It’s not often you hear a jazz debate on sports radio. So yesterday’s exchange about the Dave Brubeck recording of “Take Five” – and the ensuing debate over its authorship (by Brubeck’s alto saxist, alter ego, and longtime associate Paul Desmond) – may actually qualify as a predecent-setting occasion.

The fact that it also included comments from one of the city’s leading jazz drummer-bandleaders? Well, that just puts it over the top.

Here’s the setup: with “Take Five” playing behind them, ESPN Radio (WMVP) hosts “Carmen, Jurko & Harry” found themselves enmeshed in the question of whether this most famous of jazz tunes could in fact be called “a Dave Brubeck song” if it was actually written by someone else. Among their listeners was Chicago drummer Ted Sirota, and as he explains (and as you can hear here), he finally couldn’t take it any more. So he called in.

Sirota – best known for his acclaimed band the Rebel Souls, and for his membership in the Sabertooth jazz quartet that plays each Saturday night deep into Sunday morning at the Green Mill – brought the proper perspective to this burning question. I’m still researching the premise that this represents the first recorded instance of a jazz musician settling what amounts to a sports-bar bet.

(However, I do like Sirota’s reaction to being immediately put on the air after telling the producer he was a jazz drummer: “That’s the first time I’ve ever been treated better by saying I’m a jazz drummer!”)

Listening to the preamble to Sirota’s comment – the first 2:50 or so of the Carmen-Jurko-Harry summit – you can easily understand Sirota’s growin impatience with these guys. It also begs the question of why Ted Sirota was listening to these geniuses in the first place. But upon hearing him set them straight, you’re kind of glad he did.

The one chance I had to talk to Paul on the phone didn’t go so well.  It was 1991 or 92, and Kurt Rosenwinkel was living in the extra room in my apartment.  The phone rings and I answer it. This voice snaps out, “WHO IS THIS?!”  I was taken aback.  I always have hated people calling MY telephone and being rude. Plus, it sounded like he was calling from a pay phone, which seemed shady to me for some reason – like an angry drug dealer or something.  I said, “THIS IS TED!”, trying to be rude right back. Then the gruff voice barks out, “WELL IS KURT THERE?!” I yelled back real loud and obnoxious, “NO KURT’S NOT HERE!!!”  Then he says, “Well tell him Paul Motian called!”  I almost dropped the phone!  So many things rushed through my head in the next two seconds – “Oh shit!  I was just rude to one of my heroes!” I had a thousand questions that I wanted to ask if I ever got a chance to speak with Paul Motian but I could barely find my voice enough to say sheepishly, “Sure, I’ll tell him you called.”  And that was it…

Fortunately I did get to hear him play in person a number of times and I think it’s really incredibly inspiring that a lot of the musicians that I came up with (Kurt, Chris Cheek, Bill McHenry, and others) got to be regulars in his band, as I know they all idolized him as well.  I remember how much of an impact the “Monk In Motian” record had on cats at Berklee when it came out.  I remember the excitement that we all had when “On Broadway Vol. I” and then “On Broadway Vol. II” came out. He played on so many influential records long before these, and so many after.  His playing on Paul Bley’s “Turns” absolutely blew my mind – and still does.  That’s one of my desert island discs.  There are so many others. Maybe I’ll list some of my favorites soon…

MAX ROACH

On Thursday, August 16 the world lost a true musical giant.  One of the last surviving leaders of the be-bop revolution in jazz, Max Roach, passed away at the age of 83. I remember hearing Max for the first time.  It was on a record my Mom brought home for me one day when I was 14 years old.  I was an aspiring drummer and had been practicing and honing my skills for a few years.  I had heard of Max Roach and seen pictures, but I didn’t know what he sounded like.  I took the LP up to my room and checked out the cover – “Rich vs. Roach” on Mercury Records.  Max and Buddy Rich were facing off behind their respective drum kits, thrusting their sticks/swords at one another, getting ready for battle.  The bright red background warned the listener – there would be bloodshed! Meanwhile, Max and Buddy did their best to prevent their serious-as-death expressions from bursting into all out laughter. I placed the thick slab of vinyl on my turntable, dropped the needle and braced myself for the first track, “Sing, Sing, Sing”.  The big band quickly blasted its way through the melody and then stepped aside as Buddy took the first solo.  The sound was very impressive, however it was nothing new to me.  I had heard Buddy Rich before.  I’d actually heard him a bunch of times.  Every time he would come on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson my parents would call me to the TV so I could see him do his thing.  I saw him in a drum battle with Animal on the Muppet Show, and even saw him live on one occasion at a local theater.  He was known as the “World’s Greatest Drummer”, and as far as I could tell it was probably true.  Who could play faster or stronger than Buddy Rich?

But something didn’t sit quite right with me when I listened to Buddy.  I couldn’t quite place my finger on it.  Hell, I was only 14, and jazz still sounded like a foreign language to me.  I zeroed in on his solo – a bombastic barrage of rudiments blasting away at the snare drum with bass drum reinforcements- a relentless attack.  It sounded like war.  How could anyone play so much drums in such a short period of time I wondered?  Buddy’s onslaught ended and the band came back in with their interlude. I’m thinking “Max doesn’t have a chance.  What the hell could he do after that?”  In no time my question was answered.   “DIG-A-DA-BOOM…………….DIG-A-DA-BOOM…….BOOM-KAKA-BOOM-KAKA-BOOM-KAKA-BOOM-KAKA………..DIG-A-DA-BOOM.

Max had covertly instructed the bass player to continue walking his bass line during the drum solo!  He used the bass line as cover while he ducked in and out of the music.  It was guerilla warfare!  Buddy fights his way, Max’ll fight his!  Buddy attacks, Max retreats, Buddy camps, Max harasses.  Music in command!  You have to pick up the sticks in order to put down the sticks (ok I’ll stop now).  It was brilliant.  In my mind there was no question who won the battle.  Max Roach had defeated the great Buddy Rich!  In my mind I pictured Buddy Rich turning red from embarrassment (not from blood) while Max continued on with his masterful solo – building tension and release, using dynamics, using call and response, playing melodically and cleverly, and all the while swinging his ass off.  And to top it all off there was that sound!  I had never heard anyone tune their drums like that!  The small tom was tensioned so high it almost sounded like a bongo drum, the floor tom was up there as well, but they spoke with such clarity and assuredness.  I was blown away.

Not long after hearing that record I got a chance to hear Max and his band in person at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago.  I arrived early so I could get a good seat up close to the drums.  “What a piece of crap” I thought to myself as I checked out the knock-off, made in Taiwan drum set that the club had set up for Max.  “How dare they provide these drums for the great Max Roach!”  I started to get nervous for Max – would he be able to play this horrible instrument with these beat up rock drum heads on them?  I was worried.  I thought I should do something.  But then again who does one call in a situation like that?  Besides, this was before cell phones.  Well, before I could figure it out the band hit the stage, and from the downbeat I was transfixed.  Mr. Roach made those drums sound just like the beautiful silver sparkle Gretsch kit that he played on “Rich vs. Roach”.  Man, he made those drums sing!  They sounded bold and beautiful and the band was cookin.

Later in the set Max did something that really blew my mind.  He picked up the throne and the hi-hat, carried them out to the front of the stage and sat down.  “What the…?” I was stumped. Then I watched in amazement as he proceeded to play an extended solo using only the hi-hat. And believe me; he played every part of the hi-hat, from the top of the hi-hat rod to the rubber stoppers on the legs.  It was an amazing display of musical ingenuity.  Later I learned the story behind this drum solo, called “Mr. Hi Hat”, which he performed in dedication to one of his heroes, Papa Jo Jones.

I learned a profound lesson that day and, although it sounds mellow dramatic, it changed my life forever.  I learned that music comes from within.  I learned that the sound is inside the musician.  I learned that the instrument is just that – an instrument- a vehicle to bring the inside out.  Max Roach taught me this.

