Pete La Roca
Pete "La Roca" Sims was an American jazz drummer and attorney. 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 studied percussion 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 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 told The New York Times in 1982 that he did so only out of necessity:
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, and Charles Lloyd, among others. During this period, he led his own group and worked as the house drummer at the Jazz Workshop in Boston, Massachusetts. He recorded two albums as a leader during the mid-1960s, Basra and Turkish Women at the Bath.
In 1968, with the market for acoustic jazz in decline, Sims decided to enroll in law school. 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. 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 album Turkish Women at the Bath was re-released on Muse Records as "Bliss" in 1973 under Chick Corea's name, 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.
Sims died in 2012 in New York of lung cancer, at the age of 74.
Discography
As leader
Basra Turkish Women at the Bath- ''Swingtime''
As sideman
With Anamari- Anamari
With Paul BleyFootloose!
With Rocky BoydEase It
With Jaki ByardHi-Fly
With Sonny ClarkMy Conception Sonny Clark Quintets
With Johnny ColesLittle Johnny C
With Ted CursonPlenty of Horn
With Art FarmerTo Sweden with Love – with Jim HallSing Me Softly of the Blues
With Don FriedmanCircle Waltz – with Scott LaFaro
With Slide HamptonSlide Hampton and His Horn of Plenty Sister Salvation Somethin' Sanctified
With Joe HendersonPage One Our Thing
With Freddie HubbardBlue Spirits The Night of the Cookers: Live at Club la Marchal, Volume 1 The Night of the Cookers: Live at Club la Marchal, Volume 2
With Steve Kuhn1960 – with Scott LaFaroThe Country and Western Sound of Jazz Pianos – with Toshiko AkiyoshiThree Waves – with Steve SwallowSing Me Softly of the Blues – with George Mraz
With Scott LaFaroPieces of Jade
With Booker LittleBooker Little and Friend
With Charles LloydOf Course, of Course Nirvana Live at Slugs
With Jackie McLeanNew Soil Bluesnik
With Helen Merrill and Dick KatzThe Feeling Is Mutual
With J.R. MonteroseThe Message
With Sonny RollinsA Night at the Village Vanguard St Thomas: Sonny Rollins Trio in Stockholm 1959 Oleo
With George RussellThe Outer View
With Tony ScottGypsy Golden Moments – with Bill Evans and Jimmy GarrisonI'll Remember
With Paul Serrano'Blues Holiday – with Cannonball Adderley a.o.