"I think of Sid Catlett as being the last of the swing drummers. Max Roach, to me, is the first bebop drummer. Kenny Clarke was the bridge." --Barney Kessel
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". . . In this modern jazz, they heard something rebel and nameless that spoke for them, and their lives knew a gospel for the first time. It was more than a music; it became an attitude toward life, a way of walking, a language and a costume; and these introverted kids... now felt somewhere at last." -John Clellon Holmes
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Max Roach Quotes
“he American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra.” -Max Roach
"Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.” -Max Roach
“I always resented the role of a drummer as nothing more than a subservient figure.” -Max Roach
"Art is a powerful weapon that society, or the powers that be, use to control or direct the way people think. Culture is used to perpetuate the status quo of a society. Even though I'm involved in music for the sake of entertainment, I always hope to offer some kind of enlightenment." -Max Roach
"A lot of things we do never have a chance to come out. When the moment comes where the band finally turns around and says, "Okay, you got it," most of the time you overdo it." -Max Roach
"One thing I gloried in, working with people like Charlie Parker, was the built-in rhythm section. You didn't need a drummer or a bass player to know where the time was." -Max Roach
"I've been through the whole mill. I've done everything everybody else did. I don't know if it was my parents' prayers or what, but I gave up everything a long time ago. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I'm trying to take care of myself in my old age." -Max Roach
"I used to take musical instruments home from elementary school. There were some music teachers there - we all learned instruments. A lot of us got started in public schools. Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, for example. But now there are no more music teachers in public elementary schools. It's like (Senator) Moynihan said, 'benign neglect.' Just let it rot and fester." -Max Roach
[Rap] "what took place after they removed the cultural enrichment programs from all the Bed-Stuys of the country." -Max Roach
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Max Roach first played drums at the age of ten in gospel bands; this early involvement with black religious music had a significant influence on his musical develpment, though he also studied formally at the Manhattan School of Music.
In 1942 he became associated with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others and, as the house drummer at Monroe's Uptown House, participated in the jam sessions there and at Minton's Playhouse that led to the development of the bop style. From the 1940s Roach played and recorded frequently with bop groups in New York, notably as a member of quintets led by Gillespie (1944), Charlie Parker (intermittently 1945-53), and Bud Powell.
During the same period, however, he also performed with musicians as dissimilar as Louis Jordan, Henry "Red" Allen, and Coleman Hawkins (with whom he made his first recording in in 1943--Rainbow Mist, Delmark), and took part in sessions with Miles Davis (1948-50) which were later issued as Birth of the Cool.
From 1954 to 1956, with Clifford Brown, Roach led an important quintet; this group produced a number of seminal recordings, including Study In Brown and At Basin Street, that epitomized the style of jazz known as hard bop.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s Roach made a series of recordings that prefigured developments associated with free jazz. In the 1960s Roach became an articulate spokesman and activist in the black-American cultural arts movement. Roach has continued to work regularly with his own groups.
Roach holds a significant position in the history of jazz. His imaginative performances as a soloist and his mature technique of improvisation, which is based on the use of deft interaction of pitch and timbral variety, subtleties of silence and sound, rhythmic and metrical contrast, and a refreshingly flexible approach to the fixed pulse, establish him as one of the most outstanding and innovative drummers of his time. "Drum Conversation" [mp3] from 1953. --OLLY WILSON, from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
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Maxwell Lemuel 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 one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians, including Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown.
Roach also led his own groups, and made numerous musical statements relating to the civil rights movement of African-Americans.
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, Roach has been quoted by Phil Schaap as having stated that his family believed he was born on January 8, 1924. 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. As an eighteen year-old fresh out of Boys' High School, Brooklyn, NY, (1942) he was called to fill in for Sonny Greer, and play with the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing at the NY Paramount Theatre.
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).
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. 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."
Virtually every jazz drummer plays in that manner today, but when Clarke and Mr. 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 Mr. Roach's importance: "I came to realize that, because of him, drumming no longer was just time, it was music."
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, a turning point in recorded jazz.
1950s
Roach studied classical percussion at Manhattan School of Music from 1950-53, working toward a Bachelor of Music degree (the School was to award him an Honorary Doctorate in 1990).
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 . 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.
