Pete La Roca | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Peter Sims |
| Born | (1938-04-07)April 7, 1938 Harlem,New York, United States |
| Died | November 20, 2012(2012-11-20) (aged 74) |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation | Drummer |
Pete "La Roca" Sims (bornPeter Sims; April 7, 1938 – November 20, 2012, known asPete La Roca from 1957 until 1968)[1] was an Americanjazzdrummer and attorney. Born and raised inHarlem by a pianist mother and a stepfather who played trumpet, he was introduced to jazz by his uncle Kenneth Bright, a major shareholder inCircle Records and the manager of rehearsal spaces above theLafayette Theater. Sims studied percussion at theHigh School of Music and Art and at theCity College of New York, where he playedtympani in the CCNY Orchestra.[2] He adopted the name La Roca early in his musical career, when he playedtimbales for six years inLatin bands.[3] In the 1970s, during a hiatus from jazz performance, he resumed using his original surname. When he returned to jazz in the late 1970s, he usually inserted "La Roca" into his name in quotation marks to help audiences familiar with his early work identify him. He toldThe New York Times in 1982 that he did so only out of necessity:
I can't deny that I once played under the name La Roca, but I have to insist that my name is Peter Sims with La Roca in brackets or in quotes. For 16 or 17 years, when I have not been playing the music, people have known me as Sims....When I was 14 or 15, I thought ["La Roca"] was clever; right now, it's an embarrassment. I thought that it would be something that people would probably remember - boy, was I ever right on that one! I can't make my conversion.[4]
In 1957,Max Roach became aware of him while jamming atBirdland and recommended him toSonny Rollins. As drummer of Rollins' trio on the afternoon set at theVillage Vanguard on November 3 he became part of the important recordA Night at the Village Vanguard. (Only one of five recorded tracks with La Roca was included on the original single LP release of the album). In 1959 he recorded withJackie McLean (New Soil) and in a quartet withTony Scott,Bill Evans andJimmy Garrison. Besides Garrison he often joined with bassists who played in the Bill Evans Trio, especiallyScott LaFaro andSteve Swallow, and also accompanied pianists likeSteve Kuhn,Don Friedman andPaul Bley.
Between the end of the 1950s and 1968, he also played withSlide Hampton, theJohn Coltrane Quartet,Marian McPartland,Art Farmer,Freddie Hubbard,Mose Allison, andCharles Lloyd, among others. During this period, he led his own group and worked as the house drummer at the Jazz Workshop inBoston, Massachusetts.[5] He recorded two albums as a leader during the mid-1960s,Basra (Blue Note, 1965) andTurkish Women at the Bath (Douglas, 1967).
In 1968, with the market for acoustic jazz in decline, Sims decided to enroll in law school.[5] By this time he was already earning most of his income by driving a taxi cab in New York City, a job he held for five years during the 1960s.[4] Sims became a lawyer in the early 1970s, and was still practicing at the time of a 1997 radio interview with WNYC's Steve Sullivan. When his albumTurkish Women at the Bath was re-released on Muse Records as "Bliss" in 1973 under Chick Corea's name (without Sims' consent), Sims filed a lawsuit and served as his own legal counsel. Sims won his suit, and the erroneously-labeled records were recalled.
He returned to jazz part-time in 1979, and recorded one new album as a leader,Swing Time (Blue Note, 1997).
Sims died in 2012 in New York of lung cancer, at the age of 74.[6]
With Anamari
WithBill Barron
WithPaul Bley
WithRocky Boyd
WithJaki Byard
WithSonny Clark
WithJohnny Coles
WithTed Curson
WithArt Farmer
WithDon Friedman
WithSlide Hampton
WithJoe Henderson
WithFreddie Hubbard
WithSteve Kuhn
WithScott LaFaro
WithBooker Little
WithCharles Lloyd
WithJackie McLean
WithHelen Merrill andDick Katz
WithJ.R. Monterose
WithSonny Rollins
WithGeorge Russell
WithTony Scott
With Paul Serrano
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
