Jazz Articles about Max Roach

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Max Roach / Archie Shepp: The Long March

by Troy Collins
September 16, 2009

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. ...

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Max Roach: Jazz Contrasts & Introducing Johnny Griffin

by Francis Lo Kee
April 6, 2008

Kenny Dorham Jazz Contrasts (Keepnews Collection) Riverside-Concord 2008 Johnny Griffin Introducing (RVG) Blue Note 2008

These two fantastic recordings feature the great drumming of the late Max Roach. His playing is flawless and demonstrates how a drummer can be both dramatic soloist and sensitive accompanist. Kenny Dorham was ...

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Max Roach: We Insist! Freedom Now Suite

by Chris May
October 8, 2007

Re-released following the passing of drummer Max Roach in August 2007, We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960) remains a work of enduring musical and social importance. Notwithstanding Roach's central role in the creation of bop, or his later hard bop explorations with trumpeter Clifford Brown, it is, by some margin, the most perfectly realised album he recorded. 1960 was the year in which black Americans' struggle for civil rights reached critical mass. In February, anti-segregationist lunch-counter sit-ins ...

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Kenny Dorham: Kenny Dorham: Jazz Contrasts

by Samuel Chell
October 5, 2007

In the new liner notes included with this addition to the Keepnews Collection on Riverside, the producer expresses his satisfaction with this 1957 “blowing" album, showcasing the trumpeter whom, after Clifford Brown, he considers second to none. Recorded approximately a year following Brown's passing, the date demonstrates Dorham's gifts as a balladeer, composer and, above all, as a pyrotechnician--the kind of player who can take apart a song's chord structure and reconstruct it with surgical precision, even while operating at ...

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A Tribute To Max Roach

by David A. Orthmann
September 17, 2007

Introduction

I can't recall the reason why I picked Percussion Bitter Sweet out of a record store bin in the mid-sixties. It was one of the first recordings I ever purchased. Apart from Max's brilliant drumming and knotty yet accessible compositions, it served as an introduction to iconic musicians like Eric Dolphy, Booker Little, Clifford Jordan, Mal Waldron, Art Davis, and Abbey Lincoln. Several years later, I experienced Max's mastery of the drums in person. Spanning just a portion of ...

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Moments with Max

by Nick Catalano
September 7, 2007

The passing of Max Roach will initiate countless reminiscences, retrospectives, and reassessments. With his appearances alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on “Ko-Ko"--the seminal early bebop release--"The Birth of The Cool" with Miles Davis, and on countless recordings with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and other bop pioneers, Max set a new standard for percussion even before he started his first group with Clifford Brown in 1954.

Soon, writers and music folk everywhere will be recalling incidents from Max's ...

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Kenny Dorham: Jazz Contrasts

by David Rickert
July 11, 2007

Producer Orrin Keepnews was never one to indulge much in blowing sessions, but this 1957 recording from trumpeter Kenny Dorham comes pretty close. With a lineup featuring Sonny Rollins, Oscar Pettiford, Hank Jones, and Max Roach, why not just give the guys a few standards and turn them loose? Dorham had been recruited for Riverside from a successful stint at Blue Note and Rollins had just completed Saxophone Colossus (Prestige, 1956), so both were eager and ready. The rhythm section ...