EMP|SFM Oral History Videos

Category: Jazz

Video Title: Jazz and Max Roach

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Who: Robert Wyatt

The Player:
Robert Wyatt is a singer-songwriter and former drummer for the British art rock band the Soft Machine.

Learn more: Explore a musical genre that's an American original, at EMP's annual Jazz in January series.

Read the transcript:

Robert Wyatt
Well I started playing by banging rolled up copies of what would have been in those days the The New Statesman, probably. Rolled up copies of The New Statesman along with a record my big brother had brought home which was Jazz at Massey Hall in 1953. Recorded in 1953, it was later, of course, when I heard it. And the drummer was Max Roach, and I just couldn't believe the speed of thought that was going on. It was like listening to a whole load of thirty three and a third speed LP being played at 78. I just couldn't believe anybody could think that fast, and it was thrilling to me because I realized that they were following an exact train of thought, mathematically decipherable train of thought, but at that speed and with that sense of spontaneous reaction to the moment, it was incredibly exciting to me, and so I would sit there at the table with my rolled up New Statesmans trying to go flip flap, flip flap, flip flap, flip flap, flip flap, flip flap, flip flap, flip flap, along with "Wee" or "Hot House," or whatever, Tadd Dameron tunes, Dizzy Gillespie tunes, and that's my first memory with playing along with Max Roach on drums.