Pete La Roca

Pete La Roca abandoned music entirely in 1968 to practice law under his birth name Pete Sims, thereby truncating a promising trajectory. He had launched his performing life on timbales in Latin ensembles before adopting the professional surname Pete La Roca. Between 1957 and 1959 he supplied drums for Sonny Rollins and forged working ties with Jackie McLean, Slide Hampton, Marian McPartland, and the John Coltrane Quartet, for which he served as the original drummer in 1960. He fronted his own band from 1961 to 1962, held the drum chair at Boston’s Jazz Workshop from 1963 to 1964, and subsequently appeared with Art Farmer (1964–1965), Freddie Hubbard, Mose Allison, Charles Lloyd (1966), Paul Bley, and Steve Kuhn. As a leader he documented two distinguished sessions: the Blue Note classic Basra, featuring Joe Henderson, and Bliss!, a Douglas date later reissued on Muse that showcased Chick Corea and John Gilmore. La Roca returned to jazz performance in 1979. He died of lung cancer in November 2012 at the age of 74.