Thursday, June 28, 2012

Musicians' quotes: Max Roach on historical perspective

Some of the records were done 'under the table', because you were fined and thrown out of the union if you did record. It was always a hustle and a rush. Much of the music written by Charlie Parker was written in taxi cabs on the way to the studio [...] It was get in, get out immediately, because the union was always lurking around the corner. And it's amazing to me, when I remember how it was done, how today it is considered so profound.

Max Roach on the sessions recorded during the 1948 Musician's Union ban, which include Charlie Parker's "Parker's Mood", quoted on Geoffrey Haydon's Quintet of the Year (Aurum Press, 2002).


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