Max Roach 1924-2007: Thousands Pay Tribute to the Legendary Jazz Drummer, Educator, Activist

Maya Angelou, Bill Cosby, Amira Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and others credited Roach with helping to revolutionize the sound of modern jazz and for playing a prominent role in the struggle for black liberation at home and in Africa.

Max Roach was born in North Carolina in 1924, but he grew up in Brooklyn. His musical career began in the local Baptist church, and by the age of 16 he was playing with Duke Ellington. A few years later he helped lay the groundwork for bebop with Charlie Parker's group. Over the next six decades he would remain at the forefront of creative music playing with such legendary figures as Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp.

But to many Roach might be best remembered for a record he released in 1960 along with his future wife, the vocalist Abbey Lincoln.

The cover of the record showed a photograph of student activists from SNCC participating in a sit-in at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C.

Max Roach titled the record: "We Insist: Freedom Now Suite." It remains one of the most moving musical pieces to come out of the black liberation movement.

At the time Max Roach told Down Beat magazine, "I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. 'We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we're master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through.''

In 1961, Max Roach staged a one-man protest on stage Carnegie Hall during a Miles Davis performance because the concert was a benefit for an organization supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Roach's outspokenness led him to being blacklisted by some in the music industry but he continued to perform and compose into the 21st century.

Roach would also became a leading jazz educator and was the first jazz musician to win a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.

Later in the show we will play excerpts of Bill Cosby and Maya Angelou speaking at Max Roach's funeral but first we are joined by two guests both of whom have known Roach for decades.

• Amiri Baraka, Max Roach's biographer and acclaimed poet, playwright, music historian, and activist. In 1992, Baraka worked with Max Roach to compose an opera called "The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson."
• Phil Schaap, award-winning jazz historian, radio host, and reissue producer. He is the host of "Bird Flight," a daily radio program devoted to the music of Charlie Parker. Birdflight is broadcast on WKCR out of Columbia University at 89.3 FM. Schaap also teaches jazz history at the Lincoln Center in New York.