Pete LaRoca
Pete Laroca, actually Peter Sims ( born April 7, 1938 in New York City; † November 19, 2012 ) was an American jazz drummer and lawyer.
Life and work
Pete Laroca was the son of a trumpeter and pianist. He studied at the High School of Music & Art and at the Manhattan School of Music. Max Roach heard him in the jazz club Birdland and recommended him to Sonny Rollins. His livelihood, he earned a law office and in New York's public library.
Laroca played in the 1950s with the hard bop formations of Jaki Byard, Jackie McLean, Art Farmer, Joe Henderson, JR Monte Rose, Kenny Dorham, Paul Bley, Slide Hampton, Sonny Clark and Sonny Rollins. With the latter, he took on the legendary concert at New York's Village Vanguard in 1957. 1961/62 launched shortly Laroca own formation and was the mid-1960s in the Jazz Workshop in Boston, Farmer and listen to Charles Lloyd at Art. In 1965 he recorded his first album as a leader, Basra ( Blue Note Records).
In 1967 the album Turkish Woman At The Bath with Chick Corea, bassist Walter Booker and John Gilmore, the 1973 also known as Bliss! was published by Chick Corea. Around 1968 ended Laroca his jazz career and began working as a lawyer. He took the name of Pete Sims again ( Laroca he had chosen as a stage name when he played in his youth in Latin bands ). In 1997, he took again an album as a leader on ( Swing Time, Blue Note Records). Early 2000s Laroca ill from lung cancer.
Voices of his colleagues
"Hey what 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 what a drummer like no one else. "
"OK, of all the drummers I had heard up until then, Pete what 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 what unusual and I Realized this is not amateur night anymore! That was a wonderful few tunes .. "
Auswahldiskographie
- Basra ( Blue Note Records, 1965) with Joe Henderson, Steve Kuhn, Steve Swallow
- Bill Barron: Modern Windows ( Savoy Records, 1961)
- Jaki Byard: Hi- Fly ( Prestige Records, 1962)
- Sonny Clark: My Conception ( Blue Note, 1959)
- Art Farmer: To Sweden With Love (1964 ), Sing Me Softly Of The Blues ( 1965); both Atlantic Records
- Don Friedman Circle Waltz ( Riverside Records, 1962)
- Slide Hampton: Sister Salvation ( Atlantic, 1960)
- Joe Henderson: Page One, Our Thing ( Blue Note, 1963)
- Jackie McLean: New Soil ( Blue Note, 1959)