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5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Max Roach

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The drummer helped pioneer bebop in the 1940s and delivered a message of resistance and liberation from the 1960s on. Listen to 13 selections from musicians, writers and critics.

For the past year, The New York Times has been asking musicians, writers and scholars to share the music they’d play for a friend to get them into jazz. Now we’re focusing on Max Roach, who, alongside the drummers Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey, helped pioneer bebop in the 1940s.

A Brooklyn native, Roach started playing drums at age 10, and was eventually influenced by the personality that Clarke brought to the instrument. He graduated from high school in 1942 and became the house drummer for Clark Monroe’s Uptown House in Harlem, then played with Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. By the time he played with Miles Davis in the late ’40s, Roach had shifted his style to a more propulsive rhythm that emphasized the ride cymbal.

But while history has credited him with de-emphasizing the bass drum in bebop, Roach himself debunked such thinking. “We played the bass drum, but the engineers would cover it up because it would cause distortion due to the technology at the time,” he once said in “The Drummer’s Time,” a book about jazz drumming. “There were never any mics near our feet; they would have one mic above the drum set, and that was all.”

In 1960, Roach turned his attention to racial and political issues, releasing the album “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite” as a response to injustices in the United States. Featuring the activist and singer Abbey Lincoln (to whom Roach was married for eight years), the LP used equal amounts of rage and silence to convey the angst of Black Americans. “He was not trying to be slick and have a message,” his son Raoul said in the 2021 documentary “Summer of Soul.” Instead, “that is the message. It’s our time. Do it now. We want liberation.”

Roach carried that declaration through the rest of his career. Long considered a cornerstone in the world of jazz, his rapid-fire rhythms have influenced scores of like-minded percussionists to explore themes and textures. Below, we asked 13 musicians, writers and critics to share their favorite Max Roach songs. Enjoy listening to their choices, check out the playlist at the bottom of the article and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.

The momentum in Roach’s playing here is captivating: He’s chasing the time, but not pushing it. He hardly deviates from the skeletal pattern he’s playing, even during Clifford Jordan’s mournful solo. The crispness with which the band converges on the downbeat of every bar evokes the sound of James Brown, signifying the undeniable power and impact of a unified Black band. Further, the crackle of the snare (along with Abbey Lincoln’s tambourine) realizes the terrifying snap of the “driva man’s” whip, used to shock and startle the slave into silence and submission.

The last minute and twelve seconds of the video are the most compelling, as Roach, unaccompanied, meditatively plays the same 5/4 pattern over and over. A few bars in, he introduces a slightly more complex ride cymbal pattern, using the drumstick’s shank on the crown of the cymbal. Roach dials up the intensity of the drum solo masterfully, choosing dynamics over density, allowing the cadence he’s playing to reveal more and more about itself. A player of Roach’s facility and imagination must deploy a great deal of restraint in order not to play. This, to me, is the most important lesson — what he chooses to leave out is what draws the listener in. When he hits the last note on the cymbal, he leans in as the crash fades to silence, ending a six-minute master class in the power of musical intention.

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This song takes me on so many different journeys because there are so many different movements within the piece. It feels a lot like life’s highs and lows giving you 12 minutes of emotions, ranging from happiness, melancholy, chill, groovy and peaceful. There’s even an element that feels almost warlike. The way Max uses his toms while accompanying the horn player from about 6:50-9:00 reminds me of African drums. The toms are tuned to perfection and Max’s rhythmic pattern — along with the melodic pattern of the horns — just puts me in a trance.

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Max Roach made yet another indelible mark with his “Members, Don’t Git Weary” album. Released in 1968, the album is an aural representation of avant-garde jazz at its core while serving as musical commentary to the social and political conflicts of the time.

The opening track, “Abstrutions,” subtly invites the listener to explore Roach’s innovative approach to rhythm, form, timbre and improvisation. “Abstrutions” arguably challenges the traditional idea of the blues form, extending the final four-bar phrase with a captivating unison horn call met with a powerful drumroll to carry us back to the top. With support from Roach’s increasingly robust playing, the horn lines intensify as they answer the pianist Stanley Cowell’s commanding improvisation. Roach’s rhythmic agility is felt as the phrase restarts with a seemingly displaced downbeat that keeps listeners on their toes. “Abstrutions” has the full essence of avant-garde jazz but feels inherently soulful and funky at the same time. Roach’s intentional play on tension and release speaks to his distinctive compositional style and meaningful inclusion of the sentiment of protest and activism.

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I discovered and fell in love with jazz while in college. For almost four years, I spent my Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in the listening room of the campus radio station — KDVS 90.3 FM in Davis, Calif. — diving deep into its immaculate record collection. My understanding of the jazz genre came from this place, from playing records, finding something I liked, looking at the personnel and then burrowing through that artist’s discography (this was pre-internet, mind you) in the stacks of vinyl. From this study, I could put my finger on the records, musicians and lineups at the forefront of change in the genre — and at every step of the way, there was Max Roach. “Drums Unlimited” was the first time I heard compositions for the drum and only the drum. Roach seemed to regularly dislodge convention, for decades, but here, on the title track, he is nothing short of a master of the craft — musically, socially, culturally. There he is, with mesmerizing rhythm and beat; a circular thrust that feels like the beginning of revolution. He gives musical voice to what he would later, forcefully, verbally articulate in the Black struggle for liberation. When we were making “Summer of Soul,” Roach’s set at the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 (with his then-wife, Abbey Lincoln) began with a similar drum solo (sorry, it didn’t make the final film!), and all I could think about was this track — a persistent genius, armed with will and intellect, in his element, reaching desperately for freedom.

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Often, the drum is a song’s heartbeat. It brings it life and guides it along until the last note. On “Freedom Day,” Max’s drum playing represents a heart dealing with the emotions of becoming a free human being. You feel the anticipation, the anxiety, the strength, and even the uncertainty. Abbey Lincoln’s vocals, while not perfectly in line with the melody, are still perfectly placed as she represents the honesty of not being sure what is to come, and the power that comes with knowing you are ready to face it.

Max himself said, “we don’t really understand what it is to be free,” yet you hear him feeling free enough to let out a range of emotions in each lick and snare, which allows other musicians like the trumpeter Booker Little to follow suit. The “We Insist!” album was an especially important one, in that after its release, Max vowed to never play music that was not socially relevant. I would be remiss to not also mention the album cover, which is a staged lunch counter sit-in mirrored from the 1960 Greensboro Four sit-in, which took place months before the recording of this album.

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Few drummers have reached the level of innovation and influence Max Roach did throughout his long and prolific career. During the bebop era he, along with Kenny Clarke, transformed the way drummers approached their sets. This approach was part of the foundation of sounds my ears embraced when I first found jazz. “Joy Spring,” recorded with the legendary and tragically short-lived Clifford Brown and Max Roach Quintet, is a jazz classic and a personal favorite. From the moment the drum hits start, I feel a buoyancy that carries me throughout the tune. Roach’s brushes lay down a steady swing that’s punctuated by deep in-the-pocket hits — he manages to maintain a delicate balance between high energy and smoothness. He gets an attack from those brushes as he flows and accentuates the variations within the melody, the agile soloing filled with his signature triplet motifs. His drumming sings to me as much as Clifford’s trumpet or Harold Land’s sax. I can’t listen to this recording without a smile forming on my face. I’m transported to the days when so much of this music was new. “Joy Spring” remains fresh in my ears at every listening.

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I had, for a little while, been fascinated by the gossip around the recording of “Money Jungle.” The album from the trio of Roach, Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington was a generational bridge between a swinging idol and progenitors of bop, but Mingus is said to have stormed out of the session in 1962 because of something Roach played, or said, and had to be cajoled to return by Ellington himself.

What could go that badly between Mingus and Roach? The pair had by then held down so many bandstands as parts of extraordinary groupings, and had even joined to launch a record company together a decade before the session with Ellington. Listening to “Money Jungle” didn’t clear it up. Mingus opens by scratching out a harsh-sounding challenge; Ellington parries with hard phrasing to jerk the steering wheel the other way. Roach rides it out in the back seat as the song exhausts itself to a stop.

I still don’t have an answer for the walkout, but I care less about the speculation because of “Percussion Discussion.” Mingus and Roach did versions of their own push-pull live during the “Mingus at the Bohemia” sets in 1955 and after — sometimes alongside the pianist Bud Powell or with a horn involved, other times as a duet. The version released on 1965’s “The Charles Mingus Quintet Plus Max Roach” (under the title “Drums”) finishes with Mingus sweeping an operatic bow before Roach thumps out a tip of the cap like a matador honored by his provocateur.

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On “Garvey’s Ghost,” we hear nearly eight minutes of sacred shouts and vibrations, as Roach leads us further into his lexicon of musical language. It’s what I imagine Roach thinking about when writing the work; it’s his concept of sounds that would emanate from the decks of ships on the Black Star Line, a return to the motherland, a going home. It’s Max dropping pins throughout the African diaspora guiding the listener, it’s the call and response of Abbey Lincoln’s haunting vocal standing proxy as the voice of the ancestors, it’s the foundational Bembé drum chant that moves us from West Africa in origin to Cuba thanks to the additions of “Patato” and “Totico” (Carlos Valdés and Eugenio Arango, respectively). It’s Booker Little and Clifford Jordan as street bishops on their soapboxes shouting down Babylon through an aggressive series of solos, it’s Art Davis’s bass sending up kettle prayers, with Max batting cleanup, exhibiting mastery within the spaces of his solo that leads us back to the chorus. “Garvey’s Ghost” is Max’s lead single for the soundtrack of this imagined trans-Atlantic voyage. I would suggest that you add this to your playlist, and get yourself a ticket, so to speak.

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Revolutionary of bebop, guru of time keeping, an O.G. of cool jazz.

Max Roach held so many titles, but it was his 1962 recording of “The Profit,” the second track on the B-side of the album “It’s Time,” that paved the way for a young me to fall in love with a sound that would surpass any previous definition I had known for the genre of “jazz.”

