Max Roach Passes Away

Drummer Max Roach died in his sleep last night at his home in Manhattan. He was 83 years old. A major player in the Bebop and Hard-bop eras of the '40s and '50s, Roach was also a proponent of the civil rights movement, conceiving in the '60s with Oscar Brown Jr. the protest record of protest records We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite. As one critic put it, he "initially mystified and thoroughly challenged other drummers," driving and innovating the genre of jazz to new heights with his multi-layered rhythms and unconventional meters.

A peer of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, Max Roach also lent his gift to students as a professor at the University of Massachusetts and was awarded 8 honorary doctorate degrees from Columbia University and the University of Bologna, the distinction of Harvard Jazz Master, and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in the late '80s.

Max Roach - The Third Eye