Home » Jazz Articles » Max Roach
Jazz Articles about Max Roach
The Rebel Festival
by Karl Ackermann
On the morning of July 4, 1960, there were more than a few signs of the mayhem that had taken place the night before in Newport, Rhode Island. Newport's Millionaires Row woke up to broken store windows, overturned vehicles, and storm drains clogged with garbage and beer bottles. One-hundred-eighty-two people, mostly young, New England college students had been arrested by combined forces of the Newport Police Department, Rhode Island State Police, and troops from the state's National Guard. The incoming ...
read moreCharlie Parker: Birth Of Bebop - Celebrating Bird At 100
by Mark Corroto
Let's face it, there is absolutely nothing new to say about the music of Charlie Parker, unless (insert joke here) you happen to be Phil Schaap. Lao Tzu's quote The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long" is fitting. John Coltrane was 40 when he died in 1967, Eric Dolphy 36 in 1964, and Clifford Brown died at 25 in 1956. Parker was dead at the age of thirty-five in 1955. His legend has grown larger with ...
read moreTrumpets? Yes (And More)
by Marc Cohn
Lots of trumpeters this week (mostly 21st century music): Marcus Printup, Ron Horton, Roy Hargrove, Farnell Newton, along with Buck Clayton (and Buddy Tate) plus Emmett Berry (and Don Byas). Big band (a bit off center) from Marty Ehrlich and Django Bates and the Charlie Parker centennial (Koko, including the 'famous' breakdown) and our chronological Sonny Rollins celebration, this time with Max Roach's band from 1957. Along the way John Patton, Ronnie Cuber, Don Byron and Stan Getz. Enjoy the ...
read moreCharlie Parker: The Savoy 10-inch LP Collection
by Kyle Simpler
Charlie Parker is one of the most important musicians in jazz history and a household name even for people who never listen to jazz. His music is like a textbook for aspiring jazz musicians, and it still sounds modern even after more than a half century since its creation. 2020 marks the centennial of Parker's birth, and to help commemorate the anniversary, Craft Recordings has released a vinyl box set containing the first four The New Sounds in Modern Music" ...
read moreBebop Pioneers in the 1950s (1949 - 1960)
by Russell Perry
Bebop had its roots in the big bands of the late 1930s and was nurtured in jam sessions during the war and the musician's strike of the 1940s. By 1950, the prescient Coleman Hawkins, and the pioneers--Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Max Roach were well-established stars at risk of the music moving on and leaving them behind. Yet, they all had much more to offer in the 1950s. Playlist Host Intro 0:00 Coleman Hawkins -Ben Webster ...
read moreMax Roach & Archie Shepp: The Long March
by Glenn Astarita
Bebop was considered a radical departure for jazz music during its formation in the 1940s and 1950s, pioneered by drummer Max Roach, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie among others. Coupled with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp's 1960s avant-garde jazz proclivities, the artists respectively helped procure a prismatic and non-traditional perspective on the jazz idiom. However, their discographies indicate sojourns into more mainstream ventures as well. This duo outing was captured live at a 1979 performance at Jazzfestival Willisau in Switzerland and ...
read moreMax Roach / Archie Shepp: The Long March
by Troy Collins
Recorded live in concert at the Willisau Jazz Festival on August 30, 1979, The Long March documents another of drummer Max Roach's historic duo collaborations with the leaders of the jazz avant-garde. This stellar date with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp follows Streams of Consciousness (Piadrum, 1977), with pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, and Birth and Rebirth (Black Saint, 1978), with multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton, predating Historic Concerts (Soul Note, 1979), his meeting with pianist Cecil Taylor, by only a few months. ...
read more