The seven-minute track encapsulates the very essence of the 1960s Black movement, exploding with skill and expression from start ’til end. I eventually understood this to be one form of the many conversations Max had regarding his stance on civil rights, and the politics surrounding Black American history.

The solos by the trumpeter Richard Williams, the tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan and the bassist Art Davis add such rich texture to Roach’s continuous ride cymbal technique. But what is most compelling was his perfected undertone beat — soft yet unmistakably strong and constant — while delivering a killer drum solo throughout.

Enter Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s vocal choir, erupting into what sounds like a song of profound protest from the very intro; a deeply moving spiritual chant depicting the ’60s and all its intensities. Through Roach’s “The Profit” began my devotion to the astral jazz of that era and beyond.

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So much of Max Roach’s extraordinary discography is canonical and progressive that it’s easy to overlook his work for Atlantic Records from 1964 to 1971. Yet, this phase bristles with fury and offers the cool melodicism of his classic earlier recordings with Clifford Brown. No recording bridges these objectives better than his 1968 masterwork, “Members, Don’t Git Weary.” The title tells you that, landmark legislation notwithstanding, there was still much work to be done toward liberation and equality — but the music here shines a light on the paradise for the victors. “Effi,” an elegant six-minute paragon by the pianist Stanley Cowell, one of six greats in the band, is the highlight. The saxophonist Gary Bartz and the trumpeter Charles Tolliver take pointed solos, but Roach drives the sound, rumbling with volcanic force beneath and beside them. There’s beauty, power and catharsis all in one. Roach was not tired, not weary at all, and his music was an energy potion.

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Amiri Baraka sitting shotgun as the Jersey tunnel lights slide through the car window. We were on our way to a poetry reading. In the back seat I bathed in classic and legendary Baraka banter. Max Roach was the star of the ride. I learned about Roach in the firsthand sway and swag of Baraka’s enthused tone. “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite” was the album of discussion. I didn’t know what I was listening to until many years later. And as I revisit this album, “Tears for Johannesburg” never fails to amaze. Shhhh. The cymbals slowly weep into Abbey Lincoln’s moan, and the cross stick signals the build. It’s the orchestra of solidarity for me. What I love most about the song is the wordless conversation. Jazz disrupts traditional song structure as a protest against established conventions, and this song declares the sentiment. Max Roach’s heart beats at the time signature of 5/4. The bass keeps the pulse and the horns haunt. The song begs the ear to listen and take heed of our mourning as well as our resistance. The political message crescendos in the rim of Roach’s drum. We feel for the struggle of our comrades in Johannesburg because Roach makes sure of it. There is no need for words.

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I discovered Max Roach’s 1981 LP, “Chattahoochee Red,” in the early ’90s just from casual crate-digging and being semi-autodidactic in learning jazz history to buttress my music journalism career. I was immediately taken by the opening cut “The Dream/It’s Time,” a blistering modern bop composition on which Roach interjected snippets from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Roach’s rhythmic ingenuity, King’s heroic voice, and later the impassioned solos from the trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, the tenor saxophonist Odean Pope and the bassist Calvin Hill made me a die-hard Roach fan, even though at the time I knew more of his eminence as a bebop pioneer and influential drummer than I did of his actual discography.

I’ve always said that crate digging is the unsung hero in music education. After repeated listening to “The Dream/It’s Time,” my continued investigation into Roach’s music led me to the 1962 incarnation of “It’s Time” that fused strident hard bop with doleful choral singing conducted by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Nevertheless, it’s “The Dream/It’s Time” that became my favorite Roach composition. It was always in heavy rotation during my radio shows on Washington, D.C.’s Pacifica station, WPFW-FM, during the mid-to-late ’90s. And it resurfaced again, this year, in some of my vinyl-only D.J. sets as we mark the 60th anniversary of King’s 1963 March on Washington.

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I remember being around 16 years old and my friend Glenn Laurie would play the Art Blakey Quintet at Birdland, and back then I was confounded at what those musicians were playing. It took a while but finally my ears opened, and I could hear what these great musicians were doing on their instruments. That began my immersion into the world of jazz and learning and listening to everyone from Thelonious Monk to the one of the greatest drummers of this idiom called jazz, Max Roach.

It would be a few years later that I would be introduced to a seminal 1954 Max Roach recording with the impressive and ever inventive trumpeter Clifford Brown. It was a phenomenal album with the tenor saxophonist Harold Land, bassist George Morrow and pianist Richie Powell supporting Brown and Roach. The one tune that particularly stands out is their rendition of Bud Powell’s “Parisian Thoroughfare” that starts with the band replicating the traffic jam of a Parisian street before taking off with the compelling melody of triplets performed by Brown and Harold Land. It is an infectious melody in the key of G major. Brown makes every note swing with joy and sass accompanied by Max’s elegant rhythmic support. Max’s solo, where it is all Max beautifully modulated and direct, is what people are talking about when they say Max is such a musical drummer. And then it finally goes back to the cacophony of Paris streets and then a reprise of the wonderful melody.

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Source: Music - nytimes.com

Tagcloud: DrumsJazzmusicRoach, Max

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