Jazz great, UMass prof Max Roach dies

By Kristin Palpini
Staff Writer

Published on August 17, 2007

AMHERST - When internationally renowned jazz drummer Max Roach came to Amherst, he ushered in a golden age of jazz.

As a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts, Roach taught and played alongside Archie Shepp, Billy Taylor and Yusef Lateef. He brought his longtime musical colleague Dizzy Gillespie to play a benefit concert for a UMass scholarship fund.

Roach, a founding architect of bebop who helped create the rhythmic language of modern jazz, made historic jazz performances happen in the Valley. But on Thursday the beat stopped when Roach died at a Manhattan hospital. He was 83 and had been ill for several years.

"He was a major musical force," said Jeffrey W. Holmes, director of UMass' Jazz & African-American Music Studies program, and a friend to Roach. "He had this kind of overall warmth with everything he did. I think he was truly touched by everyone and how they revered him, but he could play with people and deal with people on an eye-to-eye level.

"I'm really very saddened by this," added Holmes, who taught his first class at UMass with Roach in 1980.

Born Jan. 10, 1924, in Newland, N.C., Roach came to Amherst in 1972 at a time when the university had just launched its Afro-American studies program and was trying to increase the racial diversity of its staff and students, said friend Frederick C. Tillis, who is also the former director of the UMass Fine Arts Center and current director of the UMass Jazz in July program.

"We were very excited to have him. He's an internationally renowned jazz player, one of the greats," said Tillis, recalling Roach's arrival on campus.

What distinguished Roach from other drummers were his fast hands and ability to simultaneously maintain several rhythms. By layering different beats and varying the meter, Roach pushed jazz beyond the boundaries of standard 4/4 time. His dislocated beats helped define bebop, the high-speed, harmonically advanced music of the 1940s that helped elevate jazz from dance-hall entertainment to concert-stage art.

Roach's innovative use of cymbals for melodic lines, and tom-toms and bass drums for accents, helped elevate the percussionist from mere timekeeper to featured performer - on a par with the trumpeter and saxophonist.

"One of the grand masters of our music," Gillespie once observed.

"Drummers around the world are playing Max Roach licks, even if they don't know his name," said Tom Reney, a longtime WFCR jazz DJ and friend to Roach.

Roach taught at UMass from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. During that time he established the Jazz in July summer music program, taught jazz history classes and general music courses in addition to playing in faculty and community concerts.

"People always came in throngs to hear Max," said Holmes.

Reney said he still gets goose bumps when he thinks about Roach playing his ode to jazz drummer Jo Jones. Roach's tribute, "For Poppa Jo," was a rousing solo played on the high-hat, paired cymbals on a stand worked with a pedal.

"It was just him and a high-hat, but I still have goose flesh when I think about it. I'm sure everyone who has seen him play in the last 25 years would say the same thing," Reney said.

Roach was center-stage for the jazz upheaval of the 1940s and '50s, playing on landmark recordings with Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and many others.

In 1952, Roach and bassist-composer Charles Mingus founded Debut Records. Among the short-lived label's releases was a famed 1953 Toronto performance in Massey's Hall, dubbed "the greatest jazz concert ever," featuring Roach, Mingus, Parker, Gillespie and Powell.

While at UMass Roach also created the Fletcher Henderson Memorial Scholarship Fund, in memory of Henderson, the man who established the traditional jazz orchestra. (The fund now bears Roach's name as well.) For those who knew him, the way Roach established and perpetuated the scholarship fund was an example of his demeanor and generosity.

"He had a certain kind of, I consider it humility and respect for the culture of jazz," Tillis said. "He had such great contacts in the jazz world, and he'd bring them here to help us and the musicians."

Reney recalled another example of Roach's giving nature. It was the first time the two had met. Reney and a friend were producing Roach's first percussion solo concert at a Worcester venue in 1979. The payment arrangement for Roach was "the guarantee or the door," meaning Roach would receive the agreed fee or the revenues from ticket sales collected at the door, whichever was greater.

At the end of the night, Reney handed Roach the proceeds from the door, which were substantially more than what Reney had promised Roach for payment.

"He handed it back to me," Reney said with a chuckle. "He said You'll never survive in this business if you're this honest.'"

Tillis said Roach may have been the first person ever to hold a percussion solo concert.

"That's not an easy thing to do and maintain interest," Tillis said of an all-percussion performance. "He was one of the greats. His solo performances are one of the things he's known for."

But Roach was much more than a musician on the global stage; he was a member of the vanguard of a new black consciousness, Reney said. He was a man who used his talents to spread awareness of the injustices of racial bigotry and comported himself with a public and private dignity that permeated his relationships.

By the mid-1950s, Roach had watched several of his friends, including Parker, die from heroin addiction. In 1956, Roach was further devastated when trumpeter Clifford Brown died in a car accident.

After his own struggle with drugs and alcohol, Roach rebounded with a new political consciousness with the help of his first wife, singer Abbey Lincoln. Albums like "We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite" reflected his support of black activism.

"He used his music, especially in the '60s, to express his anger about what was going on, and rightfully so," Holmes said. "Even through everything, he always carried himself with respect and dignity, the same kind he demanded of others."

Roach also formed an all-percussion ensemble known as M'Boom, a quartet and a double quartet that included his daughter Maxine Roach on viola. He even worked with rapper Fab Five Freddy in the early 1980s. Ignoring critics, Roach insisted rap had a place on music's "boundless palette."

Roach, who in 1988 became the first jazz musician to receive a MacArthur Fellowship "genius award," said his curiosity reflected his sense of obligation to music. He was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995.

It was around this time that Roach retired from UMass. He left his mark on the university and through his tenure there brought national fame to Amherst.

"He was a major figure here. In my travels whenever I mentioned Amherst or UMass, Max's name would come up immediately," Reney said. "He was an amazing musician, and we were lucky to have had him here."

Information from the Washington Post and the Associated Press was used in this article.

Kristin Palpini can be reached at kpalpini@gazettenet.com.