In 1955, he also was the drummer in a number of appearances and recordings with vocalist Dinah Washington. Appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival with her in 1958 which was filmed and the 1955 live studio audience recording of Dinah Jams. Mark Jams is considered to be one of the best and most overlooked vocal jazz albums of its genre.
1960s-1970s
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 1970s, 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.
1980s-1990s
In the early 1980s, 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 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, 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 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.
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 trumpet master Clark Terry, the two long-standing friends in duet and quartet. His last performance was at the 50th anniversary celebration of the original Massey Hall concert, in Toronto, where he performed solo on the hi-hat.
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.
Death
The grave of Max Roach
Max Roach passed away in the early morning on August 16, 2007 in Manhattan. He was survived by five children: sons Daryl and Raoul, and daughters Maxine, Ayo and Dara. Over 1900 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, NY.
In a funeral tribute to the 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."
Personal life
Two children, son Daryl Keith and daughter Maxine, were born from his first marriage with Mildred Roach. In 1956 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 Nieyela and Dara Rashida, were later born to Roach and his third wife, Janus Adams Roach. He has three grandchildren, Kyle Maxwell Roach, Kadar Elijah Roach and Maxe Samiko Hinds. 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 from the onset of hydrocephalus-related complications.
From the 1970s through the mid-1990s Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Honors
He was given a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1988, 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, 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. 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.
In 1986 the London borough of Lambeth named a park in Brixton after him. - Roach was able to officially open it when he visited the UK that year.
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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.
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.
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.”
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 baked 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 been 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. We are going to go to break. When we come back, we’ll hear Bill Cosby remembering Max Roach.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Max Roach died last week at the age of eighty-three. He died of Alzheimer’s. Bill Cosby also paid tribute to Max Roach at his funeral at Riverside Church. He said, “Why I became a comedian is because of Max Roach. I wanted to be a drummer.” Cosby went on to recall how he spent $75 on a drum set and then tried to imitate his favorite jazz drummers.
BILL COSBY: Art Blakey came to town. And Art Blakey sat down, and I watched. Doo-da-doo be-shok! And I saw him. He hit it twice. Shzook! And he hit it so fast that it came out shzok! I said, “Ah-ha! I got you now, Art Blakey!” And I went home, and I looked at the drum and the sticks, and I said, da-da da-da shzok!, and it came out shzok! on the snare. Got you! Ha ha!
Then bought a LP. Max Roach and sp-da-da-da da da-ba-ba-ba-baa! Da-da-da-da da da-da-da-da daa! Fa-da-da-da-da da-da—and I kept—I kept falling behind. It was ba-da-da-baa tsooee—and then the left hand—the left hand said, “Look, you play, and because”—and the right hand said, “Well, if you play, then I know—I lose,” and said, “Well, just fill boom!, hit the base drum and then try to catch up and, oh, just do something.” And they kept playing—de-ba-da-ba-da da-dwi-bi-di-da, oh-ji-ba-da-bla oollllll blllllll dllllll blllllll bop!
Max Roach came to town. He came to the Showboat. And I sat there. Max came out, had a blue blazer on with some kind of crest. I was with my boys from the projects. And one of my boys said, “Max got a boat.” And the musicians did—da-bleen-din-dol-ding-dol-din-blorp-worp, ha-da-ha-da. And Max sat down, and his face never changed. He took both sticks, and he said, bash, bash, fa-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-daa, da-da-da-daa-da-da-da-da-daa, vi-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-daa, va-di-di-di-di—and I went home. It was no tricks. Nothing I could take.
When I finally met him in person to the point where Max Roach knew who I was, and he came over to me, he said, “Bill Cosby!” I said, “Let me tell you something. You owe me $75.”
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Cosby at the funeral of Max Roach. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report.
Our guests live in studio, Max Roach’s close friends, Amiri Baraka, who wrote Max Roach’s biography, though it hasn’t been published—we’ll talk about that—and the jazz expert Phil Schaap, very close to Max Roach. Can you talk about how Max Roach changed the role of the drummer, Phil?
PHIL SCHAAP: Well, he’s a continuation of the drummer becoming a leader and certainly taking a solo. That transition is not that easy to perceive now after seventy years, but in the ‘30s most drummers didn’t solo, and they were part of a team, three or four as one, as Monk would put it, the rhythm section. And Max Roach is someone who put the drums down front and center.
