It’s interesting that history doesn’t really move in a linear way, even when you have adjacent history-making players living in the same city at the same time, playing with the same people:
“Kenny’s influence was that you should get more involved in harmonic playing. Kenny plays piano and is a total percussionist. It had little to do with the technique of playing. Kenny was in the Army when I came on the scene. I knew nothing about him until after recording with Coleman Hawkins [1943, Roach was 19]. That style of playing was already established around New York.
The first person I heard on radio who played broken rhythms using the bass drum and hi-hat was Jo Jones. Actually, Chick Webb, Jo Jones, O’Neil Spencer and Sidney Catlett had the greatest influence on me.”
– Max Roach, Modern Drummer interview
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