It’s hard for me to think about Max and not relate it to some very personal experiences in my life.  After hearing Max that afternoon at the Jazz Showcase I decided that I too wanted to be a jazz drummer, and here I am still playing and performing 25 years later.  Fortunately, I would hear and meet Max a few more times over the years.  I wonder just how many people in the world had similar experiences and decided they wanted to be drummers after hearing Max.  Had to be a lot of ‘em.

What was it about his sound, his concept, and his time feel that made so many people want to listen to him, to play with him, and play like him?  As I dug deeper in the jazz bins at my local record stores, I could hear his influence clearly in so many other drummers – Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Dannie Richmond, Stan Levey, Ben Riley, Dennis Charles, Art Taylor all sounded like Max’s offspring.  Even John Bonham of Led Zeppelin would quote Max’s “The Drum Also Waltzes” in his famous “Moby Dick” drum solos.  Max Roach was quite possibly the most influential jazz drummer of all time and considered by most to be the father of modern jazz drumming.

Max Roach was born in New Land, North Carolina on Jan. 10, 1924 but grew up in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn. His mother sang gospel, and Max began playing drums in gospel bands at 10.  Later he studied percussion formally at the Manhattan School of Music, but eventually left and got his real education, like so many others, on 52nd St.  Max was quick to give props to the masters that came before him and influenced his playing as he was coming up.  “Even though I was working with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Don Byas in the small-group atmosphere of 52nd St., we all came out of the swing era, and when I was growing up, my biggest ambition was to play with the big bands.  But by the time we got to 52nd St., taxes and the war had heralded the demise of the big bands, and small bands became the order of the day.  But I grew up with the big bands.  In those days, you didn’t get a chance to see (Gene) Krupa or Buddy (Rich) in the black community because we had separate dance halls and theaters.  It was two different cultures.  So my big influences were Chick Webb, Jo Jones, and a drummer that few people know, Razz Mitchell, who was with the Savoy Sultans…Then, of course, there was Jimmy Crawford, Big Sid Catlett and O’Neill Spencer…”

After brief stints with Duke Ellington and Benny Carter, Max was with Dizzy Gillespie’s quintet by 1943 and playing with Charlie Parker by 1945.  As a major innovator on the instrument, he played with everyone who was anyone on the bebop scene.

THE BE-BOP REVOLUTION

In his classic book of interviews called “Notes and Tones” jazz drummer Arthur Taylor asked Max “Where did the term be-bop come from?”   Max responded, “’Be-bop’ is the name of a song written by Dizzy Gillespie.  As far as I can remember, critics called the music be-bop when they came into the club where we were playing at that particular time on Fifty-Second Street.  The music was so unique and unusual, so fresh and original; they asked Dizzy what he called it, and perhaps Dizzy misunderstood their question, or maybe he told them the title of the tune…and they just called all the music be-bop.  It’s another one of those nicknames like boy, nigger and jazz.  In fact, the music which Dizzy, Bird, Monk and people like that created is very difficult to master technically and very difficult to play emotionally, because you have to get your emotions up to the level of the technique involved, which isn’t easy.  They’ve been nicknaming our music for a long time, and I resent terms such as jazz and be-bop.”

Unfortunately, these are the names that stuck.  Be-bop was a revolution within jazz.  It was a radical rupture with what had preceded it – the “Swing Era”.  Many listeners and musicians belittle the Swing Era, which is shortsighted and unfair.  If not for the gliding swing of the Basie Band and the sophistication of Duke Ellington there would be no be-bop.  The trumpet of Louis Armstrong, the saxophones of the “Big Three” – Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Ben Webster, the guitar of Charlie Christian, the piano of Art Tatum and the drums of Papa Jo Jones and Sid Catlett laid the groundwork for what was to follow.

But what did follow was radical in all aspects.  It changed forever the way that musicians would approach melody, harmony and rhythm and it was spearheaded primarily by the great alto saxophonist, Charlie “Bird” Parker. Musicians like Bird, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Oscar Pettiford, Don Byas, Fats Navarro, Miles Davis and others broke with tradition while they experimented with sound at legendary clubs like Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem in the early 1940’s.  They risked everything and had no guarantees that their music would be accepted either commercially or artistically.  But they saw their music as the truth and they pressed forward in the face of adversity.

Bebop turned the jazz world on its head and Max Roach was the drummer for the revolution.  Max was Bird’s drummer and appeared on most of his recordings.  One of the attributes of be-bop was the breakneck tempos that the musicians started to play – improvising at the speed of light.  Max raised the bar for all drummers when he burned up those tempos with Bird. Along with drummers like Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, Shadow Wilson and others, Max is credited for the shift in how drummers played time (i.e. the rhythm they would use to accompany the other musicians).  By moving the main emphasis of time playing from the hi-hat to the ride cymbal and decreasing the volume of the “boom-boom-boom-boom” of the bass drum to sit underneath the walking bass line (referred to as “feathering the bass drum”). This gave the music a leaner, more agile feeling, but still kept the rhythm driving forward.

Before be-bop, the bass drum played a different role because Swing music was dance music and required a strong “4 on the floor” from the bass drum.  However, World War II had a profound impact on the music business.  There were rations and bans on many basic materials, including rubber, which made it difficult to keep a big band on the road.  Not surprisingly, in the racist U.S.  Black musicians had a harder time than white musicians keeping their busses on the road.   They found themselves without access to new tires when they needed them.  On top of that, many of the musicians were drafted and shipped off to war.

As a result of the economic and social impact of the war, the big bands started to break up and small groups of four, five or six musicians began to take their place. The music moved from the ballroom to the night club and the scene became more about listening than dancing. Kenny Clarke, Max and other drummers began to break up the snare drum and bass drum patterns to emphasize certain beats in the rhythm or accentuate an idea behind a soloist.  This became known as “dropping bombs”. These concepts, put forward by Max, along with his melodic soloing can be heard on early recordings by Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Miles Davis and others.  Although it created such a tremendous upheaval, the bebop era was short lived.  Charlie Parker died in 1955 at the age of 34, and the music continued on without him.

HARD BOP

In 1952 Max Roach teamed up with Charles Mingus to start their own artist run record label – Debut Records.  The two understood the importance of owning the rights to their own music and witnessed just how badly their fellow musicians were being exploited, sometimes selling their life’s work away for a few hundred dollars or some drugs.  Although the label was short lived as a result of the owners’ busy performance schedules, it was historically important and laid the groundwork for musicians to start their own labels in the future like Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom Records.

During the mid 50’s Max and the great trumpet player, Clifford Brown, co-led a band that remains one of the most influential in jazz history. The band featured either Harold Land or Sonny Rollins on tenor sax, Richie Powell on piano, and George Morrow on bass. This band, along with others like the Miles Davis Quintet, The Horace Silver Quintet, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, would usher in a new era and a new style of music that came to be known as “hard-bop”.

Clifford Brown and Richie Powell, along with Powell’s wife, would die in a tragic car accident while the band was on tour. Brown was only 25 years old.  Max took Brownie’s death very hard and entered into a dark period of drinking and depression that took him years to overcome.  However, he did form a new band with another phenomenal young trumpet player, Booker Little, and would continue to blaze his own path in the music. Tragically, Little would soon die at a very young age as well.  He was only 23 when he died of uremia.

Max persevered and continued his groundbreaking work.  One of his innovations was his incorporation of odd time signatures into jazz.  Modern classical composers like Stravinsky, Bartok, and Leonard Bernstein had frequently used odd time signatures in their work, but bebop stayed stuck in 4/4 time.  Max recorded his album “Jazz in ¾ Time”, which was a collection of six tunes all in ¾ time.  This was path breaking at the time and predated Paul Desmond’s hit song with the Dave Brubeck Quartet “Take Five ” by two years.  Max would continue to explore music in 5/4, 7/4, 9/4 and beyond.

Equally as important as his musical achievements, it was also during this era of the late 50’s to early 60’s that Max’s revolutionary political outlook would start to play a prominent role in his music.