But it’s beyond that. It’s also the completeness of his music, the drums as a melodic instrument, the sound—you know, Bill Cosby was talking about sounds, but also pitches. I mean, the idea that the drums themselves could be the entire orchestra, I mean, this is pretty advanced thinking. And Max Roach, of course, had—boom—an all-percussion ensemble that played tunes, many which, of course, Max Roach wrote, which, of course, is [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: And playing different tunes with both hands and both feet.
PHIL SCHAAP: All four limbs for all four players. And one of the things about that band was that Max—and this was really just to show the talents of the band—he had them keep switching, so you would play a different instrument on every number. So it was a very difficult band to play in, I imagine, and a very astounding band to hear. It was actually shocking.
AMY GOODMAN: How did he change jazz?
PHIL SCHAAP: Well, he’s, first of all, the drummer for bebop. And bebop is as much a change in jazz as one can imagine, other than its birth through swing. It’s the change of the flow of the rhythm. He’s the drummer who changed that flow. He was the drummer on Charlie Parker’s first records, Miles Davis’s first records, Stan Getz’s first records, Bud Powell’s first records, J.J. Johnson’s first records. He’s the drummer on The Birth of the Cool. He’s the drummer on the first bebop records, period.
And bebop is an important thing. It’s sort of like a language, a root language like Latin. People actually don’t play bebop. We don’t actually speak Latin. What we speak are the languages that are descendent. One of the key ones would be hard bop. Max Roach is as much an innovator to that breakthrough as anybody we could name. And he sort of retooled bebop, making it funkier, and he made it more blues-rooted therefore, forceful, and, most astoundingly, prettier.
AMY GOODMAN: Amiri Baraka, the role of the drum, the significance of the talking drum?
AMIRI BARAKA: Well, see, one thing that Max—and Max was a great historian, too. I mean, when I used to go to his house two, three times a week or a year or so, year and a half, to write his biography, one thing he told me, he said that the whole drum set is an industrial machine. It’s not like hand drums. And so that—and it actually reflects the one-man bands that came off the plantation, where they would put the cymbals and everything on their back and go down and try to make a living playing all those things at once, horns and—you know, so that this industrial instrument—there’s even a movie that was made, a film, made by—jeez, I taught with this guy at Yale—but, anyway, a film where he takes Tony Williams to Africa and sets up the instrument on the shore and plays. And a couple minutes later, from the interior, they answer him—ba-da ba-da—with the hand drum. And they say, “We hear you all.” In other words, they thought it was a lot of people. They say, “We hear you all, but we do not understand what you’re saying,” to show you the difference between, you know, the Afro-American and the Africans, say, “We do not understand what you’re saying.”
But Max had that kind of—that genealogy in what he did. He knew hand drum, you know, and he could sort of reflect that genealogy, I mean, from old-time through swing. You know, his mentor, I guess, was Jo Jones, but also it was a Wilson Driver, who had something to do with that. So he reflected an old tradition, you know.
I did a gig with him and Archie Shepp in Philadelphia one time, and I came there with all my poetry, and he says to me, “No, no, you can’t read anything. You’ve got to do what we do. We’re going to improvise. You have to improvise.” I said, “Oh, my god! This is going to be wild.”
AMY GOODMAN: Sonia Sanchez said the same thing. She also spoke at the funeral, the leading figure in the Black Arts Movement paying tribute to Max Roach on Friday.
SONIA SANCHEZ: I have seen this Maxwell man, this Maxwell Roach man. From the middle of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century, I have seen him at work moving in the bloodstream of his people. I have seen him look up when someone inferred that this long voyage of artistry had been futile and had lacked dignity. I have seen his tongue track down these disbelievers. I have seen his mouth silence these diplomats of the dead and anoint our hands with eyes.
He has known for a long time that we stand on an earth collapsing in a pallet of pain, that we stand in the tracks of conquistadores and imperialists, homophobes and racists, terrorists and pornographers, sexists and voyeurs, countries and people who want to own everything that exists, who try to extract our rhythms and put them in the pillbox to be taken once a day, earth studiers, doomsayers, invasive actors, offense to their own blood.
And this Maxwell Roach continued to hold up the air. No mysteries surrounded him. The cities knew him, felt his touch, saw his solitary eye demanding dignity and change, saw his sparkling hand scoop thunder from his pores. And his drums ask, “Who will hold them when they are weary?” And his drums ask, “Who will carry them and remember that they have hearts?”
