’s your two feet.
And the basis of that is—I’ll give you an example. You play one thing with your right hand. You call this the swing beat. You play another thing with your base drum. That’s the four-four beat. Then you play another rhythm that’s totally different with your left hand. That’s the shuffle beat. Then with your left foot you play a Charleston beat. Now, in that sense, that’s the essence of this particular drum: you have to learn to deal with all four elements, and they have to blend together, similar to, say, a string quartet. You have to hear everything.
AMY GOODMAN: Max Roach on Gil Noble’s Like It Is on WABC in New York years ago. Phil Schaap, you’re smiling as you’re watching the late Max Roach.
PHIL SCHAAP: Well, it’s a great thing to hear that much jazz information in such a short instance. It’s also amusing to me, because I know who taught Max Roach that: Charlie Parker, at Max’s home, or his mother’s home, in Brooklyn. I guess it’s sixty-two or sixty-three years ago. Max Roach was late for the rehearsal at his own home. And Bird was sitting at the drums, and he said, “Max, can you do this, these four things? And you do them all at the same time, one limb for each event.” And that’s what Charlie Parker could do, and I’m pleased to see that Max Roach learned the lesson. I’m still working on it myself.
AMY GOODMAN: Phil Schaap and Amiri Baraka are with us. We’re spending the hour on Max Roach. Before he was thirty, he was voted the greatest jazz drummer in the world. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We’re spending the hour on the legendary jazz drummer Max Roach. On Friday, a funeral at the historic Riverside Church was held. Thousands of people came out. Renowned poet Maya Angelou spoke at the funeral for Max Roach.
MAYA ANGELOU: Family, family, family, when great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. I have come to sing a song of praise to the courage of black men, in general, black American men, in general, and Max Roach, in particular.
I was the only parent of a young man, a young black man. James Baldwin, John Killens, Julian Mayfield, and Max Roach offered themselves to me as my brother, my brother friends. I was young and quite mad. And so were they. But they were brave enough to be brothers to an African American woman—that’s no small matter—an African American woman who has opinions and is not loathe to tell anybody her opinion at any time, loudly.
Max Roach and the other men I have mentioned dared to say to me things like, “Listen, what you said to your son—he was eleven—what you said to him last week wasn’t all that swift. In fact, that was dumb. You’re raising a black boy in a white country where—poor boy in a country where money is adored, where black is hated, and man—where a man is no small matter. It’s a difference between being an old male born with certain genitalia—you can be an old whatever that is, but to become a man, and an African American man, is no small matter. Help yourself.”
And then, on the other hand, he would call me from New York to California and say, “Girl, I’m so proud of you. I saw you on television. You were brilliant. I’m so proud to be your brother.”
Thanks to Max Roach and African American men, there are some single women who dare to be mothers, dare to be sisters, dare to be lovers, dare to be citizens.
Thanks to Max Roach, all forty years ago, his then-wife Abbey Lincoln, Rosa Guy and I decided we were going to storm United Nations. And we put it to some men. They said, “Don’t be silly.” And we said we’d get the African American—the Harlem community to come down there to United Nations. They said, “Don’t be silly. Those people have never been to Times Square.” Max Roach said, “Do it”—not only “Do it,” “I’ll go with you.” And we went. And Harlem turned up down at United Nations, and we made an international statement. Max Roach.
Max Roach encouraged me to marry a man, a South African freedom fighter who was at United Nations, who was madder than I was. Max Roach said, “He’s good for you. He’ll teach you a thing or two.” He taught me three or four things.
I have wept copiously after losing Max Roach. I also laugh uproariously, because he dared to love me without any sexual innuendos, without any of that, just loved me, told me I was brilliant, much like my own brother. He told me I was brilliant, smarter than most people. He also told me I wasn’t as smart as he was, which was true, which was true.
When great trees fall, it is wise, I think, for us to praise the ground they grew out of.
It is such a wonderful thing to look at his friends and family, to see great names here, great artists, who loved Max Roach, because he had the courage to love us. And so, I’m glad to say we had him. We are bigger and better and stronger, because Max Roach was my brother.
AMY GOODMAN: Maya Angelou remembering Max Roach at Riverside Church on Friday at the funeral of the great jazz legend.
In studio with us, Amiri Baraka and Phil Schaap. Phil, can you talk about the protest that Maya Angelou referred to at the UN, also the Newport Jazz Festival and the one you were at, the Miles Davis concert?
PHIL SCHAAP: Well, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Jazz Artists Guild, the Newport Rebels was the first. It was in July of 1960 and is a continuance of Max Roach’s feelings about the artists controlling, even owning and certainly directing, their own business, which relates initially to his running a record label with Charles Mingus called Debut. This was an expansion of that operation. Now they were going to run their own jazz festival. And they had a lot of musicians on the staff. I was talking with his trombonist Julian Priester on just Friday, and he said, “I was a ticket taker, and so was Mingus.”
And also the Newport festival, the actual Newport festival, was actually closed down by the authorities. There was a lot of—it’s hard to describe it at a distance of forty-seven years, but if you saw West Side Story, there was some youthful rebellion going on parallel to jazz rebellion. But the Max Roach-led festival continued and actually did better business, because they were the only game in town. And when they came back to New York after it, they decided to show that something of substance had happened up there and should be continued.
I remember Jo Jones, the drummer, used to take me to some of these events that they had on a loft. It was around 10th Avenue at West 51st Street, and I even saw some, I guess, previews of the Freedom Now Suite: We Insist! So that was about the Newport Rebels of 1960.
Then, the following year—one of Max Roach’s greatest insights about the contemporary Civil Rights Movement from an American perspective was that it was the same thing internationally, in that he felt that the rebellion against imperialism and apartheid in South Africa and the contemporary Civil Rights Movement here in the United States was one thing, and it’s a blended theme that he puts across brilliantly in his music. And he felt that, well, among other people, the great Miles Davis was too centered on whatever he was doing for the Civil Rights Movement in the States wasn’t even addressing the real issue, which was international. So he decided he was going to make his own rebellion single-handed on stage at Carnegie Hall.
Now, I was ten years old when that concert happened, and my recollections have to be taken with that, you know, information. This is just some kid looking in at—and it’s pretty impressive. A little bit scary, too, you know. I remember, that day, I was becoming closer to a minister who gained Max Roach’s friendship long before I did named Reverend John Garcia Gensel. He really was the counsel for Duke Ellington. And my lasting personal memory of that day was after the concert was over, walking out onto 56th Street and 7th Avenue and seeing Max Roach and Reverend Gensel just casually talking about things. I said, “Well, I bet you those are two very impressive people. I’d like to hear what they’re saying. I’m not sure I’m going to get that close.” And I did, though, eventually.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to break into this discussion of Max Roach to bring our listeners and viewers breaking news. The latest we hear right now, CNN is reporting that Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General of the United States, has resigned. Now, Amiri Baraka, we brought you here to talk about Max Roach, but your response, the political being that you are, seeing you on Saturday out in Newark marching with a thousand people protesting the war abroad and the war at home.
AMIRI BARAKA: Well, they stalled that long enough. Gonzales had to fall on his sword sooner or later. It was a short sword. It took a long time for him to reach it. But Bush’s whole administration is sort of dying on the vine, you know. I wish it would happen more swiftly than it’s happening. But—I mean, because he’s already violated the Constitution of the United States every kind of way you can think of. I mean, so to continue with this is to just march lockstep toward fascism. One hopes this will, you know, slow it down.
AMY GOODMAN: Charles Schumer, the senator of New York, one of Gonzales’s chief critics, released a statement saying, “It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership,” Schumer said. He went on to say, “We beseech the administration to work with us to nominate someone whom Democrats can support and America can be proud of.”
AMIRI BARAKA: I’m just sorry that Gonzales resigned before he could arrest himself. That would be the best arrest we’ve heard, basically, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: The protest that happened in Newark was one of the largest in decades.
AMIRI BARAKA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Scores of groups joining together with People’s Organization for Progress.
AMIRI BARAKA: Well, you see, what I said then was that we need to join the antiwar movement with the anti-imperialist movement and the anti-racist movement, because people who want to fight against the war without seeing that war has its origins in imperialism, and that has to be countered. You have to start at the root, because otherwise, just by opposing this war, there might be a brief pause, and then there will be a war with Iran, and then there will be a brief pause, and then there will be a war with North Korea, then there will be a brief pause, and then some fool will say we should go to war with China. I mean, so it’s imperialism is at the root of the problem. You know, the war is just a reflection of imperialism, sort of an unbridled attempt to, you know, claim the world.