A REBEL AND A FREEDOM FIGHTER

Before there was Bob Dylan, Peter Tosh, The Clash, Public Enemy or Rage Against the Machine, there was Max Roach. In 1958 a record called “Freedom Suite” was released by the great tenor saxophonist, Sonny Rollins.  This record featured Roach on drums and Oscar Pettiford on bass.  The album was groundbreaking for a number of reasons.  First, it was recorded by a piano-less trio, which was virtually unheard of at this time. This format gave the music a “free” quality as a result of not being locked in by harmony that normally would be dictated by the presence of a piano or guitar. Second, the entire first side of the album consisted of Sonny’s composition, “The Freedom Suite”, lasting nearly twenty minutes – also unheard of for a studio album at that time.  Finally, the music had a political theme. It exposed the hypocrisy of racism in the U.S. and called for the freedom of Black people.

On the back of the LP was a special statement by Sonny that read, “America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humor, its music.  How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America’s culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.”

Although this statement might seem somewhat tepid by today’s standards, it unfortunately still rings true fifty years later, and was incredibly daring and brave to put on the back of a record album in 1958.  However, the B side of the album failed to sustain the theme of the A side. It featured four standards that although played brilliantly by the trio, were not artistically and politically groundbreaking like the first side.  Although Sonny shied away from making more statements like “Freedom Suite”, fortunately for us Max would pick up where Sonny left off.

In 1960 Max and Mingus would again team up to protest against the conventional and unchallenging music programming of the Newport Jazz Festival.  They hosted their own shadow festival and dubbed it the Newport Rebel Festival.  Ironically, the Newport Festival was shut down as a result of rioting and the “rebel” fest thrived as a result.

In 1961, Roach held a protest on stage at Carnegie Hall during a Miles Davis concert.  Max believed that the benefit concert for which Miles had agreed to perform was for an organization that claimed to be providing aid to Africa, but was actually a CIA front.  He sat on stage and held up a sign in protest.  Miles talked about how much this pissed him off in his autobiography.  He said he couldn’t play shit because Max was distracting him. Later, Max explained to Miles that he was just trying to look out for him because he didn’t want him to be used by people who didn’t have good intentions. The long time friends eventually did work it out.

Max began writing compositions that would directly relate to his experiences and the freedom struggles of the time.  His albums in the 60’s had names like, “Deeds, Not Words”, “It’s Time!”, and “Members Don’t Get Weary”.  However, Max would make what many would consider one of his finest statements as an artist with his 1960 recording of “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite”.

In a 1993 interview with Modern Drummer magazine, Max explains that “Freedom Now Suite…was commissioned by the Junior League of the NAACP in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.  It was actually written for voice, percussion, and dance.  The first presentation was multi-media with singers, chorus, dancers, narration, and film”.  He continues, “Nat Henthoff, who was A&R director for Candid Records, came to the performance and asked us to record the “Freedom Now Suite”. So we recorded it and then sneaked it into South Africa as a jazz record.  But then it got banned because of Nat’s liner notes, which explained that one of the pieces was about the massacre of people in Johannesburg. Then it reached the Associated Press that a jazz record had been banned in South Africa, that record became a collector’s item and sold more copies than any record I’ve ever made.”

“We Insist!” has inspired activists and musicians alike for decades. The cover portrays a lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina by three young SNCC activists.  The recording featured the powerful lyrics of the great singer, entertainer, writer and activist Oscar Brown Jr., and the moving voice of Max’s wife at the time, Abbey Lincoln.  Roach’s breadth as an artist, a drummer and a revolutionary is abundantly evident in this piece of work, as is his sense of internationalism.  The musicians on the album, Coleman Hawkins, Booker Little, Babatunde Olatunji, and others reflect this sense of internationalism.

The record begins in the slave South with “Driva’ Man”. This haunting piece is performed in an awkward 5/4 time signature, with Max’s drum and a tambourine emulating the crack of the drivaman’s whip on beat one of every measure.  The record ends with “Tears For Johannesburg”, in which the musicians link their own struggle to that of their brothers and sisters in South Africa at a time shortly after the Sharpeville massacres had taken place.