And you came towards us, Max, hands outstretched, suffering our ignorance and indecision. You came warrior-clear, your intellect kissing our spines, and you brought us life. You came feet, hands, head, heart, strumming sweet life-life-life-life-life-ooooh-life-life-life-life-life, and we were reborn in your spreading sails of flesh.
Brother Max, baba-baba-baba-baba-baba, Brother Max, baba-baba-baba man, whenever I hear a drum exploding in a room, I remember the first time I saw you on stage, your drum crashing against the stars. You let me ride on your riff. You held me tight against this hard earth, and I knew you, man. I knew you would hold us all tight against this hard earth, make our living and dying matter. And you pulled our bodies homeward until we shouted, “Amen! Awomen! Amen-men-men-men! Awomen! Awomen! Awomen! Awomen! Awomen!”
And you played, and your hands kept reaching for God. And you played. And your hands kept reaching for God. And you played, “I want to go home, gots to get home, gots to walk on the water, gots to ride the air, gots to ride the lightning across the sky, gots to cross myself one day and wake up home.” And you did, my dear brother. We heard the prayer in your hands. And you crossed yourself last Thursday morning and woke up home. Indicia. Indicia-a-a. Indi-indicia-a-a, you men [phon.], close with the ancestor.
AMY GOODMAN: Poet Sonia Sanchez at the funeral of Max Roach. As we wrap up, Amiri Baraka, you wrote Max Roach’s biography with him. Where is it?
AMIRI BARAKA: Well, my copy is in a box. You know, all the—actually, I did that twice. Max was not satisfied with the first writing of it. He said to me—you know, when I showed it to him, he read it, and he asked me—he says, “Amiri, is there another word for M.F.?” And I said, “Well, 
I don’t know, Max. I have to go think about it, you know.”
But what it was really is that he, seeing himself as he was as a young man, he wasn’t really happy with that. I mean, you know, everybody wants to mature. But he had told me out of his mouth his life, and I had dutifully written it down, but he didn’t want to be that anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I hope to see it published someday.
AMIRI BARAKA: I hope so.
AMY GOODMAN: Amiri Baraka and Phil Schaap, I want to thank you so much for being with us, and being it’s Lester Young’s birthday, I’m glad, because it meant you, Phil, were free from WKCR, but people can listen to your program every morning at wkcr.org.
Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2007/8/27/max_roach_1924_2007_thousands_pay
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Jazz Musician Max Roach Dies at 83
By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 16, 2007; 3:26 PM
Max Roach, the dazzling drummer who helped create the rhythmic language of modern jazz while expanding the expressive possibilities of the drums, died Aug. 15 in New York. He was 83 and had been ill for several years.
Mr. Roach was a founding architect of bebop, the high-speed, harmonically advanced music of the 1940s that helped elevate jazz from dance-hall entertainment to concert-stage art. In dozens of landmark recordings with such musical giants as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk -- including a 1953 performance that has entered legend as "the greatest jazz concert ever" -- he pioneered a new approach to jazz drumming that remains the standard to this day.
An influential force in music for 60 years, Mr. Roach expanded the borders of improvised music by incorporating elements of other artistic traditions, including African and Asian music, dance, poetry and hip-hop. He led performances with as many as 100 percussion instruments on stage, but he also played minimalist solos using only the high-hat, a pair of cymbals mounted on a metal stand and worked with a pedal.
"Nobody else ever had the nerve to come out on stage with a cymbal under his arm and say, 'This is art,' " jazz critic Gary Giddins told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. "Max Roach's whole bearing says he is a musician to be treated like any great virtuoso. No drummer before him had ever achieved that."
He later became a strong voice for racial equality through his compositions and his recordings with singer Abbey Lincoln, to whom he was married for several years.In 1988, he was among the first jazz musicians to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, or so-called "genius grant."
Mr. Roach's most significant innovations came in the 1940s, when he and another 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, Mr. 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.
Virtually every jazz drummer plays in that manner today, but when Clarke and Mr. 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 Mr. Roach's importance: "I came to realize that, because of him, drumming no longer was just time, it was music."
