Famous Jazz Drummer and Bruh Max Roach Passes

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August 16, 2007 Max Roach, a Founder of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83 By PETER KEEPNEWS Bro. Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drummingin the 1940's and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers anddefying listeners' expectations, died early today in Manhattan. He was 83. His death was announced today by a spokesman for Blue Note records, on whichhe frequently appeared. No cause was given. Mr. Roach had been known to beill for several years. As a young man, Mr. Roach, a percussion virtuoso capable of playing at themost brutal tempos with subtlety as well as power, was among a small circleof adventurous musicians who brought about wholesale changes in jazz. Heremained adventurous to the end. Over the years he challenged both his audiences and himself by working notjust with standard jazz instrumentation, and not just in traditional jazzvenues, but in a wide variety of contexts, some of them well beyond theconfines of jazz as that word is generally understood. He led a "double quartet" consisting of his working group of trumpet,saxophone, bass and drums plus a string quartet. He led an ensembleconsisting entirely of percussionists. He dueted with uncompromisingavant-gardists like the pianist Cecil Taylor and the saxophonist AnthonyBraxton. He performed unaccompanied. He wrote music for plays by Sam Shepard<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=111142&inline=nyt-per> and dance pieces by Alvin Ailey. He collaborated with videoartists, gospel choirs and hip-hop performers. Mr. Roach explained his philosophy to The New York Times in 1990: "You can'twrite 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." He found himself in historic situations from the beginning of his career. Hewas still in his teens when he played drums with the alto saxophonistCharlie Parker, a pioneer of modern jazz, at a Harlem after-hours club in1942. Within a few years, Mr. Roach was himself recognized as a pioneer inthe development of the sophisticated new form of jazz that came to be knownas bebop. He was not the first drummer to play bebop - Kenny Clarke, 10 years hissenior, is generally credited with that distinction - but he quicklyestablished himself as both the most imaginative percussionist in modernjazz and the most influential. In Mr. Roach's hands, the drum kit became much more than a means of keepingtime. He saw himself as a full-fledged member of the front line, not simplyas a supporting player. Layering rhythms on top of rhythms, he paid as much attention to a song'smelody as to its beat. He developed, as the jazz critic Burt Korall put it,"a highly responsive, contrapuntal style," engaging his fellow musicians inan open-ended conversation while maintaining a rock-solid pulse. Hisapproach "initially mystified and thoroughly challenged other drummers," Mr.Korall wrote, but quickly earned the respect of his peers and established anew standard for the instrument. Mr. Roach was an innovator in other ways. In the late 1950s, he led a groupthat was among the first in jazz to regularly perform pieces in waltz timeand other unusual meters in addition to the conventional 4/4. In the early1960s, he was among the first to use jazz to address racial and politicalissues, with works like the album-length "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite." In 1972, he became one of the first jazz musicians to teach full time at thecollege level when he was hired as a professor at the University ofMassachusetts<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_massachusetts/index.html?inline=nyt-org> at Amherst. And in 1988, hebecame the first jazz musician to receive a so-called genius grant from theMacArthur Foundation<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/macarthur_john_d_and_catherine_t_foundation/index.html?inline=nyt-org> . Maxwell Roach was born on Jan. 10, 1924, in the small town of New Land,N.C., and grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He beganstudying piano at a neighborhood Baptist church when he was 8 and took upthe drums a few years later. Even before he graduated from Boys High School in 1942, savvy New York jazzmusicians knew his name. As a teenager he worked briefly with Duke Ellington<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=88854&inline=nyt-per> 's orchestra at the Paramount Theater and with Charlie Parker atMonroe's Uptown House in Harlem, where he took part in jam sessions thathelped lay the groundwork for bebop. By the middle 1940's, he had become a ubiquitous presence on the New Yorkjazz scene, working in the 52nd Street nightclubs with Parker, the trumpeterDizzy Gillespie and other leading modernists. Within a few years he hadbecome equally ubiquitous on record, participating in such seminalrecordings as Miles Davis<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=86914&inline=nyt-per> 's "Birth of the Cool" sessions in 1949 and 1950. He also found time to study composition at the Manhattan School of Music<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/manhattan_school_of_music/index.html?inline=nyt-org> . He had planned to major inpercussion, he later recalled in an interview, but changed his mind after ateacher told him his technique was incorrect. "The way he wanted me to playwould have been fine if I'd