Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel Roach (January 10, 1924[a] – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history.[2][3] He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, Grammy nominated Violist. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.[4]
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel Roach
January 10, 1924
Newland Township, North Carolina, U.S.
August 16, 2007 (aged 83)
New York City, U.S.
- Musician
- composer
- educator
- Drums
- percussion
- piano
1944–2002
In the mid-1950s, Roach co-led a pioneering quintet along with trumpeter Clifford Brown. In 1970, he founded the percussion ensemble M'Boom.
Personal life[edit]
Two children, a son Daryl Keith and daughter, Maxine Lorna, were born from Roach's first marriage with Mildred Roach in 1949. In 1956, he met singer Barbara Jai (Johnson) and fathered another son, Raoul Jordu. During the period 1962–1970, Roach was married to singer Abbey Lincoln, who had performed on several of his albums. In 1971, twin daughters, Dara Rashida, and Ayodele Niealah, 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.
His godson is artist, filmmaker and hip-hop pioneer, Fab Five Freddy.[23]
Roach identified himself as a Muslim in an early 1970s interview with Art Taylor.[24]
Style[edit]
Roach started as a traditional grip player but favored matched grip as his career progressed.[25]
Roach's most significant innovations came in the 1940s, when he and 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. This also created 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 the drums. 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.[2] Roach said of the drummer's unique positioning, "In no other society do they have one person play with all four limbs."[26]
While this is common today, when Clarke and Roach introduced the concept in the 1940s it was revolutionary. "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 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."[2]
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, and rhythmically cohesive phrases. Roach described his approach to music as "the creation of organized sound."[14] Roach's style has been a big influence on several jazz and rock drummers, most notably Joe Morello,[27] Tony Williams,[28] Peter Erskine,[29] Billy Cobham,[30] Ginger Baker,[31] and Mitch Mitchell.[32] The track "The Drum Also Waltzes" was often quoted by John Bonham in his Moby Dick drum solo and revisited by other drummers, including Neil Peart and Steve Smith.[33][34] Bill Bruford performed a cover of the track on the 1985 album Flags.
Honors[edit]
Roach was given a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1988 and cited as a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1989.[35] He was twice awarded the French Grand Prix du Disque, was elected to the International Percussive Art Society's Hall of Fame and the DownBeat Hall of Fame, and was awarded Harvard Jazz Master. In 2008, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the Recording Academy.[36] He was celebrated by Aaron Davis Hall and was given eight honorary doctorate degrees, including degrees awarded by Wesleyan University, Medgar Evers College, CUNY, the University of Bologna, and Columbia University, in addition to his alma mater, the Manhattan School of Music.[37][38]
In 1986, the London borough of Lambeth named a park in Brixton after Roach.[39][40] Roach was able to officially open the park when he visited London in March of that year by invitation from the Greater London Council.[41] During that trip, he performed at a concert at the Royal Albert Hall along with Ghanaian master drummer Ghanaba and others.[42][43]
Roach spent his later years living at the Mill Basin Sunrise assisted living home in Brooklyn, and was honored with a proclamation honoring his musical achievements by Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz.[44] Roach was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.[45]
In 2023, Roach was the subject of a documentary feature film Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, which premiered at South by Southwest and was nationally broadcast on the PBS series American Masters.[46]