[Dixielandjazz] Max Roach - The Beat Goes On Minus A Virtuoso

[Steve Barbone]

The third article/obit/remembrance of Max Roach in the NY TIMES this week. A
moving tribute to a GIANT of jazz, or rather a GIANT of MUSIC, as well as a
class act.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

The Beat Goes On, Minus a Virtuoso

NY TIMES - By TRYMAINE LEE - August 18, 2007

Sitting in a narrow dressing room behind a heavy red curtain at the Birdland
jazz club in Midtown, the saxophonist James Moody, 82, rested his head in
his hand and remembered gigs with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and
someone else: Max Roach, his longtime friend, the legendary jazz drummer who
died on Thursday at age 83.

It had been quite some time since Mr. Moody had seen him. But he remembered
gigs in Germany with ³Dizzy and Roach,² and his 70th birthday, which he
spent with a bunch of the old-timers, the legends.

³He was, like, the beginning,² Mr. Moody said of Mr. Roach, one of the
founders of the sometimes fractured, always rhythmic style of post-World War
II jazz known as bebop. ³He was an innovator. He changed it all. ²

Mr. Moody then pushed aside the curtain and walked into the room he had just
torn down with his quartet. Through the crowd, he spotted another jazz
legend, Jimmy Heath. The two men embraced and laughed, and soon their talk
returned to Mr. Roach. And to the old days.

So it was late Thursday and early yesterday, as the first jazz sets played
around the city after Mr. Roach¹s death. At the Village Vanguard and the
Blue Note, at Birdland and in the studios of Columbia University¹s radio
station, WKCR, Mr. Roach was being remembered simply as ³the beginning.²

Bebop has deep roots in New York, and Mr. Roach grew up in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, so his death had special resonance here.
Still, there was more laughter than tears when his life was recalled.

³It was his technique,² said Mr. Heath, 81, also a saxophonist. ³And his
concepts were so innovative. But he wasn¹t only a drummer. The thing about
Max was he was always fighting for the rights of African-American people,
that we were creative, worthy people.²

They were joined by the trumpeter Jon Faddis, 54, a protégé of Dizzy
Gillespie¹s, and Phoebe Jacobs, 89, a jazz education advocate and longtime
friend of Mr. Roach¹s who worked in some of the clubs he played early in his
career. 

The group remembered an incident at a Miles Davis show, when Mr. Roach took
to the stage with a protest sign ‹ ³something to do with Africa or black
people,² Mr. Heath recalled ‹ and sat there with the sign held high above
his head. ³Miles was like, ŒMan, why did you have to do that during my set?¹
² Mr. Heath recalled, laughing with Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Moody.

Phil Schaap, a longtime jazz disc jockey at WKCR, has dedicated the entire
week after Mr. Roach¹s death to playing his music.

³He was one of the daddies of the bebop era,² said Richard Okon, 62, the
manager of the Blue Note. ³Max took the music and played not only with his
head, intellectually, but from his soul and his whole heart.²

Mr. Roach¹s New York, at least the one he tromped about in the 1940s, 1950s
and 1960s, was much different from today¹s scene.

On 52nd Street, once known as Swing Street, jazz clubs like the Three
Deuces, the Onyx, the Famous Door and the Yacht Club lined the sidewalks
between Fifth and Seventh Avenues.

And there were the clubs in Harlem and in the Village where jazz reigned
supreme. Smoke, even some from cigarettes, was everywhere.

Today, only a few of the old-time clubs remain, the Village Vanguard being
the oldest, but the jazz and memories of Mr. Roach and the other great ones,
alive and dead, still permeate their walls. Their spirits, like the grainy
black and white photographs that hang on the walls of the Vanguard, the Blue
Note and the new Birdland, remind enthusiasts and curious tourists alike
that jazz is still alive, though some of its most revered messengers have
faded away.

Inside the Blue Note, Mr. Okon, the manager, ushered a couple of European
tourists past a well-lighted bar and a wall of homage, bearing photographs
of the many legendary musicians who have graced its stage.

Along with the likes of Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Oscar Peterson, Betty
Carter, Milt Jackson and others hung a picture of Mr. Roach and Billy
Eckstein.

In the dark, wedge-shaped Village Vanguard ‹ where Mr. Roach, already
established, first performed on Feb. 10, 1959 ‹ Max Koslow, 62, a club
regular, nodded his head, catching the beat of a number by Mr. Roach and
Clifford Brown that wafted from the club¹s speakers.

He sat in his usual Thursday-night seat a few feet from the stage, waiting
for a buddy to arrive. It was just a few minutes before showtime. Mr. Koslow
nodded his head and mused on Mr. Roach¹s legacy. ³It was his use of rhythms
and polyrhythms,² Mr. Koslow said, slowly sipping from a glass of Cognac.

The performances on this night were dedicated to Max Roach, the club¹s
manager said. ³He was one of the old cats that still came by,² said Marty
Elkins, a longtime waitress at the club. ³But I hadn¹t seen him around for
the past couple years.²

In a back office at the club that over the decades has doubled as a dressing
room for many a great musician, Steve Wilson was preparing to take the stage
with his quartet.

³Max formed the idea of a drum being a melodic instrument,² Mr. Wilson, 46,
said. ³He¹s an important figure in our music and our culture. Max is one of
the important spirits that walk the room with us and takes that stage we¹re
about to step on. He is a great architect of American music, a great
architect of African-American music.²

As midnight approached, and many of the late jazz sets of the night had
ended, the faint sounds of drumming rose from the subway. The drummers were
playing not on drum kits, but on the bottoms of buckets. Still, there was
something familiar about their erratic rhythms.

³He was the beginning of it all,² Mr. Moody said.