been after a career in a symphony orchestra," hesaid, "but it wouldn't have worked on 52nd Street." Mr. Roach made the transition from sideman to leader in 1954, when he andthe young trumpet virtuoso Clifford Brown formed a quintet. That group,which specialized in a muscular and stripped-down version of bebop that cameto be called hard bop, took the jazz world by storm. But it was short-lived. In June 1956, at the height of the Brown-Roach quintet's success, Brown waskilled in an automobile accident, along with Richie Powell, the group'spianist, and Powell's wife. The sudden loss of his friend and co-leader, Mr.Roach later recalled, plunged him into depression and heavy drinking fromwhich it took him years to emerge. Nonetheless, he kept working. He honored his existing nightclub bookingswith the two surviving members of his group, the saxophonist Sonny Rollinsand the bassist George Morrow, before briefly taking time off and puttingtogether a new quartet. By the end of the 50's, seemingly recovered from hisdepression, he was recording prolifically, mostly as a leader butoccasionally as a sideman with Mr. Rollins and others. The personnel of Mr. Roach's working group changed frequently over the nextdecade, but the level of artistry and innovation remained high. His sidemenincluded such important musicians as the saxophonists Eric Dolphy, StanleyTurrentine and George Coleman and the trumpet players Donald Byrd, KennyDorham and Booker Little. Few of his groups had a pianist, making for adistinctively open ensemble sound in which Mr. Roach's drums were prominent. Always among the most politically active of jazz musicians, Mr. Roach hadhelped the bassist Charles Mingus establish one of the first musician-runrecord companies, Debut, in 1952. Eight years later, the two organized aso-called rebel festival in Newport, R.I., to protest the Newport JazzFestival's treatment of performers. That same year, Mr. Roach collaboratedwith the lyricist Oscar Brown Jr. on "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite," whichplayed variations on the theme of black people's struggle for equality inthe United States and Africa. The album, which featured vocals by Abbey Lincoln (Mr. Roach's frequentcollaborator and, from 1962 to 1970, his wife), received mixed reviews: manycritics praised its ambition, but some attacked it as overly polemical. Mr.Roach was undeterred. "I will never again play anything that does not have social significance,"he told Down Beat magazine after the album's release. "We American jazzmusicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we're mastermusicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill totell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through." "We Insist!" was not a commercial success, but it emboldened Mr. Roach tobroaden his scope as a composer. Soon he was collaborating withchoreographers, filmmakers and Off Broadway playwrights on projects,including a stage version of "We Insist!" As his range of activities expanded, his career as a bandleader became lessof a priority. At the same time, the market for his uncompromising brand ofsmall-group jazz began to diminish. By the time he joined the faculty of theUniversity of Massachusetts in 1972, teaching had come to seem anincreasingly attractive alternative to the demands of the musician's life. Joining the academy did not mean turning his back entirely on performing. Inthe early '70s, Mr. Roach joined with seven fellow drummers to form M'Boom,an ensemble that achieved tonal and coloristic variety through the use ofxylophones, chimes, steel drums and other percussion instruments. Later inthe decade he formed a new quartet, two of whose members - the saxophonistOdean Pope and the trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater - would perform and recordwith him off and on for more than two decades. He also participated in a number of unusual experiments. He appeared inconcert in 1983 with a rapper, two disc jockeys and a team of break dancers.A year later, he composed music for an Off Broadway production of three SamShepard plays, for which he won an Obie Award. In 1985, he took part in amultimedia collaboration with the video artist Kit Fitzgerald and the stagedirector George Ferencz. Perhaps his most ambitious experiment in those years was the Max RoachDouble Quartet, a combination of his quartet and the Uptown String Quartet.Jazz musicians had performed with string accompaniment before, but rarely ifever in a setting like this, where the string players were an equal part ofthe ensemble and were given the opportunity to improvise. Reviewing a DoubleQuartet album in The Times in 1985, Robert Palmer wrote, "For the first timein the history of jazz recording, strings swing as persuasively as anysaxophonist or drummer." This endeavor had personal as well as musical significance for Mr. Roach:the Uptown String Quartet's founder and viola player was his daughterMaxine. She survives him, as do two other daughters, Ayo and Dara, and twosons, Raoul and Darryl. By the early '90s, Mr. Roach had reduced his teaching load and was againbased in New York year-round, traveling to Amherst only for two residenciesand a summer program each year. He was still touring with his quartet asrecently as 2000, and he also remained active as a composer. In 2002 hewrote and performed the music for "How to Draw a Bunny," a documentary aboutthe artist Ray Johnson.