Drummer-percussionist Max Roach is credited, together with Kenny Clarke, for creating the bebop and modern jazz style of drumming. During his illustrious 50-year career as a jazz musician, he played with Charlie PARKER, Dizzy GILLESPIE, and other key artists involved in the evolutionary process that metamorphosed swing into bebop.
Max Roach was born in New York City on January 10, 1924, and grew up listening to the big-band sounds of Chick Webb, Count BASIE, Duke ELLINGTON, and the Savoy Sultans. He was influenced by drummers Webb, “Papa” Jo Jones, “Big Sid” Catlett, O’Neil Spencer, and Razz Mitchell. Always interested in jazz, he also studied percussion and classical composition.
Roach’s big break came at 19, when he was asked to substitute for Sonny Greer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at New York’s Paramount Theater. After that high-profile start, Roach performed a variety of gigs and eventually found himself working with Dizzy Gillespie on 52nd Street. Gillespie then introduced him to Charlie Parker.
A variety of sounds from Dixieland to Swing could be heard at the 52nd Street clubs during the 1940s, and it was here that the serious music frivolously dubbed “bebop” was born. Parker, Gillespie, Thelonious MONK, and others began experimenting with a new formula for jazz improvisation—extremely fast tempos, chord substitutions and alterations, the use of new intervals, and extended melodic lines. Solos were much longer, and bebop was meant to be listened to and was not dancing music. The bebop innovators wanted to take the focus off jazz as entertainment, and instead focus on its musical virtuosity. Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem and the 52nd Street clubs held all-night jam sessions where the musicians worked to hone their craft.
In Parker’s group, Max Roach’s improvisational talents flourished. He was one of the first (along with Clarke) to move the swing rhythm from the hi-hat— a cymbal that is played with the foot—to the ride cymbal, a large cymbal played with a drumstick, keeping steady time on the hi-hat on beats 2 and 4. This allowed for much more interaction and punctuation between the drummer’s bass drum and snare, and the rest of the ensemble. Roach also used his torn toms and snare to play melodic patterns that introduced new solo possibilities for drummers, well demonstrated by his solo features on Miles DAVIS’S Birth of the Cool
In the 1950s Roach co-led a quintet with trumpeter Clifford BROWN, releasing a series of classic recordings that featured innovative originals and unique arrangements, including “Brown/Roach Incorporated,” and “Live at the Bee-Hive.” This collaboration was the zenith of that era’s hard bop scene, but sadly came to an end following the deaths of Brown and the group’s pianist Richie Powell in a car crash in 1956.
Roach later worked with an endless list of jazz luminaries and led his own groups. Among those he performed or recorded with were Bud Powell, Kenny Dorham, Booker Little, George Coleman, Miles Davis, Clifford Jordan, Sonny ROLLINS, Cecil Taylor, Eric DOLPHY, Anthony Braxton, Oscar Brown, Jr., and Abbey Lincoln (to whom he was married for a time).
Max Roach was also a pioneer of solo percussion composition, and wrote several drumset pieces that have been performed in jazz club venues as well as on the concert stage. These include “Tribute to Big Sid,” “Dr. Free-Zee,” and “The Drum also Waltzes."
Roach also held a teaching position in the music department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, until his retirement in the mid-1990s.
Gregg Juke
SEE ALSO:
BEBOP; HARD BOP; JAZZ; SWING.
FURTHER READING
Rosenthal, David H. Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992);
Taylor, Arthur, ed. Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews (London: Quartet, 1983).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
In the Light; It’s Time; The Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker; Percussion Bitter Sweet; Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool