Jazz pioneer Max Roach dead at 83

Legendary jazz drummer Max Roach died in his sleep last night in New York City. He was 83 years old. An innovator of the highest level, Roach was one of the first jazz musicians to coax lyricism out of the drums. Roach ushered in a new expressive style of percussion in jazz, and subsequently all of pop music.

One of bebop’s founding members, Roach performed alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespee, and appeared on numerous seminal recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, among them Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool, Thelonious Monk’s Genius of Modern Music: Volume 2, and Bud Powell’s The Amazing Bud Powell: Vol. 1. As co-leader of the Clifford Brown and Max Roach quintet in the '50s, Roach propelled some of the most blistering recordings of the hard-bop era. While their partnership was cut short when Brown died in a car crash in 1956, Roach and Brown’s group produced a handful of the most vital and definitive cuts in jazz history, including “Sandu,” “Cherokee,” and “Pent-Up House.”

Roach was also a committed activist for civil rights. In 1960, he released We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite with vocalist Abbey Lincoln, an ambitious record that addressed racism and slavery in America.

In the 1970s, Roach continued to develop his sound and approach, performing with avant-garde musicians Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, and Archie Shepp, and in 1988, he was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Roach recorded his last album, alongside trumpeter Clark Terry, in 2002.

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