Roach, Max(well) (New Land, NC, 10 Jan 1924)
Drummer and composer
His mother was a gospel singer and he first played drums at
the age of ten in gospel bands; this early involvement with black religious
music had a significant influence on his musical development, though he also
studied formally at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1942 he became associated
with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others and, as the house drummer at
From 1954 to 1956, with Clifford Brown, Roach led an
important quintet; this group produced a number of seminal recordings,
including Study in Brown and At Basin Street, that
epitomized the style of jazz known as hard bop. During the late 1950s and early
1960s Roach made a series of recordings that prefigured developments associated
with free jazz; on Max Roach Plus 4 at
In the 1960s Roach became an articulate spokesman and
activist in the black-American cultural arts movement, and the titles of many
of his compositions and albums from that period - notably We Insist! Freedom
Now Suite, on which he collaborated with Oscar Brown, Jr. - reflect his
awareness of and involvement in the struggle for racial equality. Much of his
work was undertaken in conjunction with the singer Abbey Lincoln, his wife at
the time, and made use of solo voices and chorus as well as jazz ensemble. From
that time he has also composed music for Broadway musicals, films, television,
and symphony orchestra. Roach has continued to work regularly with his own
groups; in 1970 he organized M' boom Re: Percussion, an ensemble of ten
percussionists that performs and records works written specifically for
percussion instruments. He has also made recordings with such artists as
Abdullah Ibrahim (1977), Anthony Braxton (1978-9),
Archie Shepp (1979), and Cecil Taylor (1979), and as
a soloist with a string quartet (Survivors, 1984). He has been an active
lecturer on jazz and has held positions at the Lenox (
Roach holds a significant position in the history of jazz. With Kenny Clarke, he was particularly important in establishing the practice of setting the fixed pulse on the ride cymbal instead of the bass drum; this enabled more flexible use to be made of the other parts of the drum set and allowed for greater polyrhythmic texture. His imaginative performances as a soloist and his mature technique of improvisation, which is based on the use of deft interaction of pitch and timbral variety, subtleties of silence and sound, rhythmic and metrical contrast, and a refreshingly flexible approach to the fixed pulse, establish him as one of the most outstanding and innovative drummers of his time.
Olly Wilson
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, © Macmillan Reference Ltd 1988