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was born Jan. 10, 1924, in Newland, N.C., and moved with his family to Brooklyn, N.Y., when he was 4. He sang in a children's church choir, played in a drum-and-bugle corps and had his first drum set at 12.
He played briefly with Duke Ellington's orchestra when he was 16 and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, but his real education came in the all-night clubs of Harlem.
"When I was young in New York, we worked seven days a week, around the clock," he said in a 1977 interview. "We'd play downtown from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. Then we'd pack our gear and go uptown to an after-hours club from 4 a.m. until 9 a.m. During the day there were house-rent parties where you could see [pianist] Art Tatum and [drummer] Sid Catlett. That was our teaching. It was the most marvelous way to learn."
In 1944, Mr. Roach played drums with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins on Gillespie's "Woody 'n' You," widely acknowledged to be the first true bebop record. Working with alto saxophonist Parker a year later, Mr. Roach performed on such benchmark bebop tunes as "Billie's Bounce," "Koko" and "Now's the Time."
He worked off and on with Parker until 1953 and for a time acquired Parker's taste for narcotics. Mr. Roach overcame his addiction and in the 1950s helped trumpeter Miles Davis kick his own heroin habit.
In 1949, Mr. Roach appeared on pianist Bud Powell's groundbreaking "Tempus Fugit" and "Un Poco Loco," then turned up on the influential 1949-50 sessions led by Davis and Gerry Mulligan called "Birth of the Cool." In 1951, he was the drummer on "Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 2," an important work by pianist and composer Thelonious Monk.
Taken together, these recordings defined the vibrant language of bebop, which remains the predominant form of modern jazz. In the view of many fans, bebop reached its zenith on May 15, 1953, when Mr. Roach joined Parker, Gillespie, Powell and bassist Charles Mingus in Toronto for "the greatest jazz concert ever." It was captured on the album "Live at Massey Hall," released on the Debut record label, founded by Mingus and Mr. Roach. (The two later feuded over money after the company folded.)
In California in 1954, Mr. Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown formed a widely admired quintet that came to include saxophonist Sonny Rollins. They created a sensation with their earthy but elegant music, which became the foundation of the jazz style known as hard bop.
When Brown was killed in a car accident in 1956 at the age of 25, a distraught Mr. Roach fell into an alcoholic depression. He recovered through hard work, exploring new projects with Rollins, Monk and trumpeter Kenny Dorham. He also formed a musical and personal alliance with Lincoln, a singer and actress who abandoned her early sex-kitten image for a stance of black pride.
Their 1960 recording, "We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite," with music by Mr. Roach and lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr., featured Lincoln's sometimes anguished vocals and became an important musical milepost in the civil rights movement. Lincoln and Mr. Roach, who were married from 1962 to 1970, recorded two other albums and continued to live in the same Manhattan apartment building for years.
Beginning in 1972, Mr. Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts and lectured on music throughout the country. He worked with avant-garde musicians Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton and Archie Shepp; formed a 10-member drum ensemble, M'Boom Re: Percussion'; and appeared with gospel choirs, symphony orchestras, brass quintets and Japanese drummers. He also composed music for dance pieces by Alvin Ailey and for plays by Sam Shepard.
In the 1980s and '90s, Mr. Roach often performed with a string quartet that included his daughter Maxine Roach on viola. He played drums in spoken-word concerts with writers Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka and sometimes accompanied hip-hop artists.
When asked why he would perform with rappers, Mr. Roach replied, "The world of organized sound is a boundless palette." (He drew the line at jazz fusion, however, because of his disdain for electronic music.)
The trim, dapper Mr. Roach, typically attired in a suit and tie, was a man of dignity who demanded respect for his art. Late in his career, he rejected the term "jazz," saying it relegated his music to second-rate venues and low pay.
"For some time now," critic Giddins wrote in 1985, "it has been insufficient to say of Max Roach that he is the most widely admired drummer since the advent of modern jazz. He's become something more -- a tough-minded monitor of the music's best instincts."
He made his final recording, with trumpeter Clark Terry, in 2002.
He was married and divorced three times -- Lincoln was his second wife -- and had relationships with several other women.
Mr. Roach's survivors include his daughter Maxine and a son, actor Daryl Roach, from his first marriage, to Mildred Roach; a son, Raoul Roach, from another relationship; and twin daughters, Ayodele Roach and Dara Roach, from his third marriage, to Janus Adams Roac
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Legendary Jazz Drummer Max Roach Dies At 83
August 16, 2007, 2:10 PM ET
Cortney Harding, N.Y.