In 1961 Max would record yet another masterful record in the mode of “We Insist!” entitled “Percussion Bittersweet”. The first song on the record, “Mama”, “does not look at women in the romantic sense”, explains Roach, “but rather as strong, self-sufficient human beings who take an active part in world problems.”  Max clearly grasped what Mao meant when he said that “women hold up half the sky”.   Max describes the next track “Tender Warriors” as being “written for our youth who partake in our struggles for independence and equality.  They are freedom riders, sit-in demonstrators and all others who actively participate in the fight for civil rights.”  This record also includes a piece entitled “Praise For a Martyr”, which according to Roach “was composed in homage to all the men and women who have sacrificed their lives fighting for their individual and collective freedoms.”

It could help put things in perspective when you think that in 1961 the Beatles still had Pete Best as their drummer and their biggest song was a single called “My Bonnie”.  As a black man and an artist, Max was really risking everything by making such bold statements.  Both he and Abbey Lincoln later spoke about how they were blacklisted by many in the music industry and suffered financially as a result of the bold stance they took on many issues.

In the liner notes to the 1962 recording “Speak Brother Speak” Max wrote, “The music in this album was created to mirror the street rallies and meetings that exist today in the ghetto areas of the large cities in the U.S.A, such as the Fillmore district in San Francisco, the South Side of Chicago, and Harlem in New York, to mention a few.”

Max talked about this in the Modern Drummer interview from 1993. “That was a period of total protest, and I was heavily involved in the civil rights movement.  I’ve never believed in art just for the sake of art.  It is entertainment, of course, and dancing is also part of it, but it can also be for enlightenment.  Critics and other musicians sometimes jump on my case and say, ‘Max, if you want to make some money, forget about the politics.’  But you are the way you are, and that’s what came out of me.”

Max would continue to make beautiful and challenging music throughout the 60’s and into the 21st century.  One record from 1965 entitled “Drums Unlimited” is an indispensible part of any drummer’s record collection and features the legendary drum solos “The Drum Also Waltzes” and “For Big Sid”. On “Chattahoochee Red”, released in 1981, Roach would play an overdubbed drum solo over Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”

In the course of his career he would perform, with gospel choirs, symphony orchestras, string quartets, and kodo drummers from Japan.  He would never stop growing, searching, and advancing his music.  He would never play it safe.  He would form a percussion ensemble with many of the great NYC drummers and percussionists called M’Boom.

Unlike many of his fellow bebop comrades, Max refused to let the music get stale and predictable.  He would continue to advance the revolution.  He refused to turn his back on the next generation of musicians, as some had turned their backs on the be-bop cats.  He performed and recorded with “avant-garde” musicians like Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton.  He recorded the “Long March”, a 26 minute drum and saxophone duet, with Archie Shepp.  He understood that the music grew out of the masses and reflected back on them, challenging them, leading them at times and following at others.  He understood where the hip-hop generation was coming from, and instead of denouncing them, he embraced them and drew parallels between hip hop and bebop.  He collaborated on projects with his godson, Fab 5 Freddy, and performed with break dancers and MC’s in the early days of hip hop (check out the videos on You Tube!).

I always knew the day would come.  Of course that day will come for all of us, but when I heard the news about my hero passing, my heart sank and my eyes welled up.  I remembered another time when I was 15 years old and playing in a summer jazz workshop.  The teacher turned to me and said, “I see you’ve been checking out some Max!”  I was so thrilled that someone could detect that I sounded like my idol.  Of course later on I learned a deeper message from Max’s example.  That message was to be bold, to be brave, to take chances, to try to pour my soul into every note I play, to find my own voice as an artist, to risk it all for the sake of the music, to never stop fighting against oppression and to never stop fighting for the masses of people.

The poet Amiri Baraka read his poem called “Digging Max” at the memorial service for the drum legend.  One stanza reads…

“But ask anybody conscious, who Max

Roach be.  Miles certainly knew

And Coltrane too. All the cats who

Know the science of Drum, know

Where our

Last dispensaton come from.  That’s

Why we call him, MAX, the ultimate,

The Furthest Star.  The eternal

Internal, the visible invisible, the

message

From afar…

Long Live Max Roach!

-Ted Sirota

8/28/07

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