Thursday, June 18, 2009

Max Roach - Right under my nose...

I grew up studying jazz drummers in the 70's. While my buddys were copping Bonham licks and discovering Neal Peart I was cloning Buddy Rich and Louis Bellson. Moving past these big band greats on to other forms of jazz I discovered players like Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones and Jack Dejohnette. Max and Philly Joe were easy enough to understand but Elvin and Jack were definitely acquired tastes. Once I got it though, I was hooked.


I live in a small town about an hour and half from Nashville. About the last thing I expected to see on the front page of the local paper was an article about how the complete collection of Max Roach's drums were found the other day at a local moving and storage company. It was an unbelievable story about how Max's drums were stored in a barn in a town even smaller than mine about 50 min to the north. I was dumbfounded when I read the article. How could all of the instruments of one of the most important drummers of the last century be stored in barn in some tiny Tennessee town?



The story reported that the family claimed that only about half of the collection was still in the barn when they found it. That conjured up frightening images of some rural teenager bashing out rock grooves on priceless old K Zildjians that he bought for $50 from some guy in a barn.


I am going down to the storage company tomorrow to see if I can catch a glimpse of some of the gear. I will report on the outcome. I will be interested to find out if there are others as interested as I am to get a look at Max's gear. Stay tuned...


To read the newspaper article, follow this link: http://www.herald-citizen.com/index.cfm?event=news.view&id=EF0E9BB3-19B9-E2E2-6702ED7EC811E2F1

Well, I went down to the storage company and talked to one of the guys that worked there. He said the drums had already been shipped back to the Roach family in New Jersey. I asked a little more about how the drums had ended up in a barn in Byrdstown and he said that the drums were stolen and the guy that stole them had a friend in Byrdstown that stored the drums for him. He said only about half of the equipment was there when the moving company picked them up for the family. He also said the kit that Max played was not among the stolen property.

Pretty crazy...

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