AMY GOODMAN: There are rumors—just rumors, so far—that President Bush is going to tap Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, to be the next attorney general.
AMIRI BARAKA: Because he’s done such a good job. I mean, Katrina should, you know—I mean, I don’t have any faith in Chertoff, since he used to be attorney general in New Jersey. You know, I mean, he’s led a long and checkered career, you know? Appointment without, you know, accomplishment is what I see.
AMY GOODMAN: Phil Schaap, how involved was Max Roach in the politics of the day? I mean, we’ve been talking about his deep involvement in linking international with local issues.
PHIL SCHAAP: Well, he would be very, very much involved in your show to sort of—a shortchange that you don’t have him as a guest this morning to comment on these very same events. I was sort of looking forward to the impeachment also. Maybe he could have emulated some of his predecessors, like John Mitchell and Gaston B. Means—Gonzales, of course, I’m speaking about, not Max Roach.
But you can hear in Amiri’s statement that this bigger picture and the connections is something that is a real story and a real theme and a real concept. Max Roach was about that. He understood these connections. He spoke about them frequently. You know, I used to go over to Roy Eldridge’s house on election night, because I’m from Hollis, Queens. That’s where he lived. And it used to be great to see Roy Eldridge sort of talk about what was happening. And Max would say, “Well, what did Roy say?” because they had both been in this Newport rebellion in 1960, two generations.
AMIRI BARAKA: The ‘62 thing actually was against the murder of Patrice Lumumba. And that’s what brought everybody down there, and the fact that Maya, who, people don’t know, was intensely political back in those days. You know, she’s one of the people—her and Abbey—that climbed up into the United Nations, and they were taking off their shoes, throwing them down there at the Negro bunch, and it was very interesting. And like I said in that thing, some people I’ve met as political activists, you know, who I didn’t even know were poets and musicians at the time.
AMY GOODMAN: Amiri, I wanted to turn to your poem that you read at the funeral of Max Roach on Friday, reading the poem that you wrote for Max Roach’s seventy-fifth birthday called “Digging Max.”
AMIRI
BARAKA: I wrote a poem for Max on his seventy-fifth birthday. This is a
picture of Max and I in Paris. And this is called "Digging Max."
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/8/27/max_is_the_highest_the_outtest
MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 2007
"Max is the Highest, the Outtest, the Largest, the Greatest, the Fastest the Hippest"–Poet Amiri Baraka Eulogizes Jazz Legend Max Roach
Amiri Baraka–Max Roach’s biographer and acclaimed poet and playwright–delivered the eulogy at Roach’s funeral at Riverside Church. Baraka read the poem, "Digging Max," that he wrote for Roach’s 75th birthday.
TRANSCRIPT:
Amiri Baraka–Max Roach’s biographer and acclaimed poet and playwright–delivered the eulogy at Roach’s funeral at Riverside Church. Baraka read the poem, "Digging Max," that he wrote for Roach’s 75th birthday.
TRANSCRIPT:
(At Seventy Five, All The Way Live!)
Max is the highest
The outest the
Largest, the greatest
The fastest, the hippest,
The all the way past which
There cannot be
When we say MAX, that’s what
We mean, hip always
Clean. That’s our word
For Artist, Djali, Nzuri Ngoma,
Senor Congero, Leader,
Mwalimu,
Scientist of Sound, Sonic
Designer,
Trappist Definer, Composer,
Revolutionary
Democrat, Bird’s Black Injun
Engine, Brownie’s Other Half,
Abbey’s Djeli-ya-Graph
Who bakes the Western industrial
singing machine
Into temperatures of syncopated
beyondness
Out Sharp Mean
Papa Joe’s Successor
Philly Joe’s Confessor
AT’s mentor, Roy Haynes’
Inventor, Steve McCall’s
Trainer, Ask Buhainia. Jimmy Cobb,
Elvin or Klook
Or even Sunny Murray, when he aint
in a hurry.
Milford is down and Roy Brooks
Is one of his cooks. Tony Williams,
Jack DeJohnette,
Andrew Cyrille can tell you or
youngish Pheeroan
Beaver and Blackwell and my man,
Dennis Charles.
They’ll run it down, ask them the next
time they in town.
Ask any or all of the rhythm’n.
Shadow cd tell you, so could
Shelly Manne, Chico Hamilton.
Rashid knows, Billy Hart. Eddie
Crawford
From Newark has split, but he and
Eddie Gladden could speak on it.
Mtume, if he will. Big Black can
speak. Let Tito Puente run it down,
He and Max were tight since they
were babies in this town.
Frankie Dunlop cd tell you and he
speak a long time.
Pretty Purdy is hip. Max hit with
Duke at Eighteen
He played with Benny Carter when he
first made the scene. Dig the heavy learning that went with
that. Newk knows,
And McCoy. CT would agree. Hey,
ask me or Archie or Michael Carvin
Percy Heath, Jackie Mc are all hip to
the Max Attack.
Barry Harris can tell you. You in
touch with Monk or Bird?
Ask Bud if you see him, You know he
know, even after the cops
Beat him Un Poco Loco. I mean you
can ask Pharaoh or David
Or Dizzy, when he come out of hiding,
its a trick Diz just outta sight.
I heard Con Alma and Diz and Max
In Paris, just the other night.
But ask anybody conscious, who Max
Roach be. Miles certainly knew
And Coltrane too. All the cats who
know the science of Drum, know
where our
Last dispensation come from. That’s
why we call him, MAX, the ultimate,
The Furthest Star. The eternal
internal, the visible invisible, the
message
From afar.
All Hail, MAX, from On to Dignataria
to Serious and even beyond!
He is the mighty SCARAB, Roach the SCARAB, immortal as
our music, world without end.
Great artist Universal Teacher, and
for any Digger
One of our deepest friends! Hey MAX!
MAX! MAX!
AMY GOODMAN: Poet Amiri Baraka, Max Roach’s biographer and acclaimed playwright, music historian and activist.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2007/08/max_roach.html
Music
Pop, jazz, and classical.
Aug. 22 2007
Max Roach
Why he was jazz's greatest drummer.
by Fred Kaplan
Jazz drummer Max Roach
Max Roach's death last Wednesday, at age 83, marks another step toward the end of the modern jazz world's greatest generation. Only a few remain among the giants who were present alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as they created the harmonically adventurous, rhythmically turbulent postwar music called bebop. There's still Sonny Rollins, 76; Roy Haynes, 82; Hank Jones, 88. A few of their immediate successors remain active as well: Lee Konitz, 79; Ornette Coleman, 77. But there aren't many more.
Fred Kaplan, Slate's "War Stories" columnist, also writes widely about jazz, including a jazz blog for Stereophile. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.
Roach made his mark in the mid-1940s playing in the Gillespie-Parker quintet, and it takes only a few seconds to understand the impact his presence made. Here, for instance, is a fragment of "Groovin' High," taken from one of the band's earliest studio sessions, recorded on Feb. 28, 1945, and featuring Cozy Cole on drums. Cole was a swing drummer; he taps the drums on each 4/4 beat—tap-tap-tap-tap—and the song (which would evolve into a bebop anthem) sounds, at this stage, like an easy-going, head-swaying swing tune, with just a dash of horn-led syncopation.
Now listen to "Groovin' High," as played at Town Hall in New York City on June 22, 1945, with the same band, except with 21-year-old Max Roach on drums. The basic beat is still 4/4, but it has a propulsive drive; the cymbals are leading the way, not just following the chart; and, every now and then, Roach accents a beat or drops an explosion on the tom-tom, to carve up the rhythm and extend the horns' liberties—to make it jarringly clear that we're all on new terrain
Pianist Ethan Iverson, in his jazz blog, reminds me of a later Parker tune, "Kim," from a 1952 studio date, where Roach presses the pedal still harder and where he experiments more drastically with rhythms within rhythms on top of still different rhythms.
Roach didn't invent bebop, but he showed a whole new way for drummers to play a role in the new music—to do something besides just keeping time. (It would be a while longer before a bass player came along to do the same.)
Unlike some boppers, Roach didn't stop there. He kept exploring new techniques, new rhythms, new sounds. His first real eye-popper—the track that has drummers shaking their heads even now, 56 years later—was "Un Poco Loco," recorded in 1951 with pianist Bud Powell (and preserved on a compilation titled The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1). The song, written by Powell, has, as the title suggests, a crazy rhythm to begin with. But Roach adds a more complex layer that goes against Powell's rhythm, on a cowbell no less, while pounding a rumbling roll on the bass drum at a different tempo still. Simply jaw-dropping—and you can dance to it.
More remarkable, Roach clearly devised this approach on the spot. The album contains three takes of "Un Poco Loco," and the drumming is a bit different on each. On the first take, Roach hits the cowbell in a high-energy Latin rhythm that goes with Powell's rhythm; had he stopped there, it would have been impressive enough. On the second take, he tries a whole other approach, hitting only a couple beats per measure and altering the beats; it's very diverting. Only on the third and final take did he pull out the polyrhythmic marvel.
Later that decade, and into the 1960s, Roach became active in the civil rights movement and recorded several albums with explicitly (and, at the time, provocatively) political themes, some of them featuring his wife at the time, singer Abbey Lincoln: We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, Speak Brother Speak, and Lift Every Voice and Sing. All along, he continued to play adventurous but usually accessible jazz with most of the giants—Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Clifford Brown. In the 1970s and '80s, he performed tightrope-walking duets—just him on drums and another daring acrobat on a horn or piano—with Cecil Taylor, Mal Waldron, Dollar Brand, Archie Shepp, Clark Terry, and, most surprising, Dizzy Gillespie (the resulting album may be the only time Gillespie, the master of chord variations, played without a piano or guitar comping behind him).
I remember watching Roach on The Tonight Show—it must have been in the early 1970s—when Bill Cosby was guest-hosting for Johnny Carson. He played a drum solo for something like seven minutes. With most drummers, that alone would have been deadly, but Roach upped the stakes by playing nothing but a hi-hat cymbal, and I think he was hitting the cymbal with a pair of brushes, not sticks. It was enthralling. I'd never seen anything like it, and neither, it seemed, had anyone in what I recall was a cheering audience.
I couldn't find that clip on YouTube, but I did come across this one, a similar but shorter solo on hi-hat, recorded (judging from the graying hair) at least a few years later. He was a drummer who saw the drums as much more than a percussive instrument. Melody and tone clusters came as naturally to him as rhythm. He was, simply, a master musician.
THE MUSIC OF MAX ROACH: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. ROACH:
We Insist!--Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (1962)
Side one:
"Driva Man" (Roach, Oscar Brown) -- 0:00
"Freedom Day" (Roach, Brown) -- 5:18
"Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace" (Roach) -- 11:26
Side two:
Max Roach -- drums
Abbey Lincoln -- vocals
Booker Little -- trumpet on "Driva Man", "Freedom Day", "All Africa", and "Tears for Johannesburg"
Julian Priester -- trombone on "Driva Man", "Freedom Day", and "Tears for Johannesburg"
Walter Benton -- tenor saxophone on "Driva Man", "Freedom Day", and "Tears for Johannesburg"
Coleman Hawkins -- tenor saxophone on "Driva Man"
James Schenk -- bass on "Driva Man", "Freedom Day", and "Tears for Johannesburg"
Michael Olatunji -- congas, vocals on side two
Raymond Mantilla -- percussion on side two
Tomas du Vall -- percussion on side two
Max Roach- DRUMS UNLIMITED - Full Album (1966)
1. The Drum Also Waltzes (Max Roach) 0:00
2. Nommo (Jymie Merritt) 3:33
3. Drums Unlimited (Max Roach) 16:17
4. St. Louis Blues (W.C. Handy) 20:40
5. For Big Sid (Max Roach) 26:03
6."In The Red (A Xmas Carol)" (Max Roach) 29:07
MAX ROACH, drums
JAMES SPAULDING, alto sax
FREDDIE HUBBARD, trumpet
RONNIE MATTHEWS, piano
JYMIE MERRITT, bass
Side 2 track 1 also features RONALD ALEXANDER, soprano sax
This set was Max Roach's only recording as a leader during 1963-67. Three of the six numbers ("Nommo," "St. Louis Blues" and "In the Red") find Roach heading a group that includes trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, altoist James Spaulding, pianist Ronnie Mathews, bassist Jymie Merritt and, on "St. Louis Blues," Roland Alexander on soprano. Their music is essentially advanced hard-bop with a generous amount of space taken up by Roach's drum solos. The other three selections ("The Drum Also Waltzes," "Drums Unlimited" and "For Big Sid") are unaccompanied features for Max Roach and because of the melodic and logically-planned nature of his improvisations, they continually hold on to one's attention.
2. Nommo (Jymie Merritt) 3:33
3. Drums Unlimited (Max Roach) 16:17
4. St. Louis Blues (W.C. Handy) 20:40
5. For Big Sid (Max Roach) 26:03
6."In The Red (A Xmas Carol)" (Max Roach) 29:07
MAX ROACH, drums
JAMES SPAULDING, alto sax
FREDDIE HUBBARD, trumpet
RONNIE MATTHEWS, piano
JYMIE MERRITT, bass
Side 2 track 1 also features RONALD ALEXANDER, soprano sax
This set was Max Roach's only recording as a leader during 1963-67. Three of the six numbers ("Nommo," "St. Louis Blues" and "In the Red") find Roach heading a group that includes trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, altoist James Spaulding, pianist Ronnie Mathews, bassist Jymie Merritt and, on "St. Louis Blues," Roland Alexander on soprano. Their music is essentially advanced hard-bop with a generous amount of space taken up by Roach's drum solos. The other three selections ("The Drum Also Waltzes," "Drums Unlimited" and "For Big Sid") are unaccompanied features for Max Roach and because of the melodic and logically-planned nature of his improvisations, they continually hold on to one's attention.
Max Roach Quartet Live at the Jazz Alley Bandstand, Washington DC:
Max Roach Double Quartet Stuttgart 1990:
The
Max Roach Double Quartet at Jazzgipfel Stuttgart 1990. Cecil
Bridgewater, Odean Pope, Tyrone Brown, Diane Monroe,Lesa Terry, Maxine
Roach and Eileen Folson.
Clifford Brown & Max Roach (Full Album)--1955
Max Roach - 'Jazz in 3/4 Time' - full album:
1-Blues Waltz 00:00
2-Valse Hot 06:32
3-I'll Take Romance 20:57
4-Little Folks 25:26
5-Lover 31:08
6-The Most Beautyful Girl In The World 36:46
Personnel: Max Roach (drums); Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone); Kenny Dorham (trumpet); Ray Bryant(piano on 6), Billy Wallace (piano); George Morrow (bass instrument)
The idea of jazz in 3/4 time was not a new one when Max Roach recorded these tracks in 1956 and 1957, but this was the first jazz album entirely devoted to that unusual time signature. At the helm of a first-rate quintet including Sonny Rollins and Kenny Dorham, Roach proves conclusively that waltzes can swing.
2-Valse Hot 06:32
3-I'll Take Romance 20:57
4-Little Folks 25:26
5-Lover 31:08
6-The Most Beautyful Girl In The World 36:46
Personnel: Max Roach (drums); Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone); Kenny Dorham (trumpet); Ray Bryant(piano on 6), Billy Wallace (piano); George Morrow (bass instrument)
The idea of jazz in 3/4 time was not a new one when Max Roach recorded these tracks in 1956 and 1957, but this was the first jazz album entirely devoted to that unusual time signature. At the helm of a first-rate quintet including Sonny Rollins and Kenny Dorham, Roach proves conclusively that waltzes can swing.
Max Roach - Full Concert - 08/16/92 - Newport Jazz Festival (OFFICIAL):
More Max Roach at Music Vault: http://www.musicvault.com
Max Roach Quartet 1990:
Max Roach, drums, vocals
Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet
Odeon Pope, tenor saxophone
Tyron Brown, bass
Philharmonie, JazzFest Berlin/Germany, 3rd November 1990
Live concert tracklist:
The Smoke That Thunders 03:45
Elixir Suite 05:36
Tricotism 03:37
Cherokee 06:45
In A Sentimental Mood 08:40
I Want To Talk About You 05:33
South Africa Goddamm - Blues March 08:24
It's Time - Mr.Hihat 07:29
Odeon Pope, tenor saxophone
Tyron Brown, bass
Philharmonie, JazzFest Berlin/Germany, 3rd November 1990
Live concert tracklist:
The Smoke That Thunders 03:45
Elixir Suite 05:36
Tricotism 03:37
Cherokee 06:45
In A Sentimental Mood 08:40
I Want To Talk About You 05:33
South Africa Goddamm - Blues March 08:24
It's Time - Mr.Hihat 07:29
Max Roach 5tet with Abbey Lincoln "Driva Man"-- 1964 HD
"Freedom Now Suite" Belgian TV BTR2 1964:
Max Roach 5tet with Abbey Lincoln "Freedom Day"- 1964 HD:
"Freedom Now Suite"Belgian TV BTR2 1964
Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln:
Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite
Max Roach - "All Africa"
From 'We Insist!' Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (1961):
Personnel:
Max Roach (Drums)
Abbey Lincoln (Vocals)
Booker Little (Trumpet)
Julian Priester (Trombone)
Walter Benton (Tenor Saxophone)
Coleman Hawkins (Tenor Saxophone)
James Schenk (Bass)
Michael Olatunji (Congas, Vocals)
Raymond Mantilla (Percussion)
Tomas du Vall (Percussion)
--
Nat Hentoff (Producer)
Max Roach (Drums)
Abbey Lincoln (Vocals)
Booker Little (Trumpet)
Julian Priester (Trombone)
Walter Benton (Tenor Saxophone)
Coleman Hawkins (Tenor Saxophone)
James Schenk (Bass)
Michael Olatunji (Congas, Vocals)
Raymond Mantilla (Percussion)
Tomas du Vall (Percussion)
--
Nat Hentoff (Producer)
Cecil Taylor/Max Roach Duo, part 1 of 4:
Historic concert, Columbia University
December 15, 1979:
Max Roach and Anthony Braxton - "One in Two - Two in One" (full album):
Max
Roach and Anthony Braxton, "One in Two - Two in One." Recorded live at
Jazz Festival Willisau, August 31, 1979. Hat Hut Records 2R06 (1980). CD
reissue: hatOLOGY 601 (2004).
Max Roach & Anthony Braxton - "Birth" (1978):
"The
music in this album is a result of our belief in a continuum that links
the present with the past. Our spontaneous improvisations are true to
those well defined principles basic to African American culture. Thank
you for listening."
From: Max Roach & Anthony Braxton album "Birth And Rebirth" (1978)
From: Max Roach & Anthony Braxton album "Birth And Rebirth" (1978)
"The Long March" · Max Roach and Archie Shepp:
"South Africa Goddamn"--Max Roach and Archie Shepp:
From: 'The Long March' album by Max Roach and Archie Shepp
The Long March (originally recorded in 1981)℗ 2009 Hat Hut Records Ltd.
Released on: 2014-08-12
"U-Jaa-Ma"--by Max Roach and Archie Shepp:
From: 'The Long March' album (1981)
Le Max Roach Quintet à l'Alhambra 1960 part 1 + Interview with Max:
"Kardouba" by Max Roach, with Stanley Turrentine, Tommy Turrentine, Julien Priester, and Bobby Boswell
Max Roach Quintet with Booker Little and a beat poetry reading (1959):
Max
Roach - drums, Booker Little - trumpet, George Coleman - tenor sax, Ray
Draper - tuba, Art Davis - bass. From the 1959 TV broadcast "Look Up
and Live: The Delinquent, the Hipster, and the Square." Also includes a
depiction of a beat poetry reading.
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Clifford Brown and Max Roach Quintet - I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You
Newport Jazz Festival (Newport, RI), 07/16/1955:
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One of George Wein's great assets as a talent
booker was to showcase rising stars while still in their ascendancy.
The young trumpet sensation Clifford Brown, Down Beat magazine's 'New
Star of the Year' for 1954, was one such meteoric talent. When the
24-year-old trumpeter joined forces with the great bebop drummer and
former Charlie Parker sideman Max Roach, expectations ran high in the
jazz community that these two would shape the face of jazz to come in
the same way that Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had done in the previous
decade. Wein booked them for a Saturday evening, July 16, at the 1955
Newport Jazz Festival. Appearing under threat of rain, the hard-swinging
hard bop quintet ignited a fire on the bandstand on the strength of
Roach's driving rhythmic pulse, which seemed to lift the entire
ensemble.
They opened their set with Brown's brisk hard bop anthem "Joy Spring." Heated exchanges between Brown and tenor saxophonist Harold Land escalate to a visceral level, leading to an exceptional drum solo by Roach. For the second tune, a ballad feature for Brown, Roach introduces the young exciting newcomer to the scene with the following: "Now it's our pleasure to present a young man who has astounded the jazz world with his amazing talent in the last two years. His name is Clifford Brown and here is his amazing version of 'I Don't Stand A Ghost of a Chance with You.'" The mournful minor key ballad, co-penned by crooner Bing Crosby, is an excellent vehicle to showcase Brown's warm, round tones and bold attack. (It was included on the quintet's acclaimed 1954 recording on Emarcy, Brown and Roach, Inc.). His uncanny fluidity and expressive quality in his phrasing reveal a sense of maturity and naked emotional depth that belie his 24 years. And his effortless high-note filigrees on the dramatic crescendo would even make Louis Armstrong sit up and take notice.
Richie Powell's "Jacqui," which appeared on the quintet's Study in Brown, recorded early that year, demonstrates the pianist's potential as a composer. A jaunty swinger with tight harmony lines between trumpet and tenor upfront, it features Brown pushing the envelope on his brilliant trumpet solo, followed by an urgent Bird-inspired solo by saxophonist Harold Land and a swinging, harmonically intriguing piano solo by Powell. Potent exchanges between the soloists and Roach culminate in another extraordinary solo by the maestro of the kit.
They close their dynamic set with an audacious, radically reconfigured arrangement of the Cole Porter classic "I Get A Kick Out Of You," which jumps seamlessly from a waltz-time intro to bop-fueled uptempo burn while cleanly executing intricate and difficult stop-time passages along the way. Brown unleashes with blistering intensity on this blazing romp, living up in the stratosphere throughout his energized solo. Land, an underrated tenor stylist, follows with some heat of his own which spurs pianist Powell to a heightened solo. Unfortunately, the piece fades before Max could enter the animated conversation with one of his typically melodic and remarkably agile drum solos.
Shortly after this performance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins replaced Harold Land in Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet. They earned accolades for their January 1956 recording, At Basin Street. In June 1956, Brown and Richie Powell were being driven from Philadelphia to Chicago by Powell's wife Nancy for the band's next appearance. While driving on a rainy night on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, west of Bedford, she lost control of the car and it went off the road. All three were killed in the resulting crash. Brown was buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. But his legacy lives on through the trumpeters he influenced, including Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, Arturo Sandoval, Terence Blanchard and Wynton Marsalis, as well as the various trumpet festivals held each year in his honor. (Milkowski)
They opened their set with Brown's brisk hard bop anthem "Joy Spring." Heated exchanges between Brown and tenor saxophonist Harold Land escalate to a visceral level, leading to an exceptional drum solo by Roach. For the second tune, a ballad feature for Brown, Roach introduces the young exciting newcomer to the scene with the following: "Now it's our pleasure to present a young man who has astounded the jazz world with his amazing talent in the last two years. His name is Clifford Brown and here is his amazing version of 'I Don't Stand A Ghost of a Chance with You.'" The mournful minor key ballad, co-penned by crooner Bing Crosby, is an excellent vehicle to showcase Brown's warm, round tones and bold attack. (It was included on the quintet's acclaimed 1954 recording on Emarcy, Brown and Roach, Inc.). His uncanny fluidity and expressive quality in his phrasing reveal a sense of maturity and naked emotional depth that belie his 24 years. And his effortless high-note filigrees on the dramatic crescendo would even make Louis Armstrong sit up and take notice.
Richie Powell's "Jacqui," which appeared on the quintet's Study in Brown, recorded early that year, demonstrates the pianist's potential as a composer. A jaunty swinger with tight harmony lines between trumpet and tenor upfront, it features Brown pushing the envelope on his brilliant trumpet solo, followed by an urgent Bird-inspired solo by saxophonist Harold Land and a swinging, harmonically intriguing piano solo by Powell. Potent exchanges between the soloists and Roach culminate in another extraordinary solo by the maestro of the kit.
They close their dynamic set with an audacious, radically reconfigured arrangement of the Cole Porter classic "I Get A Kick Out Of You," which jumps seamlessly from a waltz-time intro to bop-fueled uptempo burn while cleanly executing intricate and difficult stop-time passages along the way. Brown unleashes with blistering intensity on this blazing romp, living up in the stratosphere throughout his energized solo. Land, an underrated tenor stylist, follows with some heat of his own which spurs pianist Powell to a heightened solo. Unfortunately, the piece fades before Max could enter the animated conversation with one of his typically melodic and remarkably agile drum solos.
Shortly after this performance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins replaced Harold Land in Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet. They earned accolades for their January 1956 recording, At Basin Street. In June 1956, Brown and Richie Powell were being driven from Philadelphia to Chicago by Powell's wife Nancy for the band's next appearance. While driving on a rainy night on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, west of Bedford, she lost control of the car and it went off the road. All three were killed in the resulting crash. Brown was buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. But his legacy lives on through the trumpeters he influenced, including Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, Arturo Sandoval, Terence Blanchard and Wynton Marsalis, as well as the various trumpet festivals held each year in his honor. (Milkowski)
More from Clifford Brown and Max Roach Quintet
Audio:
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Clifford Brown and Max Roach Quintet - I Get a Kick Out of You July 16, 1955
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Music
Revelatory Archive of a Giant of Jazz
Library of Congress Acquires Max Roach’s Papers
January 24, 2014
New York Times
WASHINGTON
— Max Roach, the great drummer and bandleader and paradigm-shifter of
jazz, though he disliked that word, never finished an autobiography.
That’s a shame. He died in 2007
at 83, and his career spans the beginning of bebop, the intersection of
jazz with the civil rights movement, free improvisation, and jazz’s
current state of cross-disciplinary experiments and multimedia
performances. Inasmuch as jazz is about change and resistance, he
embodied those qualities: He fought anything that would contain or
reduce him as an artist and a human being. He would have been well
served by his own narrative, set in one voice.
But
Roach was archivally minded, and, when he died, he left 400 linear feet
of his life and actions to be read: scores and lead sheets,
photographs, contracts, itineraries, correspondence, reel tapes and
cassettes and drafts of an unfinished autobiography, written with the
help of Amiri Baraka. On Monday, the Library of Congress will announce
that it has acquired the archive from Mr. Roach’s family and that it
will be made available to researchers.
“What
I think he would hope people would see,” said the violist Maxine Roach,
his daughter from his first marriage, “is that there was a lot about
his life that was difficult, you know? The struggles. A lot about
economics, and jazz as a word that we didn’t define ourselves.” (Roach
felt that it was a pejorative term; he preferred to call it
African-American music.)
“But
aside from all of that,” she continued, “I hope that people see his
excellence and his mastery of his skill, which helped him rise in this
country that’s been so hard on black men especially, and how he went
through it and what price he paid.”
I
went through some of the archive last week in advance of its public
unveiling — only a little, but enough to know that it contains the
material for understanding how Roach saw himself and how those close to
him saw him. We don’t have all the answers yet, but perhaps we can start
asking the question, what needs to be better understood about Max
Roach?
How
he constructed his style, which brought together the wholeness of the
drum kit rather than any specific part of it, let you hear tuning and
touch, and expanded the notion of the drum solo as a truly narrative art
might be the hardest one to address. (Perhaps the Roach-Baraka
manuscript will help.)
What
might be more easily understood is the nature of his friendships and
correspondences with figures including Maya Angelou and Nina Simone, and
his passions and causes, from the anti-apartheid movement in South
Africa to the obscure Philadelphia pianist Hassan Ibn Ali, with whom he
made a fascinating record for Atlantic in 1964. (There’s an hourlong
tape in the collection of Ali playing solo piano in Roach’s apartment,
some of which I heard, and several letters from him.) There is also a
one-sentence telegram that Roach sent to Gov. Nelson Rockefeller after
the Attica uprising in 1971: “Does your belief that prisoners are not
human justify the loss of 42 lives?”
There
is even some material — a radio jingle, an advertisement mock-up — on
Afro Kola, a short-lived soft drink in which Roach was an investor; his
son, the actor Daryl Roach, who worked for the company in the summer of
1968, recalled that it was quickly bought by Coca-Cola and then
vanished.
Roach
was a natural figurehead: He had an instinct to lead, to politicize, to
ask uncomfortable questions of politicians and club owners and
journalists; to run an independent record label pretty much before
musicians did that kind of thing (Debut, owned and operated with Charles
Mingus from 1952 to 1957); and to collaborate with playwrights and
visual artists.
He
stressed that jazz functioned within a larger picture of
African-American expression and a history of survival. “Beyond his
music,” Daryl Roach said, “I think Dad grew to understand that things
don’t happen in a vacuum — they happen out of a sociopolitical and
economic context.”
He
had his own economic context, of course, and the collection contains
plenty of documents of business transactions related to club dates and
recordings; there are contracts and papers from his time with the
Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet in the mid-1950s, for example. Brown
died in a car accident in 1956; the archives tell you, among other
things, what the ensemble was being paid in the months leading up to the
end, when they might have been the greatest jazz group in America: $500
for two nights at Basin Street, in the East 40s in Manhattan, that
year; $900 for six days at the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village; $203
for Roach, and $150.76 for each sideman, for one night at the Apollo
Theater in Harlem. Such details might seem inconsequential, but they’re
important: They help us reconstruct exactly when and where the group
played and how its work was valued.
There
are fascinating letters from Mingus to Roach after the dissolution of
Debut Records: This was a close and complicated relationship. In one
written in February 1961, Mingus commends Roach for his wariness of the
British-born jazz patroness Nica de Koenigswarter; emotionally and
incredulously, he reports of her stated disdain for Patrice Lumumba, the
leader of the Congolese independence movement, who had been recently
killed.
Another
letter dated three days later angrily asks Roach for $1,230 owed him.
He compares him to Miles Davis, summing them up the same way: “dress
right, pose right, and appear cold.” Above his signature, he wrote
“Hate.” Three months later, Roach interrupted a Davis concert at
Carnegie Hall, a benefit for the African Research Foundation, whose
politics he questioned; he picketed outside and eventually climbed
onstage with a sign reading “Africa for the Africans.” The collection
contains photos of all that, too.
Admiration, invective, scrutiny — the sense you get is of a man determined enough to take it all.
Museums
Library of Congress gets papers of Max Roach, influential jazz drummer
Drummer
Max Roach plays on 52nd Street in New York City. Photo circa 1947.
(William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress Prints & Photographs
Division)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Roach
Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.
A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history.[1][2] He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Eric Dolphy and Booker Little. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.[3]
Roach also led his own groups, and made numerous musical statements relating to the African-American civil rights movement.
In 1942, Roach started to go out in the jazz clubs of the 52nd Street and at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay's Taproom (playing with schoolmate Cecil Payne).[5] His first professional recording took place in December 1943, supporting Coleman Hawkins.[6]
Roach's most significant innovations came in the 1940s, when he and jazz drummer Kenny Clarke devised a new concept of musical time. By playing the beat-by-beat pulse of standard 4/4 time on the "ride" cymbal instead of on the thudding bass drum, Roach and Clarke developed a flexible, flowing rhythmic pattern that allowed soloists to play freely. The new approach also left space for the drummer to insert dramatic accents on the snare drum, "crash" cymbal and other components of the trap set.
By matching his rhythmic attack with a tune's melody, Roach brought a newfound subtlety of expression to his instrument. He often shifted the dynamic emphasis from one part of his drum kit to another within a single phrase, creating a sense of tonal color and rhythmic surprise.[1] The idea was to shatter musical conventions and take full advantage of the drummer's unique position. "In no other society", Roach once observed, "do they have one person play with all four limbs."[7]
While that approach is common today, when Clarke and Roach introduced the new style in the 1940s it was a revolutionary musical advance. "When Max Roach's first records with Charlie Parker were released by Savoy in 1945", jazz historian Burt Korall wrote in the Oxford Companion to Jazz, "drummers experienced awe and puzzlement and even fear." One of those awed drummers, Stan Levey, summed up Roach's importance: "I came to realize that, because of him, drumming no longer was just time, it was music."[1]
He was one of the first drummers (along with Clarke) to play in the bebop style, and performed in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis. Roach played on many of Parker's most important records, including the Savoy November 1945 session, a turning point in recorded jazz. The drummer's early brush work with Powell's trio, especially at fast tempos, has been highly praised.[8]
In 1952, Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus. This label released a record of a May 15, 1953 concert, billed as 'the greatest concert ever', which came to be known as Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus and Roach. Also released on this label was the groundbreaking bass-and-drum free improvisation, Percussion Discussion.[9]
In 1954, Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown formed a quintet that also featured tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell (brother of Bud Powell), and bassist George Morrow, though Land left the following year and Sonny Rollins soon replaced him. The group was a prime example of the hard bop style also played by Art Blakey and Horace Silver. This group was to be short-lived; Brown and Powell were killed in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in June 1956. The first album Roach recorded after their deaths was Max Roach + 4. After Brown and Powell's deaths, Roach continued leading a similarly configured group, with Kenny Dorham (and later the short-lived Booker Little) on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor and pianist Ray Bryant. Roach expanded the standard form of hard-bop using 3/4 waltz rhythms and modality in 1957 with his album Jazz in 3/4 time. During this period, Roach recorded a series of other albums for the EmArcy label featuring the brothers Stanley and Tommy Turrentine.[10]
In 1955, he was the drummer for vocalist Dinah Washington at several live appearances and recordings. Appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival with her in 1958 which was filmed and the 1954 live studio audience recording of Dinah Jams, considered to be one of the best and most overlooked vocal jazz albums of its genre.[11]
In 1966, with his album Drums Unlimited (which includes several tracks that are entirely drum solos) he demonstrated that drums can be a solo instrument able to play theme, variations, rhythmically cohesive phrases. He described his approach to music as "the creation of organized sound."[13]
During the 1970s, Roach formed a musical organization—"M'Boom"—a percussion orchestra. Each member of this unit composed for it and performed on many percussion instruments. Personnel included Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain.[13]
In the early 1980s, Roach began presenting entire concerts solo,
proving that this multi-percussion instrument could fulfill the demands
of solo performance and be entirely satisfying to an audience. He
created memorable compositions in these solo concerts; a solo record was
released by Baystate,
a Japanese label. One of these solo concerts is available on video,
which also includes a filming of a recording date for "Chattahoochee
Red", featuring his working quartet, Odean Pope, Cecil Bridgewater and Calvin Hill.
