Maxwell Roach: January 10, 1925

Jet, Jan 12, 1998

Maxwell (Max) Roach, composer, arranger and percussionist, was born in Brooklyn, NY, on this day. Roach, a key contributor in the development of modern jazz, has inspired countless jazz drummers since the 1940s. He first became noted as a major force in modern jazz when he served as Charlie Parker's drummer from 1946 to 1948.

During the bebop era, Roach recorded and played with Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1954, Roach assembled one of the most creative and innovate quintets in jazz history, the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet. In the late 1950s he turned his attention to the Civil Rights Movement. In 1960 he collaborated with songwriter Oscar Brown Jr. and vocalist Abbey Lincoln and created the album We Insist: The Freedom Now Suite, one of the first jazz compositions to focus on civil rights issues. Roach, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, was the first jazz artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.