MAX ROACH 100 EVENT CALENDAR

Max roach

Max Roach was a master among masters. Until his death on August 16, 2007, he was the greatest living percussionist. Beyond virtuosity, Max Roach was an innovator, on the cutting edge of every Jazz advent since BeBop. Max Roach was a formidable composer. He understood and played at the optimum every Jazz style, even those developed before his birth.

Maxwell Lemuel Roach was born in or near New Land, North Carolina in the large area known as Dismal Swamp, or simply Dismal. He was delivered by his maternal grandmother, Irene Saunders, the local midwife. For some reason, Max Roach’s birth date was documented as January 10, 1924 (it remains his legal and historical birth date) although it had actually occurred January 8th of 1924.

The Roach family, part of a massive Black migration northward, moved to Brooklyn in New York City where Max was raised.  Max’s father, Alphonse Roach, Sr., owned a gas station, and later on, after the loss of his sight, owned a newsstand. Max’s mother, Cressie Saunders Roach, was a gospel singer. Max had an older brother, Alphonse Roach, Jr., who excelled in track in junior high school; but, sadly, he died of pneumonia about the time Max Roach became a teenager.

Max also excelled at track, but music was his field. Although it was during the toughest years of The Great Depression, he received an excellent music education at the Concord Baptist Church and in the New York City Public Schools where Max also excelled academically. Initially, he studied piano, but young Max fell in love with drums, and his mother fended off the neighbors so that Max could practice. He became great in a hurry: Max Roach subbed in both the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras while in his teens.

Max Roach was the most successful, talented, and dominant member of a crew of young Brooklyn musicians who became early disciples of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Max Roach was the leader of what became known as Brooklyn BeBop. These youngsters played under the direction of Vic Coulson and Clark Monroe at places such as the Taproom (West 78 St and Broadway) and the Uptown House (198 West 134 St.). Eventually, under the nominal leadership of Coleman Hawkins, they made it to the legendary 52nd Street and to the recording studio. Max Roach was the drummer on the first BeBop recordings made on February 16, 1944. He had just turned twenty.

At this point, Max had his stint in The Swing Era’s Big Bands, working with The King, Benny Carter. Max is the drummer on Carter’s April 9, 1945 hit, “Malibu”, but Max was more excited about the all-star date he recorded 11 days before with Carter, Hawk, Kay Starr, John Kirby, and Nat King Cole.

In the spring of 1945 Dizzy Gillespie sent for him and Max became the drummer in the quintet that played The Three Deuces (72 West 52nd St), a unit that featured Charlie Parker. Thereafter, Max Roach was the drummer for BeBop, an avant-garde music that triumphed in the pop music scene. Max was the drummer on the first recordings of Miles Davis, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell, and Charlie Parker! Max Roach played 3 years in the “Golden Era BeBop Five”, the Charlie Parker Quintet.  That ended in October 1949.

Though he could have coasted on a star career, Max Roach, who had a towering intellect and an endless desire to go deeper into the music, entered the Manhattan School of Music, where he majored in composition. All during his conservatory years, he kept up a parallel life gigging, with numerous all-star appearances and his continuing work with Miles Davis on the “Birth Of The Cool”. Max was now winning all the drum polls. After graduation, he began in earnest to launch a career as a leader.

With Charles Mingus, Max Roach founded Debut Records, a musician owned and operated company that recorded great music. One of Debut’s productions, “Jazz at Massey Hall”, on which both proprietors played alongside Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie was put into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Max Roach also started a combo and made his first album in April 1953.

Towards the end of 1953, Max Roach was hired for a long ‘star-in-residence’ appearance at The Lighthouse in California. Out West, Max Roach received backing to launch a new group. But Max decided to offer co-leadership to a trumpeter he barely knew, but admired from records, named Clifford Brown. Their quintet was one of the greatest bands in Jazz history and was a trailblazer in Hard Bop.

Tragically it ended with Brown’s death in an auto crash. With difficulty, Max Roach continued his career. Maintaining the highest quality of combos while continuing an experimental approach to the adventure that is music is one of Max’s greatest triumphs. Max Roach Plus Four introduced swinging Jazz in ¾ time, facilitated long form improvisation, and set a path for leaner rhythm sections. Max Roach, a born teacher, nurtured the careers of among others Sonny Rollins, Booker Little, and Stanley Turrentine. Into this century, he still led his Max Roach Quartet with Cecil Bridgewater, Odean Pope, and Tyrone Brown. As with his mentor, Papa Jo Jones, Max Roach has helped almost every musician, especially drummers, who have come to NYC for two generations. Max Roach began giving drum clinics 60 years ago!

Most striking to the Max Roach bandstand was his insistence that the music speak morally and politically. The message that freedom is inherent in all Jazz is forthrightly stated in Max Roach’s music. This was highlighted during the American Civil Rights Movement by Max’s “Freedom Now Suite: WE INSIST!”.

            Max Roach’s social consciousness often led to doors being closed to him, yet he expanded his career and its variety. He taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; formed and directed an all-percussion orchestra, M-Boom; and attached a string quartet, Maxine Roach’s Uptown String Quartet, to his own working foursome, the Max Roach Double Quartet. Later, Max would create a brass band, the So What Brass. The compositional side of Max Roach also expanded and he was an ever-present force in The Third Stream, the blending of Western Classical and Jazz.

His activities were boosted when Max Roach received a MacArthur Grant in 1988.

There were many last hurrahs including his final public appearance at Medger Evans College where he received an honorary doctorate on December 14, 2006. Max had earlier received that honor from Columbia University – that had only previously so honored Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie. Max Roach is one of only 26 inductees into Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Neshui Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame, going in alongside Sonny Rollins in 2005. By then physical infirmity had forced Max from the bandstand but as both Cecil Taylor and Clark Terry could attest, on a given day, in even this 21st century, Max could swing you into the promised land.

Max infused his Jazz with a call for justice and equality. There can be no separating Max’s music from his message. Max Roach was a great American.

He also helped others play their music better. For every 3 beats a Jazz band plays, they owe Max Roach 5.

-Phil Schaap

Business of life

Music was his love.  Music was also a way to make a way for himself, his family and his people.  It was serious.  So, he was always a professional. Studied music at Manhattan School of Music. Dressed immaculately.  And became a bandleader. 

master of his destiny

Max Roach lived to make music. There were no industry constructs like record labels, performance venues, agents, promoters that ever stood in his way of making music. He was a consummate businessman about his business and sought out control creative and financial control of his music. Debut Records and Milma Publishing, were two examples of entrepreneurial ventures to facilitate what Max was born to do.

Debut Records was founded in 1952 by bassist Charles Mingus, his wife Celia and Max Roach. It recorded and released over two dozen albums in five years, including the seminal, Jazz at Massey Hall, considered one of the greatest jazz collaborations of all time. Debut featured recordings by Mingus and Max, but also Miles Davis, Thad Jones, Kenny Dorham and more up and coming musicians.

Max roach music companies:

Debut Records (1952) approximately a dozen albums featuring Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Kenny Dorham, Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach

Milma Publishing (1950's, '60's, 70's to present)  Artist-owned publishing vs. label-owned publishing - a rarity back then.

Max Roach Productions (1980's, 1990's, 2000) Management, Booking, Production Company which optimizes his value.

the company man

Branding: "The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind."

Max Roach was a consumer businessman, as well. Creating and endorsing products that elevated the image of this music and empowered his people. Check out a promo Max wrote for Afro Kola - “the taste of freedom”.