Acclaimed be-bop drummer and composer Max Roach died in his sleep early this morning (Aug. 16) at age 83 in New York, according to a spokesperson from Blue Note Records. The cause of death was not announced.
Considered one of the most influential drummers in jazz and beyond, Roach was born Jan. 10, 1924, in Newland, N.C., and moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., as a child. Raised in a musical family, he started drumming with gospel bands at age 10 and played with Duke Ellington at 16.
"Max was one of the founders and original members of the A-Team of Bebop," said longtime friend and collaborator Quincy Jones, who first recorded with Roach in the 50s. "He was also one of the first American musicians to understand the complex polyrhythms of Africa. Outside of losing a giant and an innovator, I've lost a great, great friend. Thank God he left a piece of his soul on his recordings so that we'll always have a part of him with us."
Over the course of his seven decade career, Roach recorded more than 70 albums, working with luminaries like Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins. In 1952, he co-founded Debut Records with Mingus and released the groundbreaking live album "Jazz at Massey Hall," featuring Parker, Gillespie, Bud Powell and Mingus.
He went on to record albums with Dinah Washington and Ellington, and in 1966 released a solo album, "Drums Unlimited." The record, containing several tracks comprised solely of drum solos, caused a stir at the time and remains one of the few records of its sort to date.
A longtime civil rights advocate, Roach in 1960 released a seven-section suite themed around slavery and racism, "We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite," that featured vocalist Abbey Lincoln, who he married two years later.
In later years, Roach performed solo show and recorded duets with such outside the mainstream musicians like Cecil Taylor, Abdullah Ibrahim and Connie Crothers. He also wrote for the theater and performed with hip-hop act Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers.
In addition to eight honorary doctorate degrees, Roach also served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts. He is survived by three daughters and two sons.
Source: http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003627038
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Max Roach
Why he was jazz's greatest drummer.
By Fred Kaplan
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.
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.
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Discography
Albums with Roach as leader and sideman are both listed here:
1944 : Rainbow Mist (with Coleman Hawkins)
1944 : Coleman Hawkins and His All Stars (with Coleman Hawkins)
1945 : Town Hall, New York, June 22, 1945 (with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker)
1945 - 1948: The Complete Savoy Studio Recordings (with Charlie Parker)
1946 : Mad Be Bop (with J.J. Johnson)
1946 : Opus BeBop (with Stan Getz)
1946 : Savoy Jam Party (Don Byas Quartet)
1946 : The Hawk Flies (with Coleman Hawkins)
1947 : The Bud Powell Trip (with Bud Powell)
1947 : Lullaby in Rhythm (with Charlie Parker)
1947 : Charlie Parker on Dial (with Charlie Parker)
1948 : The Band that Never Was (with Charlie Parker)
1948 : Bird on 52nd Street (with Charlie Parker)
1948 : Bird at the Roost (with Charlie Parker)
1949 : Birth of the Cool (with Miles Davis)
1949 - 1953: Charlie Parker – Complete Sessions on Verve (with Charlie Parker)
1949 : Charlie Parker in France (with Charlie Parker)
1949 : Genesis (with Sonny Stitt)
