Roach, Max

Roach, (Maxwell) Max

(1924–  ) jazz musician; born in New Land, N.C. The premier modern jazz drummer, he was raised in Brooklyn, attended the Manhattan School of Music, and recorded with Coleman Hawkins in 1943. Over the next four years, he was a sideman with Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, and Hawkins. He joined Charlie Parker's trailblazing quintet from 1947–49, then free-lanced as a session player and with Jazz at the Philharmonic and the Lighthouse All-Stars until 1954. Between 1954–56, he and Clifford Brown coled one of the most highly regarded groups in modern jazz. After Brown's death, Roach maintained a succession of groups while pursuing a wide range of activities as a composer and educator, particularly as a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts (1972).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.