Max Roach Is Remembered for Music and More

[7/4]

August 25, 2007

Max Roach Is Remembered for Music and More

By PETER KEEPNEWS

Max Roach was remembered at his funeral not just as a brilliant drummer who helped bring about radical changes in American music, but also as a committed activist who worked hard to bring about radical changes in American society.

Mr. Roach “used his music as an instrument of our struggle,” the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III of Abyssinian Baptist Church said in eulogizing Mr. Roach, who died on Aug. 16 at the age of 83. Mr. Roach’s funeral, held yesterday morning at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, drew a capacity crowd of friends, admirers and fellow musicians.

Former President Bill Clinton, in a statement read by Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, praised Mr. Roach as “one of the first jazz musicians to align his craft with the goals of the civil rights movement.”

But Mr. Roach’s musical contributions were not neglected. The writer Amiri Baraka, while noting that the music Mr. Roach and the singer Abbey Lincoln made in the 1960s was “part of the liberation movement,” also read a poem that included a long list of musicians who owed Mr. Roach an artistic debt. Bill Cosby said that he owed Mr. Roach a different kind of debt — and that Mr. Roach had owed him one, too.

“Why I became a comedian is because of Max Roach,” he said. “I wanted to be a drummer.”

As a young jazz fan in Philadelphia, Mr. Cosby explained, he tried to teach himself to play drums by copying records and watching the great jazz drummers in action. But when he first saw Mr. Roach, he said, he was awed by his virtuosity and realized that “there were no tricks, nothing I could take.”

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Cosby told the crowd, he decided that the rudimentary drum kit for which he had paid $75 was not for him. And, he added, when he finally met Mr. Roach some years later, the first thing he said to him was, “You owe me $75.”

As befits a memorial for a man recognized as one of the architects of modern jazz, music played an important part in the service. The vocalist Cassandra Wilson, the pianists Randy Weston and Billy Taylor, and the saxophonist Jimmy Heath were among those who performed.

Mr. Heath performed an unaccompanied improvisation on a song whose title encapsulated what many of the speakers said about Mr. Roach: “There Will Never Be Another You.”

[AllenLowe]

Roach is one of those towering figures in AMerican life for whom I wish a real and accurate bio would be written - musically ecumenical, revolutionary musical figure, prone to violence and some terrible personal deeds, but also a great and private benefactor in an un-publicized way, from what I have been told. We tend to want our cultural heroes to be either/or, and he wsa definitely on anther plane in this respect. Capable of an angry anti-semitism on the one hand, but a dispassionate viewer of the whole black/white thing (this from a personal conversation). Somebody needs to write that book about him -

[brownie]

The Keepnews article was linked to this thread earlier today

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...mp;#entry687044

A rather weak piece! The Bloomberg report was much more interesting!

[randissimo]

Here's Tom Reney's account of Max's funeral;

I attended Max Roach's funeral on Friday at The Riverside Church in New York City. It was scheduled from 11 a.m.-1 p.m., and it more than honored Max's flawless sense of time as it began precisely at 11 and, notwithstanding numerous tributes and musical interludes, ended at 1:10. The church was filled to capacity with over 2000 in attendance and an overflow crowd outside on Riverside Drive.

Speakers included Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Lt. Gov. David Paterson, Congressman Charlie Rangel, Bill Cosby, Stanley Crouch, Sonia Sanchez, Phil Schaap, and the Rev. Dr. James Forbes, whose invocation suggested that Max had "modulated from time to eternity." The Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts gave the eulogy. These were interspersed with music by trios featuring Cecil Bridgewater, Billy Harper, and Reggie Workman; Gary Bartz, Harper and Workman; Cassandra Wilson, Bridgewater, and Tyrone Brown; and solos by Randy Weston, Billy Taylor, and Jimmy Heath, who played "There'll Never Be Another You" on soprano saxophone. The soprano Elvira Green sang "City Called Heaven" and "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." A brief documentary of Max's tour of Israel in 2001 was screened, and a video monitor displayed a succession of photos of him. Max's drum stool and high hat were placed prominently on the altar; no other drummers played during the funeral.

The speakers wove elements of humor, awe and poignance in their tributes. Maya Angelou described Max as "dedicated, disciplined, and daring." Poets Baraka and Sanchez each testified to Max's musical genius and political courage in bold, staccato verse. Baraka's poem called the names of numerous drummers who are in Max's debt, and Sanchez riffed on how beautifully he embodied the name Max.

Bill Cosby has long credited Max with making him pursue a career as a comic. Initially, Cos had wanted to be a drummer. He'd spent $75 for a kit, and he gained a sense of how certain things were done from seeing Vernell Fournier (with Ahmad Jamal) and Art Blakey, but once he saw Max, he gave up in frustration. Later, when he'd become famous and finally met Max, he said, "You owe me $75!" Cosby recounted how impressed he and his homeboys from the Philly projects were with Max's sartorial elegance. When they spotted him wearing a blue blazer with a crest, one of them said, "Max must have a boat!" He also noted that "Brooks Brothers must have sold a ton of suits" once Max and Miles and other jazz icons began wearing them in the 1950's. [As you may know, Brooks now outfits Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, in addition to commissioning CD's from LCJO which they sell exclusively through their stores.]

