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| Max Roach Is Dead Great jazz drummer Max Roach, the self-taught musical prodigy, has died Wednesday night after a long illness. He was 83. Max Roach was born in New Land, N.C., on Jan. 10, 1924. He received his first musical break at age 16, filling in for three nights in 1940 when Ellington’s drummer fell ill. He played at the legendary Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, where he joined Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the bebop movement. In 1944, Roach joined Gillespie and Coleman Hawkins in one of the first bebop recording sessions. Roach pushed jazz beyond the boundaries of standard 4/4 time. His dislocated beats helped define bebop. Throughout the '40s and ’50s, Roach played bebop with the Charlie Parker Quintet and cool with the Miles Davis Capitol Orchestra, later Max joined trumpeter Clifford Brown in playing hard bop. In the mid-'50s, Roach had watched several of his friends — including Parker — die from heroin addiction. In 1956, Roach was further devastated when Brown died in a car accident. After his own struggle with drugs and alcohol, Roach survived with the help of his first wife, singer Abbey Lincoln. Married in 1962, they divorced eight years later. Over the next decades, Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts, traveled to Ghana in search of new music, and performed with groups from Japan and Cuba. He also formed an all-percussion ensemble known as M’Boom. He was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Jazz News :: home page |