Roach embarked on a series of duet recordings. Departing from the style of presentation he was best known for, most of the music on these recordings is free improvisation, created with the avant-garde musicians Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, and Abdullah Ibrahim. Roach created duets with other performers: a recorded duet with the oration by Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream"; a duet with video artist Kit Fitzgerald, who improvised video imagery while Roach spontaneously created the music; a duet with his lifelong friend and associate Gillespie; a duet concert recording with Mal Waldron.
Roach wrote music for theater, such as plays written by Sam Shepard, presented at La Mama E.T.C. in New York City.
Roach found new contexts for presentation, creating unique musical ensembles. One of these groups was "The Double Quartet". It featured his regular performing quartet, with personnel as above, except Tyrone Brown replaced Hill; this quartet joined "The Uptown String Quartet", led by his daughter Maxine Roach, featuring Diane Monroe, Lesa Terry and Eileen Folson.
Another ensemble was the "So What Brass Quintet", a group comprising five brass instrumentalists and Roach, no chordal instrument, no bass player. Much of the performance consisted of drums and horn duets. The ensemble consisted of two trumpets, trombone, French horn and tuba. Musicians included Cecil Bridgewater, Frank Gordon, Eddie Henderson, Rod McGaha, Steve Turre, Delfeayo Marsalis, Robert Stewart, Tony Underwood, Marshall Sealy, Mark Taylor and Dennis Jeter.
Roach presented his music with orchestras and gospel choruses. He performed a concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He wrote for and performed with the Walter White gospel choir and the John Motley Singers. Roach performed with dancers: the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Dianne McIntyre Dance Company, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
Roach surprised his fans by performing in a hip hop concert, featuring the artist-rapper Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. He expressed the insight that there was a strong kinship between the outpouring of expression of these young black artists and the art he had pursued all his life.[14]
Not content to expand on the musical territory he had already become known for, Roach spent the decades of the 1980s and 1990s continually finding new forms of musical expression and presentation. Though he ventured into new territory during a lifetime of innovation, he kept his contact with his musical point of origin. He performed with the Beijing Trio, with pianist Jon Jang and erhu player Jeibing Chen. His last recording, Friendship, was with trumpeter Clark Terry, the two long-standing friends in duet and quartet. Roach's last performance was at the 50th anniversary celebration of the original Massey Hall concert, in Toronto, where he performed solo on the hi-hat.[15]
In 1994, Roach also appeared on Rush drummer Neil Peart's Burning For Buddy performing "The Drum Also Waltzes", Part 1 and 2 on Volume 1 of the Volume 2 series during the 1994 All-Star recording sessions.[16]
Max Roach died in the early morning of August 16, 2007, in Manhattan.[17]
He was survived by five children: sons Daryl and Raoul, and daughters
Maxine, Ayo and Dara. Over 1,900 people attended his funeral at
Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York City, on August 24, 2007. Max
Roach was interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York.
In a funeral tribute to Roach, then-Lieutenant Governor of New York David Paterson compared the musician's courage to that of Paul Robeson, Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X, saying that "No one ever wrote a bad thing about Max Roach's music or his aura until 1960, when he and Charlie Mingus protested the practices of the Newport Jazz Festival."[18]
From the 1970s through the mid-1990s Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[20]
In 1986 the London borough of Lambeth named a park in Brixton after him.[24][25] Roach was able to officially open it when he visited the UK that year invited by the Greater London Council,[26] when he performed at a concert in March at the Royal Albert Hall together with Ghanaian master drummer Ghanaba and others.[27][28]
Roach was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.[29]
Schudel, Matt (August 16, 2007). "Jazz Musician Max Roach Dies at 83". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
"Legendary Jazz Drummer Max Roach Dies at 83". Billboard.com. 1924-01-10. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"Modern Drummer’s Readers Poll Archive, 1979–2014". Modern Drummer. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
MADISON magazine: Max Roach and James Woods Archived February 8, 2015 at the Wayback Machine
Ira Gitler (1985). Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s. Oxford University Press. p. 77. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"Max Roach Discography".
The Week, August 31, 2007, p. 32.
Harris, Barry; Weiss, Michael (1994). The Complete Bud Powell on Verve (Liner notes, booklet). Verve. p. 106.
"www.historyexplorer.net "History Explorer > Jazz History Timeline > 1952 - 1961"". Historyexplorer.net. Archived from the original on May 27, 2008. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"www.jazzitude.com "History of Jazz Part 6: Hard Bop"". Jazzitude.com. 2007-04-11. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"Hipjazz.com "Joy Spring"". Hipjazz.com. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
www.inkblotmagazine.com "Duke Ellington Money Jungle Blue Note, Recorded 1962" Archived June 4, 2008 at the Wayback Machine
"Max Roach Biography". www.allaboutjazz.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
"www.billboard.com "Legendary Jazz Drummer Max Roach Dies At 83"". Billboard.com. 1924-01-10. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"Friendship". Allaboutjazz.com. 2003-07-25. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"www.beachwoodreporter.com "The Friday Papers"". Beachwoodreporter.com. 2007-08-27. Archived from the original on February 22, 2011. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
Keepnews, Peter (August 16, 2007). "Max Roach, Master of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
Paterson, David (2008-03-13). "David Paterson Invokes Paul Robeson, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X in Remembrance of Jazz Legend Max Roach (Eulogy transcript)". Democracy Now. Retrieved 2008-03-18.
University of Massachusetts, "Randolph W. Bromery, Champion of Diversity, Du Bois and Jazz as UMass Amherst Chancellor, Dead at 87", February 27, 2013.
Palpini, Kristin (17 August 2007). "Jazz great, UMass prof Max Roach dies". United States: Amherst Bulletin.
Video: medals ceremony From Ina (French).
"University to Award 8 Honorary Degrees at Graduation on May 16". Columbia University Record. April 9, 2001. Retrieved 2007-08-16.
"Brooklyn Borough President". Brooklyn-usa.org. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"Max Roach Park". Allaboutjazz.com. 2006-10-28. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
"London Borough of Lambeth | Max Roach Park". Lambeth.gov.uk. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
Val Wilmer, Letter to The Guardian,
September 8, 2007: "It was on the initiative of then Labour councillor
Sharon Atkin that Lambeth council named 27 sites in the borough in 1986
to acknowledge contributions by people of African descent.... The
opening of the Brixton park coincided with Roach's GLC-sponsored visit
to London, happily enabling him to attend the opening in the company of
Atkin and his old friend, the drummer Ken Gordon, uncle of Moira Stuart."
"Akyaaba Addai-Sebo Interview", Every Generation Media.
Jon Lusk, "Kofi Ghanaba: Drummer who pioneered Afro-jazz", The Independent, March 9, 2009.
Museums
Library of Congress gets papers of Max Roach, influential jazz drummer
Family
members watch a clip of their father, the late jazz drummer Max Roach,
during a panel discussion at the Library of Congress on Jan. 27. From
left are Daryl Roach, Maxine Roach, Raoul Roach, Dara Roach and her twin
sister Ayo Roach. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
When
he was in the eighth grade, Max Roach, who would grow up to be perhaps
the greatest drummer in the history of jazz, got D’s in music.
His
childhood report was on display Monday during a news briefing
announcing the acquisition of Roach’s personal papers by the Library of
Congress. The collection of about 100,000 items includes letters,
business papers, musical scores and manuscripts, photographs, recordings
and videos. And, yes, that telltale report card from Roach’s junior
high school in Brooklyn.
His documents
will join those of other prominent jazz musicians at the library,
including pianist Billy Taylor, bassist-composer Charles Mingus and
saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Gerry Mulligan. The collection shows that
Roach, who died in 2007
at age 83, was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement and had a
cultural impact that went well beyond the world of music.