Phil Schaap talked about Max as a man of sensitivity and strength. Of the special interest that many jazz musicians have in boxing, he noted that Max related it to power. Schaap, the jazz radio legend of WKCR in New York, and a close personal friend of Max's, said that when they listened to records together in these past few years, Max would often ask Phil to put on "Strong Man," the Oscar Brown, Jr. song he recorded with Abbey Lincoln in 1959. Schaap also described the wounds that Max suffered and carried through the years, of racism and widespread Klan terror in the decade of Max's birth in North Carolina; the early death of Max's only brother; and the devastating deaths of trumpeters Clifford Brown and Booker Little, at ages 25 in 1956, and 23 in 1961, respectively.

Charlie Rangel read a letter from Bill Clinton, who praised Max for inspiring future generations of artists by "aligning" his music with the civil rights movement and "promoting ideals of quality and justice." Lt. Governor Paterson placed Max in a lineage of black heroes including Harriett Tubman, Paul Robeson, and Malcolm X. The Reverend Butts invoked "The Holy Ghost" as a likely source of Max's extraordinary musicianship; a sense of "righteous indignation" as a guiding force of his activism; and voiced certainty that Max is now "in that number."

Among those I saw in attendance were Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes, Cicely Tyson, Chico Hamilton, Odeon Pope, Avery Sharpe, Fred Tillis, Yusef Lateef, Sheila Jordan, Harold Mabern, Rufus Reid, Steve Turre, and former New York Mayor David Dinkins.

Tom Reney

"Jazz à la Mode"

Monday-Friday, 8-11 p.m.

WFCR 88.5 FM

NPR News and Music for Western New England

Hampshire House

131 County Circle

Amherst, MA 01003-9257

[randissimo]

Here's Tom Reney's account of Max's funeral;

I attended Max Roach's funeral on Friday at The Riverside Church in New York City. It was scheduled from 11 a.m.-1 p.m., and it more than honored Max's flawless sense of time as it began precisely at 11 and, notwithstanding numerous tributes and musical interludes, ended at 1:10. The church was filled to capacity with over 2000 in attendance and an overflow crowd outside on Riverside Drive.

Speakers included Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Lt. Gov. David Paterson, Congressman Charlie Rangel, Bill Cosby, Stanley Crouch, Sonia Sanchez, Phil Schaap, and the Rev. Dr. James Forbes, whose invocation suggested that Max had "modulated from time to eternity." The Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts gave the eulogy. These were interspersed with music by trios featuring Cecil Bridgewater, Billy Harper, and Reggie Workman; Gary Bartz, Harper and Workman; Cassandra Wilson, Bridgewater, and Tyrone Brown; and solos by Randy Weston, Billy Taylor, and Jimmy Heath, who played "There'll Never Be Another You" on soprano saxophone. The soprano Elvira Green sang "City Called Heaven" and "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." A brief documentary of Max's tour of Israel in 2001 was screened, and a video monitor displayed a succession of photos of him. Max's drum stool and high hat were placed prominently on the altar; no other drummers played during the funeral.

The speakers wove elements of humor, awe and poignance in their tributes. Maya Angelou described Max as "dedicated, disciplined, and daring." Poets Baraka and Sanchez each testified to Max's musical genius and political courage in bold, staccato verse. Baraka's poem called the names of numerous drummers who are in Max's debt, and Sanchez riffed on how beautifully he embodied the name Max.

Bill Cosby has long credited Max with making him pursue a career as a comic. Initially, Cos had wanted to be a drummer. He'd spent $75 for a kit, and he gained a sense of how certain things were done from seeing Vernell Fournier (with Ahmad Jamal) and Art Blakey, but once he saw Max, he gave up in frustration. Later, when he'd become famous and finally met Max, he said, "You owe me $75!" Cosby recounted how impressed he and his homeboys from the Philly projects were with Max's sartorial elegance. When they spotted him wearing a blue blazer with a crest, one of them said, "Max must have a boat!" He also noted that "Brooks Brothers must have sold a ton of suits" once Max and Miles and other jazz icons began wearing them in the 1950's. [As you may know, Brooks now outfits Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, in addition to commissioning CD's from LCJO which they sell exclusively through their stores.]

Phil Schaap talked about Max as a man of sensitivity and strength. Of the special interest that many jazz musicians have in boxing, he noted that Max related it to power. Schaap, the jazz radio legend of WKCR in New York, and a close personal friend of Max's, said that when they listened to records together in these past few years, Max would often ask Phil to put on "Strong Man," the Oscar Brown, Jr. song he recorded with Abbey Lincoln in 1959. Schaap also described the wounds that Max suffered and carried through the years, of racism and widespread Klan terror in the decade of Max's birth in North Carolina; the early death of Max's only brother; and the devastating deaths of trumpeters Clifford Brown and Booker Little, at ages 25 in 1956, and 23 in 1961, respectively.

Charlie Rangel read a letter from Bill Clinton, who praised Max for inspiring future generations of artists by "aligning" his music with the civil rights movement and "promoting ideals of quality and justice." Lt. Governor Paterson placed Max in a lineage of black heroes including Harriett Tubman, Paul Robeson, and Malcolm X. The Reverend Butts invoked "The Holy Ghost" as a likely source of Max's extraordinary musicianship; a sense of "righteous indignation" as a guiding force of his activism; and voiced certainty that Max is now "in that number."

Among those I saw in attendance were Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes, Cicely Tyson, Chico Hamilton, Odeon Pope, Avery Sharpe, Fred Tillis, Yusef Lateef, Sheila Jordan, Harold Mabern, Rufus Reid, Steve Turre, and former New York Mayor David Dinkins.

Tom Reney

"Jazz à la Mode"

Monday-Friday, 8-11 p.m.

WFCR 88.5 FM

NPR News and Music for Western New England

Hampshire House

131 County Circle

Amherst, MA 01003-9257