Pete LaRoca

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Pete LaRoca , actually Peter Sims (born April 7, 1938 in New York City , † November 19, 2012 ), was an American jazz drummer and lawyer.

Live and act

Pete LaRoca was the son of a trumpeter and a pianist. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art and the Manhattan School of Music . Max Roach heard him at the Birdland jazz club and recommended him to Sonny Rollins . He made his living in a law firm and New York's public library.

LaRoca played with the hard-bop formations of Jaki Byard , Jackie McLean , Art Farmer , Joe Henderson , JR Monterose , Kenny Dorham , Paul Bley , Slide Hampton , Sonny Clark and Sonny Rollins in the 1950s . With the latter he recorded the legendary concert in New York's Village Vanguard in 1957. In 1961/62 LaRoca briefly led his own formation and was heard in the mid-1960s in the jazz workshop in Boston, with Art Farmer and Charles Lloyd . In 1965 he recorded his first album as Leader Basra (Blue Note Records).

In 1967 the album Turkish Woman At The Bath was created with Chick Corea , bassist Walter Booker and John Gilmore , which was also released as Bliss! was published by Chick Corea. Around 1968 LaRoca ended his jazz career and worked from then on as a lawyer. He took on the name Pete Sims again (he had chosen LaRoca as his stage name when he played in Latin bands in his youth). In 1997 he recorded another album as a leader ( Swingtime , Blue Note Records ). In the early 2000s, LaRoca developed lung cancer .

Voices of his colleagues

" He was by far one of the most brilliant minds I ever knew, one of the greatest musicians I ever encountered who for starters would sing the bass line IN KEY and was a drummer like no one else ."

- Dave Liebman

" OK, of all the drummers I had heard up until then, Pete was one of the guys I considered as one of the best examples of how you could play without sounding like anybody else. And his time concept was unusual and I realized this is not amateur night anymore! That was a wonderful few tunes. . "

- Keith Jarrett

Selection discography

Web links

Lexical entry

Notes / individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pete LaRoca is sometimes mistakenly referred to as "LaRocca" in jazz literature
  2. ↑ Obituary
  3. ↑ One of his first steps was to sue the record company that released his last album as a leader without his approval under Chick Corea's name - he won.
  4. ^ Obituary in A Blog Supreme
  5. ↑ Interview with Keith Jarrett (2009) ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / dothemath.typepad.com
  6. ↑ The tenor saxophonist Bill Barron (1927-89) is the brother of Kenny Barron , played briefly with Cecil Taylor on his album Love For Sale (1959), otherwise mostly worked as a teacher
personal data
SURNAME LaRoca, Pete
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sims, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz drummer and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 19th November 2012
Place of death New York City