“It’s
a window into his work and also into the times,” said Larry Appelbaum, a
jazz specialist in the library’s music division. “He was at the nexus
of music, civil rights and the black power movement.”
Roach’s
five children were at the library for Monday’s announcement, and they
were proud of their father’s achievement and the archiving of his
materials. His oldest daughter, Maxine, recalled a home in which
musicians and writers, including Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley
and James Baldwin, were frequent guests.
Drummer
Max Roach plays on 52nd Street in New York City. Photo circa 1947.
(William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress Prints & Photographs
Division)
“He had a real sense of his place in the world,” she said.
The
low grades in music didn’t keep Roach from becoming a prodigy on the
drums. When he was 17, he performed with Duke Ellington and became one
of the founding fathers of bebop, the revolutionary jazz style of the
1940s.
In 1944, Roach appeared on the
first acknowledged bebop record, “Woody ’n’ You,” with Gillespie and
Coleman Hawkins. Roach was a leading figure in changing the way drums
were played in jazz, by shifting the principal beat from the bass drum
to the ting-ting-ting of the “ride” cymbal, giving the music an open,
flowing quality. Long before his death, he was acknowledged as the most
important drummer in jazz.
But Roach never
liked the word “jazz” and considered it demeaning. In a handwritten
essay that is part of the collection, Roach wrote: “ ‘Jazz’ has always
meant the worst of working conditions for an artist.”
He preferred to call it “America’s music” or “music in the tradition of Fletcher Henderson or Duke Ellington.”
“The last definition I heard him use,” Maxine Roach said, “was, ‘Our music was part of the world of sound.’ ”
In
the 1950s, Roach led a quintet with trumpeter Clifford Brown, which was
one of the most influential groups of its time. His collection contains
a handwritten manuscript of Brown’s “Daahoud” as well as a contract for
the quintet to perform for two weeks at Philadelphia’s Blue Note club
in September 1956, for $1,500 a week. The shows never took place
because, in June 1956, Brown was killed in a car accident at age 25.
Roach
described Brown and his feelings after the accident in an unpublished
autobiography that he was writing with the poet and activist Amiri
Baraka, who died Jan. 9. The manuscript is included in the collection, along with a musical play that Roach wrote with Baraka.
Roach
wrote music that became part of the soundtrack of the civil rights
movement, most notably his “We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite,” which
included his wife at the time, Abbey Lincoln, on vocals.
He
wrote another composition for drums underscoring the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which is included in a video in the
collection, and Roach briefly was involved in a business venture called
Afro-Kola — “the taste of freedom” — in the 1970s.
These
materials were gathered in a storage facility in New Jersey when the
Roach family reached an agreement with Library of Congress — “one of the
sanest places I’ve ever been in my life,” Maxine Roach said.
When the movers came to take her father’s things to Washington, it was a bittersweet moment, she said.
“It was like my baby,” she said. “But they treated his stuff like it was gold. I broke down in tears.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Roach
Max Roach
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Max Roach | |
|---|---|
Max Roach, Amsterdam 1979
|
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Maxwell Lemuel Roach |
| Born | January 10, 1924 Newland, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, United States |
| Died | August 16, 2007 (aged 83) Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Genres | Jazz, bebop, hard bop |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, educator, civil rights activist |
| Instruments | Drums, percussion |
| Years active | 1944–2002 |
| Labels | Capitol, Impulse! |
| Associated acts | M'Boom, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Eric Dolphy, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Booker Little, Clifford Brown, Sonny Stitt, Billy Eckstine, Bud Powell, Stan Getz |
A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history.[1][2] He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Eric Dolphy and Booker Little. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.[3]
Roach also led his own groups, and made numerous musical statements relating to the African-American civil rights movement.
Contents
Biography
Early life and career
Roach was born in the Township of Newland, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, which borders the southern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp, to Alphonse and Cressie Roach. Many confuse this with Newland Town in Avery County. Although Roach's birth certificate lists his date of birth as January 10, 1924,[4] Roach has been quoted by Phil Schaap as having stated that his family believed he was born on January 8, 1925. Roach's family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York when he was 4 years old. He grew up in a musical home, his mother being a gospel singer. He started to play bugle in parade orchestras at a young age. At the age of 10, he was already playing drums in some gospel bands. In 1942, as an 18-year-old fresh out of Boys High School, he was called to fill in for Sonny Greer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra when they were performing at the Paramount Theater.
In 1942, Roach started to go out in the jazz clubs of the 52nd Street and at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay's Taproom (playing with schoolmate Cecil Payne).[5] His first professional recording took place in December 1943, supporting Coleman Hawkins.[6]
Roach's most significant innovations came in the 1940s, when he and jazz drummer Kenny Clarke devised a new concept of musical time. By playing the beat-by-beat pulse of standard 4/4 time on the "ride" cymbal instead of on the thudding bass drum, Roach and Clarke developed a flexible, flowing rhythmic pattern that allowed soloists to play freely. The new approach also left space for the drummer to insert dramatic accents on the snare drum, "crash" cymbal and other components of the trap set.
By matching his rhythmic attack with a tune's melody, Roach brought a newfound subtlety of expression to his instrument. He often shifted the dynamic emphasis from one part of his drum kit to another within a single phrase, creating a sense of tonal color and rhythmic surprise.[1] The idea was to shatter musical conventions and take full advantage of the drummer's unique position. "In no other society", Roach once observed, "do they have one person play with all four limbs."[7]
While that approach is common today, when Clarke and Roach introduced the new style in the 1940s it was a revolutionary musical advance. "When Max Roach's first records with Charlie Parker were released by Savoy in 1945", jazz historian Burt Korall wrote in the Oxford Companion to Jazz, "drummers experienced awe and puzzlement and even fear." One of those awed drummers, Stan Levey, summed up Roach's importance: "I came to realize that, because of him, drumming no longer was just time, it was music."[1]
He was one of the first drummers (along with Clarke) to play in the bebop style, and performed in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis. Roach played on many of Parker's most important records, including the Savoy November 1945 session, a turning point in recorded jazz. The drummer's early brush work with Powell's trio, especially at fast tempos, has been highly praised.[8]
Max Roach, Three Deuces, NYC, ca. October 1947. Photography by William P. Gottlieb.
1950s
Roach studied classical percussion at the Manhattan School of Music from 1950 to 1953, working toward a Bachelor of Music degree (the School awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 1990).
In 1952, Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus. This label released a record of a May 15, 1953 concert, billed as 'the greatest concert ever', which came to be known as Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus and Roach. Also released on this label was the groundbreaking bass-and-drum free improvisation, Percussion Discussion.[9]
In 1954, Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown formed a quintet that also featured tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell (brother of Bud Powell), and bassist George Morrow, though Land left the following year and Sonny Rollins soon replaced him. The group was a prime example of the hard bop style also played by Art Blakey and Horace Silver. This group was to be short-lived; Brown and Powell were killed in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in June 1956. The first album Roach recorded after their deaths was Max Roach + 4. After Brown and Powell's deaths, Roach continued leading a similarly configured group, with Kenny Dorham (and later the short-lived Booker Little) on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor and pianist Ray Bryant. Roach expanded the standard form of hard-bop using 3/4 waltz rhythms and modality in 1957 with his album Jazz in 3/4 time. During this period, Roach recorded a series of other albums for the EmArcy label featuring the brothers Stanley and Tommy Turrentine.[10]
In 1955, he was the drummer for vocalist Dinah Washington at several live appearances and recordings. Appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival with her in 1958 which was filmed and the 1954 live studio audience recording of Dinah Jams, considered to be one of the best and most overlooked vocal jazz albums of its genre.[11]
1960s-1970s
In 1960 he composed and recorded the album We Insist!, subtitled Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, with vocals by his then-wife Abbey Lincoln and lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr., after being invited to contribute to commemorations of the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In 1962, he recorded the album Money Jungle, a collaboration with Mingus and Duke Ellington. This is generally regarded as one of the very finest trio albums ever made.[12]
In 1966, with his album Drums Unlimited (which includes several tracks that are entirely drum solos) he demonstrated that drums can be a solo instrument able to play theme, variations, rhythmically cohesive phrases. He described his approach to music as "the creation of organized sound."[13]
During the 1970s, Roach formed a musical organization—"M'Boom"—a percussion orchestra. Each member of this unit composed for it and performed on many percussion instruments. Personnel included Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain.[13]
1980s-1990s
Keystone Korner, San Francisco, 1979
Roach embarked on a series of duet recordings. Departing from the style of presentation he was best known for, most of the music on these recordings is free improvisation, created with the avant-garde musicians Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, and Abdullah Ibrahim. Roach created duets with other performers: a recorded duet with the oration by Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream"; a duet with video artist Kit Fitzgerald, who improvised video imagery while Roach spontaneously created the music; a duet with his lifelong friend and associate Gillespie; a duet concert recording with Mal Waldron.