1949 : The Stars of Modern Jazz at Carnegie Hall
1950 : The McGhee-Navarro Sextet (with Howard McGhee)
1951 : The Amazing Bud Powell (with Bud Powell)
1951 : The George Wallington Trip and Septet (with George Wallington)
1951 : Conception (with Miles Davis)
1952 : New Faces, New Sounds (with Gil Melle)
1952 : The Complete Genius (with Thelonious Monk)
1952 : Live at Rockland Palace (with Charlie Parker)
1953 : Jazz at Massey Hall (with Charlie Parker)
1953 : Mambo Jazz (with Joe Holiday)
1953 : Yardbird: DC-53 (with Charlie Parker)
1953 : Max Roach Quartet (Fantasy)
1953 : Max Roach and his Sextet (Debut)
1953 : Max Roach Quartet featuring Hank Mobley (Debut)
1953 : Jazz at Massey Hall (aka. The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever) (with Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell and Dizzy Gillespie)
1953 : Miles Ahead (with Miles Davis)
1953 : Cohn's Tones (with Al Cohn)
1953 : Diz and Getz (with Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz)
1954 : Brown And Roach Incorporated
1954 : Clifford Brown and Max Roach
1954 : Study in Brown (with Clifford Brown)
1954 : More Study in Brown (with Clifford Brown)
1954 : Dinah Jams Featuring Dinah Washington
1955 : Clifford Brown with Strings (with Clifford Brown)
1955 : Relaxed Piano Moods (with Hazel Scott)
1955 : Introducing Jimmy Cleveland And His All Stars (EmArcy)
1955 : New Piano Expressions (with John Dennis)
1955 : Herbie Nichols Trio (with Herbie Nichols)
1955 : Worktime! (with Sonny Rollins)
1955 : The Charles Mingus Quartet plus Max Roach (with Charles Mingus)
1956 : Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street
1956 : Sonny Rollins Plus Four (with Sonny Rollins)
1956 : Introducing Johnny Griffin (with Johnny Griffin)
1956 : Max Roach + 4
1956 : The Magnificent Thad Jones (with Thad Jones)
1956 : Brilliant Corners (with Thelonious Monk)
1956 : Tour de Force (with Sonny Rollins)
1956 : The Music of George Gershwin: I Sing of Thee (with Joe Wilder)
1956 : Rollins Plays For Bird (Sonny Rollins Quintet)
1956 : Saxophone Colossus (with Sonny Rollins)
1957 : Jazz in 3/4 time
1957 : First Place (with J.J. Johnson)
1957 : With Strings (with Clifford Brown)
1957 : Sonny Clark Trio
1957 : Jazz Contrasts (with Kenny Dorham
1958 : Deeds, Not Words (with all new cast Ray Draper, Booker Little, George Coleman)
1958 : Max Roach/Art Blakey (with Art Blakey)
1958 : Freedom Suite (with Sonny Rollins)
1958 : Shadow Waltz (with Sonny Rollins)
1958 : Max Roach Plus Four on the Chicago Scene (Mercury)
1958 : Max Roach Plus Four at Newport (Mercury)
1958 : Max Roach with the Boston Percussion Ensemble (EmArcy)
1958 : Deeds not Words (aka Conversation) (Riverside)
1958 : Max Roac/Bud Shank - Sessions (with Bud Shank)
1958 : The Defiant Ones (with Booker Little)
1958 : Award-Winning Drummer (Time T)
1959 : A Little Sweet (aka. The Many Sides of Max )(Mercury)
1959 : Rich Versus Roach (with Buddy Rich)
1959 : Quiet as it’s Kept (Mercury)
1959 : Moon-Faced and Starry-Eyed (Mercury)
1960 : Tommy Turrentine with Stanley Turrentine
1960 : Stan ‘The Man’ Turrentine
1960 : Again! (Affinity)
1960 : Parisian Sketches (Mercury)
1960 : We Insist! - Freedom Now (Candid)
1960 : Long as you're living (Enja)
1960 : Uhuru Afrika (with Randy Weston)
1960 : Sonny Clark Trio (with Sonny Clark)
1961 : Percussion Bitter Sweet (Impulse! Records)(with Mal Waldron)
1961 : Straight Ahead (with Abbey Lincoln)
1961 : Out Front (with Booker Little)
1961 : Paris Blues (with Duke Ellington)
1962 : Money Jungle (with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus)
1962 : Speak, Brother, Speak!
