With his natural sense of rhythm, Rich performed regularly on Broadway at the age of four. At the peak of Rich's early career, he was the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world.
Rich's jazz career began in 1937 when he began playing with Joe Marsala at New York's Hickory House. By 1939, he had joined Tommy Dorsey's band, and he later went on to play with such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Ventura, Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa. He also appeared in several Hollywood .
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Rich toured with his own bands and opened two nightclubs, Buddy's Place and Buddy's Place II. Both clubs were regularly filled to capacity by fans of the great master drummer. After opening Buddy's Place II, Rich introduced new tunes with elements of rock into his repertoire, demonstrating his ability to adapt to his audience's changing tastes and establishing himself as a great rock drummer.
Known for his caustic humor, Rich was a favorite on several television talk shows. During these appearances, Rich entertained audiences through his constant sparring with the hosts and his slights of various pop singers.
This famed musician received outstanding recognition throughout his career. The Downbeat Magazine Hall of Fame Award, the Modern Drummer Magazine Hall of Fame Award and the Jazz Unlimited Immortals of Jazz Award are just a few of his numerous honors.
Rich gained international attention for such master compositions as his 10-minute West Side Story medley. During his lengthy career, Rich toured around the globe, performing for millions of fans and several world leaders including the king of Thailand, the queen of England, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Regan and King Hussein of Jordan.
On April 2, 1987, Rich died of heart failure following surgery for a malignant brain tumor. Long-time friend, Frank Sinatra, presented the eulogy at Rich's funeral. Today, Buddy Rich is remembered as one of history's greatest musicians. According to jazz legend Gene Krupa, Rich was "The greatest drummer ever to have drawn breath."
Maxwell Lemuel Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians, including Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown.
Roach also led his own groups, and made numerous musical statements relating to the civil rights movement of African-Americans.
As a young man, Max Roach, a percussion virtuoso capable of playing at the most brutal tempos with subtlety as well as power, was among a small circle of adventurous musicians who brought about wholesale changes in jazz. He remained adventurous to the end.
As a teenager he worked briefly with Duke Ellington’s orchestra at the Paramount Theater and with Charlie Parker at Monroe’s Uptown House in Harlem, where he took part in jam sessions that helped lay the groundwork for bebop.
By the middle 1940’s, he had become a ubiquitous presence on the New York jazz scene, working in the 52nd Street nightclubs with Parker, the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and other leading modernists. Within a few years he had become equally ubiquitous on record, participating in such seminal recordings as Miles Davis’s “Birth of the Cool” sessions in 1949 and 1950.
Over the years he challenged both his audiences and himself by working not just with standard jazz instrumentation, and not just in traditional jazz venues, but in a wide variety of contexts, some of them well beyond the confines of jazz as that word is generally understood.
In 1972, he became one of the first jazz musicians to teach full time at the college level when he was hired as a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And in 1988, he became the first jazz musician to receive a so-called genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
By the early ‘90s, Mr. Roach had reduced his teaching load and was again based in New York year-round, traveling to Amherst only for two residencies and a summer program each year. He was still touring with his quartet as recently as 2000, and he also remained active as a composer.
This session was released in 1959 and has been marked as "a drum lover's dream come true". The two drummers are heard "throwing ideas back and forth as if engaged in a mad, joyous tennis match. And how they inspire each other".
It is certainly a great tribute to the greatness of both Buddy Rich and Max Roach
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