Within the newest of LJN’ sequence by which musicians s write about their inspirations and idols, Liam Noble writes about one of many greats, Max Roach (1924-2007). What would have been the drummer’s one hundredth birthday fell on 10 January 2024.

Liam Noble writes: Max Roach is a bebop drummer. That phrase “bebop” is bandied round an terrible lot, typically dropping the “be” to change into merely “bop” when describing the rise of the streamlined rhythm sections that developed out of Miles Davis’s teams, Ahmad Jamal’s trio and, to some extent, Brubeck’s quartet. However it’s necessary to notice the variations, as a result of bebop will not be a music of magnificence. It’s not the type of factor you need in a wine bar. It’s a music of violence, of battle. Concepts don’t a lot bounce off one another as collide and dissipate as every new concept envelops the following. It’s noisy. All through these tracks, which comprise largely music made underneath his personal identify, Roach is pushing ahead, musically, conceptually, there’s a type of struggle to it, each sonically and politically.

Max Roach and Kenny Clarke are credited with the invention of bebop drumming. In broad brush strokes, you can say they turned the equipment the other way up by making the experience cymbal the primary marker of the time and turning the bass drum right into a type of battering ram that converses genially with the snare. This made the music sound nearer to the West African drum language from whence it got here, however with piano and bass typically in the identical register because the bass drum, the music was crowded, and in a crowd everyone seems to be combating for house. Later drummers like Philly Joe Jones and Jimmy Cobb would discover methods of scaling down the feel, pianists removed a lot of the decrease sounds they have been utilizing, and the concept of the “rhythm part” as a well-oiled machine emerged. However even within the later recordings of gamers like Roach and Artwork Blakey, you possibly can hear that sound, they’re combating for house.

Unusually for somebody who was well-known for inventing one thing, Max Roach by no means rested on these laurels however continued exploring with every new album he made. I haven’t included any of his “double quartet” recordings with string quartet right here as I’m not accustomed to that music, however he definitely wrestled some attention-grabbing sounds from that mixture. His work with choir, percussion ensembles and among the main avant-garde improvisers of the time present the vary of his pursuits.

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It’s typically stated that music is already “within the air”, and that musicians merely pull it out into the open. Max Roach is a kind of musicians who, for me, all the time appears like he’s making it himself, sculpting shapes with energetic belligerence out of flat and featureless rock. While Michelangelo famously stated” I noticed an angel within the marble and I carved till I set him free”, maybe Max Roach may need stated, chisels in hand, “there’s nothing there but, however after I’ve completed there will probably be”.

1 “I’ll Bear in mind April” from Clifford Brown and Max Roach Dwell At Basin Avenue

It’s a lot simpler to put in writing about experimental excursions than 5 nice musicians taking part in on the high of their type on acquainted tunes. Clifford Brown and Sonny Rollins are sensational, however Ritchie Powell is a revelation right here too. I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by his taking part in, particularly given brother Bud’s huge presence, however Ritchie performs some really unusual traces (together with a dreamy blues foray on the five-minute mark) between the inevitable adjustments. Roach’s experience cymbal is both gentle and floaty or stubbornly exact, relying on which day you take heed to it, and his solo builds, as all the time, to some extent the place the re-entry of the horns feels so good.

2 “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace” from We Insist!

It’s laborious to think about how radical this will need to have felt in 1960. Abbey Lincoln’s wordless vocalising is accompanied solely by Roach’s drums: as all the time, he’s taking part in phrases, however right here they’re faraway from any sense of meter. There’s a way that these two concepts together might be attention-grabbing eternally, however in “Protest”, Lincoln abruptly begins screaming and Roach matches her depth all the way in which. Within the closing a part of the three, a delicate 5/4 really feel underlies the sense of exhaustion, then reduction. Roach was all the time very lively politically, and right here he connects it together with his music with a rawness hardly ever seen earlier than or since.

3 “Garvey’s Ghost” from Percussion Bittersweet

There’s one thing tremendously heat about the way in which the ensemble are available in over this groove, with Abbey Lincoln’s distinctive voice enriching the sound from inside the feel. Roach’s dedication to creating new music was undimmed all through his lengthy artistic life, and this tune is one in every of my favourites. As typical, Roach dances by, and round, all of the bell patterns, lending a disruptive high quality to what’s in any other case a reasonably static sample. And like all seemingly static patterns in jazz, it’s there to be danced by and round…

4 “Virtually Like Me” from The Max Roach Trio (that includes Hassan Ibn Ali)

This observe feels a little bit like a companion piece to Ellington’s “Cash Jungle”, with everybody engaged in ferocious battle. Hassan’s out of tune piano screams like steel on steel in its excessive register, whereas Roach pummels patterns out of the air with a type of ecstatic rage. The tune itself, a type of extension of Monk’s “Friday The Thirteenth” into extra intervallic territory, ends on a chord that appears to solid doubt on every thing that went earlier than. Like a lot of Roach’s work, it’s a straight up problem to any notion of jazz as background music.

5 “For Huge Sid” from Drums Limitless

A transcriber’s dream this one…Roach takes the well-known “Mop Mop” made well-known by one in every of his heroes, Sid Catlett, and lays out a type of manifesto of motivic improvisation round it. What’s noticeable is how he leaves house round his concepts, just like the partitions across the frames of the work in a gallery. And there’s one thing about his bass drum sound on this recording that makes it a sonic pleasure in itself, and that’s one thing no transcription, or written phrase, can seize.

6 “Abstrutions” from Members Don’t Git Weary

That is the compulsory grooving opener that the success of Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” had made nearly obligatory within the early sixties. However one thing is totally different. Take heed to that hello hat, it appears nearly to have an entire drum equipment’s price of knowledge in its easy shuffle – and it makes every thing else sound nice. Throughout Stanley Cowell’s piano solo, I believed, certainly he’s bought to alter it? However no, each refrain comes again to that hello hat sample, lilting and agency, resilient but delicate. The concept that every musician sticks to their weapons, holding their place within the music, the move coming not from a mix however a type of persevering with stress between gamers, is firmly rooted in bebop. It additionally prepares his followers for a few of his extra adventurous duo recordings.

7 “One In Two – Two In One, Pt.1” from One In Two – Two In One”

Following a studio album the earlier yr, Anthony Braxton and Max Roach recorded a second duo dwell, and this one has the sting for me. For the primary 5 minutes, Roach solutions Braxton’s plaintive melody with cymbals and gongs of contrasting colors nearly like a spiritual ritual, unfolding in its personal time and house. Then abruptly, Roach launches into time, with Braxton’s hyperactive traces the proper foil as the 2 streams of rhythmic vitality bump up towards one another like juggernauts on a motorway. What follows is a rare exploration of colors and rhythms. Roach is absolutely listening…

8 “Duets, Half 2 (Dwell)” from Historic Concert events

Max Roach in duet with one other titan of improvised music. In some ways, it will be sufficient merely to know that these live shows exist, that it’s doable to shed one’s musical pores and skin, as Roach seems to have finished. The opening of this piece made me snicker out loud, Roach answering Taylor’s stunning crystalline buildings with swooping bell-like sounds. However, as with the Braxton set, we’re quickly in polyrhythmic territory the place each gamers appear completely at residence, each collectively and aside. Roach’s insistence one way or the other holds every thing collectively, and the rhythmic counterpoint so central to all music of African origin performs out in its personal idiosyncratic approach right here.

9 “Onomatopoeia” from M’Increase

Amongst the plenty of percussion each tuned and untuned, what I really like about this observe is how one can hear Roach’s sense of melody in how he disrupts. Though the 11 quaver sample chugs on all through, the adjustments in vary enable totally different voices to emerge, some of the compelling being the timpanist, who appears like he’s simply come from a session recording Varese’s “Ionisation” and is working off the residual sounds in his head. This band is an actual one-off, and yet one more indication of how Roach refused to cease pushing his artwork into unusual and great locations.

10 “Cash Jungle” from Cash Jungle

I used to be in two minds as as to if to incorporate this, because it’s not likely Roach’s file, however shut your eyes and take heed to what he’s doing. I feel it might be his file. Ellington is all the time an accompanist, even in a trio setting. Right here he appears like a boxer touchdown strategic punches towards his opponent, who on this case is the disruptive and tantrum-prone Charles Mingus. It’s Roach’s heavy cymbal beat that retains the present on the street and set towards this type of chaos, it sounds higher than ever. If I’m underselling it, I apologise for the confusion: I feel it’s my favorite piano trio ever…and now I by no means should put three cats in a bag to see what it will sound like.