"I've been a fan, a devotee, of Cecil Taylor's from the first time I heard him, about the same time we did our Freedom Now! suite [1]," drummer Max Roach said, from a comfortable chair in his apartment on Central Park West in 2001. Their most recent collaboration had been a year before. "I associated him with the revolution that was going on artistically, politically and all that. It had always been in the back of my mind to work with Cecil. And I was doing an interview at WKCR [Columbia University's radio station], talking about the duets I had done with Archie Shepp and with Anthony Braxton, and I was asked what I would like to do next, and I said, 'Cecil Taylor.' So they sponsored a concert at Columbia for Cecil and me to do our session together.

"That was a really interesting experience. I began to get close to him. He'd always come by [venues where Roach was playing] and we'd wave at each other, but we'd never sat down and talked about anything. So when we sat down to plan the concert at Columbia, to talk about what we might do, we talked about everything except the session. We talked politics, we talked visual arts . . . He had a studio on the top floor of a building on Chambers Street then, and had a dog and a cat that were always trying to ball each other. I didn't want to be disconcerted by that, I just thought it must be one of Cecil's things . . .

"And his record collection fascinated me. He had everything there. He was dealing with the ancient, the contemporary, everything musical. We talked and talked, and the next thing we knew we were on the stage together. It was totally improvised, but I knew from the first time we talked that it would work. His warmth and friendliness and what he clearly appreciated about where I was in my music, and what I appreciated about where he was in his -- our collaboration happened without our having to say anything in advance about it.

"It was strange," Roach conceded about the stylistic conflict that was assumed to exist between the two musicians. "Prior to and during and after the concert there were two camps there, Cecil's which asked incredulously, 'You're playing with this bebopper?' and my camp, which said, 'You worked with Bud Powell, and now you're working with Cecil Taylor? What's happening?' My whole thing about Cecil was that he was more like Bud Powell than an imitator of Bud Powell, because Bud went away from what everybody was doing, and people who do that are always heavily criticized, just like Cecil was.

"So I said, 'Why not Cecil? Cecil to me is more like Bud than a person who imitates Bud, just as Anthony Braxton is more like Charlie Parker than a person who imitates Charlie Parker.' Cecil is adventurous, and creative, and he decided to be on his own, to go his own way.
"And besides, for me to work as a percussionist with Cecil -- just like working with, say Bud and Anthony and Charlie Parker -- it gave me the impetus to find something different myself. It helped me grow. After we did the concert at Columbia we did several concerts in Europe, and they always involved some of the most thrilling and challenging musical moments I've had. Cecil is one of the most challenging musicians I've ever worked with.

"To put it in lay terms, it's like being in the ring with Joe Louis, Jack Johnson or Mike Tyson. It's like being on a battlefield, but it's warm music. You really have to be at the top of your game to hang with Cecil up there on that stage, because he takes everything his own way; but in doing that he lets you go your own way, if you know what that is.

"For me, he brings out the best. People look at it as freedom, but the kind of discipline you have to deal with -- with your instrument, your own ideas, your own creativity - it's monumental with Cecil. I went to hear his solo concert at Alice Tully Hall, which I thought was just fantastic. I always think it's fantastic, what he does. He exemplifies something original. He embodies something of his own.

"You know, I worked with Lester Young after he left Count Basie's band. We were at one of the joints in the Village. I just assumed that if I played like the great drummer Papa Jo Jones who worked with Count Basie, that would be the way to play with Lester Young. In those days you worked for six weeks in a club, so you got a chance to really develop something that works, you think, with a person like Lester Young. Well, one night, when I thought I had everything down, I said, 'Ok, Lester, that was a good night.'

"And Lester looked at me and said, 'You can't join the throng 'til you write your own song.' He sang that to me. And he said, 'Do you dig the tones?'

"What I'm saying is Cecil exemplifies that. It's not a matter of doing something somebody else has done. To be a creative artist you have to come up with something that's unique to yourself, and you have to hang with it no matter what barbs are flung and which of your critics and your peers understand you or not.

"Cecil's technique is personal and I don't know anybody else who can sustain that kind of energy and power, and ideas just keep coming. It's so personal to Cecil, and even though he's always expanding and moving out, it's the same direction he has persisted in all his musical career, that I know of. I've heard some of the early things he did, when he first came out of New England Conservatory; he can play so called straightahead as well. I just love him as an artist and as a person, and the fact that he gives you the freedom -- he doesn't say 'Ok, now I'm doing it this way or that way.'

"I remember that time in his loft on Chamber Street, prior to our first Columbia concert, I said, 'Cecil, we've talked about a lot of things, but is there anything you feel you'd like to hear from me?' And he said, 'Yes, come to think of it. Most people don't know when I'm playing a ballad.' I said, 'Ok, why don't you give me some ideas.'

"So he went to the piano and played himself, Cecil Taylor. It was beautiful, but it was still Cecil. It was still in that complex range where I could play out on it, or bash on it, or lay out, or do something every simple. It just worked. He looked at me, went right into his thing, and it sounded like Cecil. And I said to myself, 'Well that means whatever you think is alright with him.' That's one of the things I like about him. Cecil depends on you to use your imagination, your skills, and if you can't keep up, you just get lost in the shuffle."

"Does he takes your ideas, too?" I asked.

"I think he does, yeah," Roach said. "When we did that first concert many of the writers were saying that Cecil was percussive and I was melodic. But it's a funny thing: Cecil used to play drums when he was young, he started out playing drums, that's what he was telling me when we had our conversation, and that can explain why he uses his hands the way he uses them. And I started out in music playing piano.

"He's the kind of person who, though through and through he's a complex person, he's also very simple, easy to get, accessible. He's as accessible as Dizzy Gillespie was. You know, Dizzy was everybody's friend. I feel Cecil's like that.

"Did you see him collaborate with Mary Lou Williams?"

"No, but I heard about it. There were various opinions. Some people thought Cecil was too powerful for her, but I said, 'Nah, that's not what it was about. Cecil was just playing, the same way she played.' The way Cecil played and the way Mary Lou played, I thought it would work together perfectly. Because Cecil plays with you, but he doesn't play like you. He's Cecil, just like everybody else should be themselves."

Roach had seen jazz in rapid development at several junctures; he'd been the house drummer at Monroe's Uptown, where bebop was forged in after-hours sessions, starting around 1942. He knew what conservatism meant, in jazz terms.

"The minute you say 'jazz,' it's like saying 'classic jazz,'" he said, "and people expect a certain sound and certain attitude. If you say 'jazz,' they're looking for a saxophonist or a trumpeter, like if you say 'ragtime,' they're looking for a pianist. What Cecil is doing is using his vision of sound, and whether anybody else picks it up or not doesn't make any difference. Sometimes an artist may never be picked up on. To prevent that, musicians often come to the point where they leans towards what they think the public is going to appreciate them doing.

"God bless Cecil, because he goes beyond that. He stands his ground. He's not looking out to see if anybody's listening or not, or whatever. He's there. What he does makes sense, and it's not easy to do. I think a lot of people are not dealing with Cecil, because his music is difficult. Many people are not dealing with Charlie Parker honestly, either, because he's difficult, too, in pure form. These kinds of people would rather deal with hybrids, watered-down versions. That makes it easier. There are some people out here who will always do that. There are writers like that, too.

"Let me say this: Cecil and I want to do some more things together; that's in the talking stage. He's won a MacArthur, I've won a MacArthur, and we look at each other and smile, because we can afford to think of new things to do. We're toying with new ideas."

"A MacArthur Fellows Band?" I suggested.

"How about that?" Max Roach shot back.

© Howard Mandel 2007