1962 : It's Time (Impulse! Records)(with Mal Waldron)
1962 : Drum Suite (with Slide Hampton)
1964 : Live in Europe: Freedom Now Suite (with Abbey Lincoln)
1964 : The Max Roach Trip Featuring the Legendary Hasaan (with Hasaan Ibn Ali)
1966 : Drums Unlimited (Atlantic) (Leader, with James Spaulding, Freddie Hubbard, Ronnie Mathews, Jymie Merritt, Roland Alexander)
1966 : Stuttgart 1963 Concert (with Sonny Rollins
1968 : Sound as Roach (Atlantic)
1968 : Members, Don't Git Weary (Atlantic)
1971 : Lift Every Voice and Sing (with J.C. White Singers)
1972 : Newport in New York ‘72 (Roach on 2 tracks only)
1972 : Daahoud (Mainstream Records)
1973 : Re:Percussion (with M'Boom, Strata-East Records)
1975 : The Bop Session (with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, John Lewis, Hank Jones and Percy Heath)
1976 : Force: Sweet Mao-Suid Afrika '76 (duo with Archie Shepp)
1976 : Nommo (Victor)
1977 : Max Roach Quartet Live in Tokyo (Denon)
1977 : The Loudstar (Horo)
1977 : Max Roach Quartet Live In Amsterdam - It's Time (Baystate)
1977 : Solos (Baystate)
1977 : Streams of Consciousness (duo with Dollar Brand)
1978 : Confirmation (Fluid)
1978 : Birth and Rebirth (Duo with Anthony Braxton)
1978 : Long time at circus yorks
1979 : The Long March (duo with Archie Shepp
1979 : Historic Concerts (duo with Cecil Taylor)
1979 : One In Two, Two In One (duo with Anthony Braxton)
1979 : M'Boom Re:Percussion (with M'Boom, Columbia Records)
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 : Max Roach Double Quartet Live At Vielharmonic (Soul Note)
1984 : Scott Free (Soul Note)
1984 : It’s Christmas Again (Soul Note)
1984 : Collage (with M'Boom, Soul Note)
1984 : Survivors (Soul Note)
1984 : Jazzbuhne Berlin ‘84 (Reperoire)
1985 : Easy Winners (Soul Note)
1986 : Bright Moments (Soul Note)
1989 : Max and Diz in Paris 1989 (duo with Dizzy Gillespie) (A&M)
1989 : Homage to Charlie Parker (A&M)
1991 : To the Max! (Enja)
1992 : Live at S.O.B.'s New York (with M'Boom, Blue Moon Records)
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)
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he was studying with who taught in the drum shop two doors down from Frank's Drum Shop and so I started studying with him, with this guy that Adam had been studying with. From the interest in the hand drums and the congas, I started to develop an interest in other forms of hand drumming, which naturally took me to start to investigate and appreciate the different styles of music from Africa, first starting with hand drums. Fortunately, at that time, there was a very good record shop also in downtown Chicago called Rose's Records and they sold music from everywhere. At that time, it was albums of course. I started going to Rose's Records and just looking in the record bins, first for music from Cuba and South America. Since I was playing congas, that would be a good place to start. I began buying records of people like Mongo Santamaria. From there, my interest started to drift across the Atlantic to the continent itself, to the origin of congas and various types of conga derivative type hand drums. From there, the interest in African music developed more and more until in 1977, Adam Rudolph, along with myself and a kora player from the Gambia named Foday Musa Suso, we started this group called the Mandingo Griot Society. Suso, he was a Griot and kora player from the Gambia. From that experience, the interest developed even more and it became more of a lived experience because now I was actually playing in situations where there was someone from the continent who also played a very important instrument from West Africa.
grown and it brings out people of diverse backgrounds and people with their children. The phenomenal thing is that now, for the last several years, we have been only doing early morning performances starting at six in the morning. We still get packed houses at six in the morning of people coming to see this music to see drums and percussions. The nice things about working with Michael is over the years, we have had time to develop a way of communicating with each other and really to develop our own duet style not only from the Winter Solstice concerts that we do, but also from working together with various ensembles, but particularly with Peter Brotzmann and the Chicago Tentet.
oldest drums in the world. We see it in all the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, old Greek statues of people playing frame drums. It is basically a wooden hoop with a large stretched string or skin draped over it. So basically, it is a string instrument also. The frame drum is a type of, musicologists call it menbranophones. The frame drum is one of the oldest drums in existence. The only difference between frame drums and your modern, standard drum kit is that the modern, standard drum kit is played with the sticks. Traditionally, most frame drums with the exception of a few are played with the hands, skin on skin. There are some cultures that do play frame drums with sticks, primarily the Celtic culture from Britain. Some Native American cultures play the frame drum with a stick or a mallet. Frame drum is just a type of, one of the many varieties of drums that we find in existence today. Another unique quality of the frame drum is usually when people play the frame drum, they sing also. It is the drum that is easy to sing with. It is the same with congas. Very seldom do you see players of the drumset singing as they play. That doesn't seem to be a part of the tradition of drumset playing.
Partial discography
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