Roach wrote music for theater, such as plays written by Sam Shepard, presented at La Mama E.T.C. in New York City.
Roach found new contexts for presentation, creating unique musical ensembles. One of these groups was "The Double Quartet". It featured his regular performing quartet, with personnel as above, except Tyrone Brown replaced Hill; this quartet joined "The Uptown String Quartet", led by his daughter Maxine Roach, featuring Diane Monroe, Lesa Terry and Eileen Folson.
Another ensemble was the "So What Brass Quintet", a group comprising five brass instrumentalists and Roach, no chordal instrument, no bass player. Much of the performance consisted of drums and horn duets. The ensemble consisted of two trumpets, trombone, French horn and tuba. Musicians included Cecil Bridgewater, Frank Gordon, Eddie Henderson, Rod McGaha, Steve Turre, Delfeayo Marsalis, Robert Stewart, Tony Underwood, Marshall Sealy, Mark Taylor and Dennis Jeter.
Roach presented his music with orchestras and gospel choruses. He performed a concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He wrote for and performed with the Walter White gospel choir and the John Motley Singers. Roach performed with dancers: the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Dianne McIntyre Dance Company, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
Roach surprised his fans by performing in a hip hop concert, featuring the artist-rapper Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. He expressed the insight that there was a strong kinship between the outpouring of expression of these young black artists and the art he had pursued all his life.[14]
Not content to expand on the musical territory he had already become known for, Roach spent the decades of the 1980s and 1990s continually finding new forms of musical expression and presentation. Though he ventured into new territory during a lifetime of innovation, he kept his contact with his musical point of origin. He performed with the Beijing Trio, with pianist Jon Jang and erhu player Jeibing Chen. His last recording, Friendship, was with trumpeter Clark Terry, the two long-standing friends in duet and quartet. Roach's last performance was at the 50th anniversary celebration of the original Massey Hall concert, in Toronto, where he performed solo on the hi-hat.[15]
In 1994, Roach also appeared on Rush drummer Neil Peart's Burning For Buddy performing "The Drum Also Waltzes", Part 1 and 2 on Volume 1 of the Volume 2 series during the 1994 All-Star recording sessions.[16]
Death
The grave of Max Roach
In a funeral tribute to Roach, then-Lieutenant Governor of New York David Paterson compared the musician's courage to that of Paul Robeson, Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X, saying that "No one ever wrote a bad thing about Max Roach's music or his aura until 1960, when he and Charlie Mingus protested the practices of the Newport Jazz Festival."[18]
Personal life
Two children, son Daryl Keith Roach and daughter Maxine Roach, were born from Roach's first marriage with Mildred Roach in 1949. In 1958 he met singer Barbara Jai (Johnson) and fathered another son, Raoul Jordu. He continued to play as a freelance while studying composition at the Manhattan School of Music. He graduated in 1952. During the period 1961–1970, Roach was married to the singer Abbey Lincoln, who had performed on several of Roach's albums. In 1971, twin daughters, Ayodele Nieyela and Dara Rashida, were born to Roach and his third wife, Janus Adams Roach. He had four grandchildren: Kyle Maxwell Roach, Kadar Elijah Roach, Maxe Samiko Hinds, and Skye Sophia Sheffield. Long involved in jazz education, in 1972 he was recruited to the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst by Chancellor Randolph Bromery.[19] In the early 2000s, Roach became less active from the onset of hydrocephalus-related complications.
From the 1970s through the mid-1990s Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[20]
Honors
Roach was given a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1988, cited as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France (1989),[21] twice awarded the French Grand Prix du Disque, elected to the International Percussive Art Society's Hall of Fame and the Downbeat Magazine Hall of Fame, awarded Harvard Jazz Master, celebrated by Aaron Davis Hall, given eight honorary doctorate degrees, including degrees awarded by Medgar Evers College, CUNY, the University of Bologna, Italy and Columbia University.[22] While spending the later years of his life at the Mill Basin Sunrise assisted living home, in Brooklyn, Max was honored with a proclamation honoring his musical achievements by Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz.[23]
In 1986 the London borough of Lambeth named a park in Brixton after him.[24][25] Roach was able to officially open it when he visited the UK that year invited by the Greater London Council,[26] when he performed at a concert in March at the Royal Albert Hall together with Ghanaian master drummer Ghanaba and others.[27][28]
Roach was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.[29]
Discography
As leader |
- 1953 : The Max Roach Quartet featuring Hank Mobley (Debut)
- 1956 : Max Roach + 4 (EmArcy)
- 1957 : Jazz in ¾ Time (EmArcy)
- 1957 : The Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker (EmArcy)
- 1958 : MAX (Argo)
- 1958 : Max Roach + 4 on the Chicago Scene (Mercury)
- 1958 : Max Roach/Art Blakey (with Art Blakey)
- 1958 : Max Roach + 4 at Newport (EmArcy)
- 1958 : Max Roach with the Boston Percussion Ensemble (EmArcy)
- 1958 : Deeds, Not Words (Riverside) - also released as Conversation
- 1958 : Award-Winning Drummer (Time) - also released as Max Roach
- 1958 : Max Roach/Bud Shank - Sessions – with Bud Shank
- 1958 : The Defiant Ones - with Booker Little
- 1959 : The Many Sides of Max (Mercury)
- 1959 : Rich Versus Roach (Mercury) - with Buddy Rich
- 1959 : Quiet as It's Kept (Mercury)
- 1959 : Moon Faced and Starry Eyed (Mercury) - with Abbey Lincoln
- 1959 : Max Roach (Time) – with Booker Little
- 1960 : Long as You're Living (Enja) - released 1984
- 1960 : Parisian Sketches (Mercury)
- 1960 : We Insist! (Candid)
- 1961 : Percussion Bitter Sweet (Impulse!) - with Mal Waldron
- 1962 : It's Time (Impulse!) - with Mal Waldron
- 1962 : Speak, Brother, Speak! (Fantasy)
- 1964 : The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan (Atlantic) - with Hasaan Ibn Ali
- 1966 : Drums Unlimited (Atlantic)
- 1968 : Members, Don't Git Weary (Atlantic)
- 1971 : Lift Every Voice and Sing (Atlantic) - with the J.C. White Singers
- 1976 : Force: Sweet Mao-Suid Afrika '76 (duo with Archie Shepp)
- 1976 : Nommo (Victor)
- 1977 : Max Roach Quartet Live in Tokyo (Denon)
- 1977 : The Loadstar (Horo)
- 1977 : Max Roach Quartet Live In Amsterdam - It's Time (Baystate)
- 1977 : Solos (Baystate)
- 1977 : Streams of Consciousness (Baystate) - duo with Dollar Brand
- 1978 : Confirmation (Fluid Records)
- 1978 : Birth and Rebirth - duo with Anthony Braxton (Black Saint)
- 1979 : The Long March - duo with Archie Shepp (Hathut)
- 1979 : Historic Concerts - duo with Cecil Taylor (Black Saint)
- 1979 : One in Two - Two in One - duo with Anthony Braxton (Hathut)
- 1979 : Pictures in a Frame (Soul Note)
- 1980 : Chattahoochee Red (Columbia)
- 1982 : Swish - duo with Connie Crothers (New Artists)
- 1982 : In the Light (Soul Note)
- 1983 : Live at Vielharmonie (Soul Note)
- 1984 : Scott Free (Soul Note)
- 1984 : It's Christmas Again (Soul Note)
- 1984 : Survivors (Soul Note)
- 1985 : Easy Winners (Soul Note)
- 1986 : Bright Moments (Soul Note)
- 1989 : Max + Dizzy: Paris 1989 - duo with Dizzy Gillespie (A&M)
- 1989 : Homage to Charlie Parker (A&M)
- 1991 : To the Max! (Enja)
- 1995 : Max Roach With The New Orchestra Of Boston And The So What Brass Quintet (Blue Note)
- 1999 : Beijing Trio (Asian Improv)
- 2002 : Friendship - (with Clark Terry) (Columbia)
As co-leader
With Clifford Brown
|
As sideman |
With Chet Baker
|
References
Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners' expectations, died early yesterday in Manhattan. He was 83.
- "2009 Inductees". North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. Retrieved September 10, 2012.
