Max Roach, 1948
Max Roach, pre-eminent jazz drummer, teacher, first jazz musician to recieve MacArthur “genius” grant, is dead at 83.
“You used to play with Charlie Parker. How can you work with those guys?” he was asked by those who should know better.
“I answered this way,” Roach said. “A person like an Anthony Braxton is more like Charlie Parker than a person who plays like Charlie Parker. Bird was creative and different and looked inside himself. He knew what Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter and the rest of them had laid down. That was the foundation. Bird built on that foundation.
“Now you have people like Phil Woods who preserve the tradition. And then there are people who push forward, who perpetuate the continuum by trying out things. Cecil Taylor is more like Art Tatum than a guy who plays like Tatum. It may not always come off, but that’s what creativity’s about. Anyway, by now people accept me for what I am.”
Interview at culturekiosque