Roach, Max(well) (1924- )

US jazz musician. He was with Charlie Parker's trailblazing quintet 1947-49, then freelanced as a session player and with Jazz at the Philharmonic and the Lighthouse All-Stars until 1954. Between 1954 and 1956 he and Clifford Brown led one of the most highly regarded groups in modern jazz. After Brown's death, Roach maintained a succession of groups while pursuing a wide range of activities as a composer and educator.

He was born in New Land, North Carolina. The premier modern jazz drummer, he was raised in Brooklyn, attended the Manhattan School of Music, and recorded with Coleman Hawkins in 1943. Over the next four years, he was a sideman with Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stan Getz. He became a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts in 1972.