Max Roach biography

Synopsis

Max Roach was born on January 10, 1924 in New Land, North Carolina. He was raised in Brooklyn and studied at the Manhattan School of Music. One of the great jazz drummers and a pioneer of bebop, he recorded with Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown. Roach was also a composer and a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts. He died in 2007.

Profile

Musician. Legendary jazz drummer Max Roach was born January 10, 1924, in New Land, North Carolina. He was raised in Brooklyn and as a child, he played drums in gospel bands. Roach studied at the Manhattan School of Music and recorded with Coleman Hawkins in 1943. Over the next four years, he played with jazz greats -- Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, and Hawkins. He joined Charlie Parker's trailblazing quintet (1947–49), then freelanced as a session player and with Jazz at the Philharmonic and the Lighthouse All-Stars until 1954. In 1954–56, he and Clifford Brown formed one of the most highly regarded groups in modern jazz.

After Brown's death, Roach maintained a succession of groups while pursuing a wide range of activities as a composer and educator, particularly as a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts (1972).

Roach, best known for creating the fast-paced bebop style, died August 16, 2007, in New York City.