Max Roach

Maxwell Lemuel Roach (born January 10, 1924, in Newland, North Carolina; died August 15, 2007, in New York) was an American jazz drummer, composer, and educator. He grew up in Brooklyn’s Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood, where he encountered percussion in church gospel music and parade bands. As a teenager he performed in Harlem clubs, then studied timpani and percussion with Henry Adler at the Manhattan School of Music and also studied composition.

By the mid-1940s, Roach was a central bebop drummer. His recordings and performances with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk transformed the drums from a timekeeping instrument into a participant in melodic and harmonic conversation. In 1952, he co-founded Debut Records with Charles Mingus. The label’s 1953 release Jazz at Massey Hall documents one of their performances. From 1954 to 1956, Roach led a quintet with trumpeter Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, pianist Richie Powell, and bassist George Morrow, a model of hard bop. After Brown died in a 1956 car accident, Roach continued with trumpeters Kenny Dorham and Booker Little.

We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (1960) is his most important work. With lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr. and vocals by his wife Abbey Lincoln, and featuring Coleman Hawkins, Booker Little, Eric Dolphy, Julian Priester, and Nigerian drummer Michael Olatunji, the five-part suite depicts a history from enslavement to liberation. It is a landmark recording linking jazz with the civil rights movement. Percussion Bitter Sweet (1961) continued that direction; in 1962, Roach recorded the trio album Money Jungle with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus.

Beginning in 1972, Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. That year he formed M’Boom, an ensemble made entirely of percussionists, and wrote works including It’s Time for voice, choir, and jazz ensemble. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1984, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1988, and was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame. He died in New York in 2007, aged 83.