The Complete Max Roach 1958-1962

Award-Winning Drummer' was recorded at a November 1958 session and featured an ensemble who by then were being touted as among the finest hard bop units around. A further three albums came out in 1959, most notably 'Rich versus Roach', a 1959 studio record by Max, with fellow drummer Buddy Rich, and with the pair's respective bands of the time. Also released in '59 were 'Quiet as It's Kept' and 'Moon Faced & Starry Eyed', both on Mercury. 1960 saw the release of 'Parisian Sketches', recorded in Paris in March, but additionally the remarkable avant-garde jazz album 'We Insist!' came out in August. Max Roach continued to perform and record throughout the rest of the 1960s and in the 1970s formed a musical organization -"M'Boom" - a percussion orchestra. In the early 1980s, Roach began presenting entire concerts solo, proving that this multi-percussion instrument could fulfill the demands of solo performance and be entirely satisfying to an audience. Roach surprised his fans in 1983 by performing at a hip hop concert, featuring the artist-rapper Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. He expressed the insight that there was a strong kinship between the outpouring of expression of these young black artists and the art he had pursued all his life. Not content to expand on the musical territory he had already become known for, Roach spent the decades of the 1980s and 1990s continually finding new forms of musical expression and presentation. Though he ventured into new territory during a lifetime of innovation, he kept his contact with his musical point of origin. He performed with the Beijing Trio, with pianist Jon Jang and erhu player Jiebing Chen. His last recording, Friendship, was with trumpeter Clark Terry, the two long-standing friends in duet and quartet. Roach's last performance was at the 50th anniversary celebration of the original Massey Hall concert, in Toronto, where he performed solo on the hi-hat.