RIP Max Roach

Max Roach died today. I know his drumming best from his collaborations with trumpeters Clifford Brown and Booker Little (who both died tragically young), but Roach was there in all aspects of Bebop from the start.

I remember at some point, back in college, in one of my Jazz History classes, having the teacher playing records just so we could hear Max Roach's playing. Pointing out not just the way, in his solos, that the cymbols were carrying melodic material (which I was taught was something that he invented), but when he was just laying down fours (if they were fours), that if you charted the poly-rhythms (which the Prof. did, on the blackboard) on those cymbols, they were inhumanly complicated. Sounded really cool too.