Pete La Roca


Pete La Roca was an American jazz drummer. Born and raised in Harlem by a pianist mother and a stepfather who played trumpet, he was introduced to jazz by his uncle Kenneth Bright, a major shareholder in Circle Records and the manager of rehearsal spaces above the Lafayette Theater. Sims learned percussion in Public School, at the High School of Music and Art, and at the City College of New York, where he played tympani in the CCNY Orchestra. He adopted the name La Roca early in his musical career when he played timbales for six years in Latin bands.
In 1957 Max Roach became aware of him while jamming at Birdland and recommended him to Sonny Rollins. As drummer of Rollins' trio on the afternoon set at the Village Vanguard on November 3 he became part of the important record A Night at the Village Vanguard. In 1959 he recorded with Jackie McLean and in a quartet with Tony Scott, Bill Evans and Jimmy Garrison. Besides Garrison he often joined with bassists who played in the Bill Evans Trio, especially Scott LaFaro and Steve Swallow, and also accompanied pianists like Steve Kuhn, Don Friedman and Paul Bley.
Between the end of the 1950s and 1968 he also played with Slide Hampton, the John Coltrane Quartet, Marian McPartland, Art Farmer, Freddie Hubbard, Mose Allison, Charles Lloyd, among others, as well as leading his own group and working as the house drummer at the Jazz Workshop in Boston, Massachusetts. During this period, he twice recorded as leader, firstly on Basra and also on Turkish Women at the Bath, also issued as Bliss under pianist Chick Corea's name on Muse.
In 1968 he stopped taking side-man gigs, and only accepted work as a band leader. La Roca began earning a living by driving a taxi cab in New York City, and later attended law school at New York University. When his second album as leader, Turkish Women at the Bath, was released under Chick Corea's name without La Roca's consent, La Roca filed and argued a lawsuit against Douglas Records, and the erroneously-labeled records were recalled.
He returned to jazz in 1979, and recorded one new album as a leader, Swing Time.

Discography

As leader

With Anamari
With Bill Barron
With Paul Bley
With Rocky Boyd
With Jaki Byard
With Sonny Clark
With Johnny Coles
With Ted Curson
With Art Farmer
With the Don Friedman Trio
With Slide Hampton
With Joe Henderson
With Freddie Hubbard
With the Steve Kuhn Trio
With Booker Little
With Charles Lloyd
With Jackie McLean
With Helen Merrill and Dick Katz
With J.R. Monterose
With Sonny Rollins
With George Russell
With Tony Scott
With the Paul Serrano Quintet