Pete La Roca

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Pete La Roca (born Peter Sims) was an American jazz drummer. He adopted the name La Roca early in his musical career when he was a timbales player in Latin bands. Between 1957 and 1968 he played with Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Slide Hampton, the John Coltrane Quartet, Marian McPartland, Art Farmer, Freddie Hubbard, Mose Allison, Charles Lloyd, Paul Bley, and Steve Kühn, among others, as well as leading his own group and working as the house drummer at the Jazz Workshop in Boston, Massachusetts. During this period, he twice recorded as leader, firstly on Basra (Blue Note, 1965) and also on Turkish Women at the Bath (Douglas, 1967), also issued as Bliss under pianist Chick Corea's name on Muse. In 1968 he left music to become a lawyer, successfully suing when his second album as leader was released under Corea's name without his consent. He returned to jazz in 1979, and has recorded one album as a leader, Swingtime (Blue Note, 1997).

Paul Bley: Floater & Syndrome The Upright Piano Sessions Revisited

by Chris May
May 26, 2025

One way for a musician to conjure rapture is through full-frontal shamanic assault, the sonic equivalent of the Orgasmatron machine that Jane Fonda's character encounters in Roger Vadim's 1968 sci-fi romp Barbarella. Funk is an ideal vehicle. But the sensations produced are superficial and short-lived. A less travelled path instead uses subtlety, understatement and nuance, and the music approaches laterally, almost by stealth. The stratagem demands more of the musician, and indeed more of the listener, but the result can ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Pete La Roca: Basra - 1965

by Marc Davis
June 2, 2016

When drummer Pete La Roca recorded Basra in 1965, the Iraq war was decades away. Today, the name Basra evokes memories of the 2003 invasion. A recording called Basra in 2016 would probably make listeners think of Saddam Hussein. Not a good association. But in 1965? It was just an exotic-sounding, Middle Eastern name. And that's exactly what the 10-minute title track to Basra sounds like. It begins with a heavy, pulsing bass. It features a meandering, haunting ...

Album Review

Pete La Roca: Basra

by Greg Simmons
January 3, 2013

Pete La Roca was one of those musicians with a long but under-sung career. He was a sideman to some great Blue Note leaders including saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, and Joe Henderson, but he only ever recorded one date (1965's Basra) under his own name during the label's heyday, and indeed only three records total as a leader over a fifty-year career. He was a drummer in the background in almost every sense.According to La Roca's obituary ...

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Album Review

Pete La Roca: Turkish Women at the Bath

Read "Turkish Women at the Bath" reviewed by Jim Santella

by Jim Santella
March 1, 1998

This album has a strange history. As Joel Dorn reminds us in the liner notes, it was originally produced by Alan Douglas in 1967 with the current title. The quartet is led by drummer Pete LaRoca, and features the talents of pianist Chick Corea, bassist Walter Booker, and tenor saxophonist John Gilmore. However, the album was later sold to Muse Records, who subsequently released it with a different title, Bliss! (MR-5011), listing Chick Corea as the leader. “Pete took umbrage, ...