Often cited by top drummers as an important influence in their own playing, Max
Roach is considered by many to be one of the great all time jazz drummers. Born
in 1923 on the edge of North Carolina's famous Great Dismal Swamp, by the age of
ten Roach was already playing regularly in gospel bands for his local church
community.
During his early twenties he was in the vanguard of the bebop style which
defined American jazz in the late 1940s. Roach played with some of the finest
exponents of the genre, drumming for leading bebop musicians such as Dizzy
Gillespie, Charlie Parker...