Transcription: Max Roach comping

Part 3 of a little mini series, looking at some comping examples by Tony Williams, Mickey Roker, and now Max Roach. This is Max's playing during Clifford Brown's solo on Flossie Lou, from Clifford Brown & Max Roach at Basin Street. The solo is 32 bars long, and the transcription begins at 0:45.

Max plays the hihat on 2 and 4 throughout, but I've only written it where he plays something different, or where seeing it will be helpful. He also plays the bass drum throughout, but I've only written the accents. It's audible between those frequent & of 3/& of 4 comping hits, but I mostly didn't write it in. In this small sample, Max always hits the cymbal on the downbeat after an accent on the & of 4; compare that with the Mickey Roker transcription, where he would often not hit the 1 (or ghost it) after an accent. It's a subtle point, but that's the kind of stuff we check out.

Note the rubadub-like meter-within-meter phrase in the last four bars of the chorus. I always check out what drummers play in the first 1-4 bars behind a new soloist— that's the last bar on the page before the slashes.

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How to play Jordu

About time I did another one of these: here's Jordu, by Clifford Brown, as played on the definitive recording, Clifford Brown & Max Roach, on EmArcy. It gets played a lot at the high school and college level, and at jam sessions, and it's an easy tune to play wrong.  Per our usual format, I've given here the recorded rhythm of the melody, along with a sketch of the drum part, along with a few notes. Print the pdf, find the lead sheet in your Real Book, listen to the recording, and proceed.

First the roadmap: the tune is 32 bars long, AABA form— an A section played twice, followed by a B section (or bridge), and then a final A section, with each section being 8 bars long. On the pdf, the first A runs from the beginning of the piece to the first ending, the second A runs from the repeat through the second ending, the bridge runs from the double bar to the end of the page, and the last A runs the DS at the top of the page through the first ending.

The major issue people have with this tune is how to handle the figures and stops on the A section. The standard thing done at jam sessions is to play the figure in measure 2, three times. But originally, that figure starts off the beat the first time, on the beat the second time, and off the beat again on the third time; and on the second time they aren't actually playing the figure at all— they just play a measure of time with a stop on the & of 4. People also tend to be unclear on what to do in measures 6 and 7— often they'll try to fit the previous figure in again. Max and the bassist just play time.

On measures 1-2 and 5-6 of the bridge Max plays a little set-up on the floor tom which might be a little hokey in modern playing. Listen closely to what's going on there, and see what you think about it, and how it works as an arrangement element. At the end of the bridge there is a bit of a subito mp as the horns do their pickups in to the last A, so you have to set that up gently.

Max fills with crescendoing 16th notes on the floor tom on the second ending, and on the last measure of the form before the solos.

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Lead sheet and audio after the break: