Here’s Max Roach soloing with his left hand on Commutation, by J.J. Johnson, on Johnson’s record First Place. A nice little self contained lesson item— there’s some trading after this solo I didn’t bother with. […]
Category: Max Roach
Groove o’ the day: Max In Tunisia
A selection of grooves played by Max Roach on the Miles Davis album At Last!— a live recording made at The Lighthouse in LA in 1953, and released thirty years later. Max here has been […]
Max Roach / Stan Levey duo transcription: Milano Blues
Here’s a composed drum duo played by Max Roach and Stan Levey, on their album Drummin’ The Blues. They trade off on some parts, and play in unison on others. I believe the whole thing […]
Transcription: Max fours
I am not screwing around people, this is now an ALL Max Roach site. Here he is trading fours on Minor Meeting, from the record Sonny Clark Trio, from 1960— there’s another record by that […]
Transcription: Max soloing
On this second of two days of major acts of white supremacist violence here in this paradise we call “the USA”, let’s retreat into art, with part 2 of the thing from the other day: […]
Transcription: Max comping
That’s the theme of the week now: jazz comping. Here’s Max Roach playing on the horn solos on A Little Sweet, from his record The Many Sides of Max. Each solo is 24 bars long, […]
Transcription: Max Roach solo – I’ll Remember April
A Max Roach epic here, a chorus of fours and two solo choruses on I’ll Remember April— not a short tune. This will probably go in an e-book sometime, so get it free while you […]
Ben Riley on musicality
Extended excerpt from Ben Riley’s Modern Drummer interview from 1986, by Jeff Potter, in which he talks about melodic drumming, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, and his other influences: JP: You have been called a “melodic […]
Max on the bass drum
An exchange on the evolution of the bass drum in jazz, from Max Roach, circa 1981, from his Modern Drummer interview with Scott K. Fish. SF: Back in the ’50s and ’60s jazz drummers were […]
Kenny Clarke and Max Roach
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 […]
Max wants you to turn off YouTube
“We used to listen to records and take off the record what the person was doing. You didn’t see the person. You’d just hear it. We’d figure out what was happening with our ears. Then […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Max Roach fast
“We’d have jam sessions at Minton’s where the tenor players were long-winded,” Roach explained. “Don Byas would play 20 minutes on ‘Cherokee,’ and then Johnny Griffin would play another 20 minutes, and then somebody else […]