Max Roach was born in Newland, North Carolina on either January 10, 1924 or January 8, 1925. The former date is listed on his birth certificate, the latter date is what his family believe was his true birth date. He was a jazz drummer, percussionist, composer, and music innovator.
Roach grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, in a musical home, as his mother was a gospel singer. So naturally he was introduced to music at an early age, and by the time he was 10 years old he was playing drums in a variety of gospel bands.
In the 1940s, as a teenager, Roach began to expand his musical horizons. In addition to working at Monroe's Uptown House in Harlem with Charlie Parker, he did a stint with the Duke Ellington Orchestra while they were in town at the Paramount Theater.
He had his first recording session in 1943 with Coleman Hawkins, and in 1944 played with Benny Carter's orchestra. From 1947-49 he played with Charlie Parker's landmark quintet.
Influenced and inspired by fellow jazz drummer, Kenny Clarke, ten years his senior, Max developed his own style and became the premier drummer in the bop movement.
In the fifties he was a regular at the Lighthouse in California before forming his own group with trumpeter Clifford Brown in 1954. That quintet set standards of excellence in the mid-fifties, at the height of the "hard bop" period. But then tragedy struck. Brown and pianist Richie Powell were killed in a car accident and it took Max some time to reorganize another band.
In the sixties, Roach fell from favor by introducing some campaigning for civil rights and racial equality into his musical compositions.
During the 1970s, Roach continued to lead his own combos, as well as, forming an orchestra, "M'Boom," with a group of percussion instrumentalists whose members both composed and performed with the unit. He also appeared as a solo performer, and as a teacher when he became Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts.
Throughout the remainder of his career Max Roach continued to find new forms of musical expression. Always the innovator, he performed in entire solo concerts, recorded duet sessions in free improvisation with various avant-garde artists, like Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor, and wrote music for plays, performed with dancers like the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, and even performed in a hip-hop concert, but he always kept in contact with his musical roots. Tall, lean, erect and distinguished-looking well into his seventies, Roach played the drums with elegance and class.
All jazz drummers owe a debt to Max Roach for his persistence, high standards for drumming, virtuosity, and creativity, and his forward-thinking approach to jazz and it's future.
.jpg)
Max Roach died in August 2007.
For a more comprehensive view of his bio Google-search his name
No comments:
Post a Comment