Pete La Roca

Pete "La Roca" Sims (born Peter Sims; April 7, 1938 – November 20, 2012, known as Pete La Roca from 1957 until 1968) 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.'' (Only one of five recorded tracks with La Roca was included on the original single LP release of the album). In 1959 he recorded with Jackie McLean ('' New Soil'') 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'' (Blue Note, 1965) and ''Turkish Women at the Bath, 1967).

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 second album as leader, ''Turkish Women at the Bath, 1997).

He died in New York of lung cancer at the age of 74.

Discography

As leader

* ''Basra'' (Blue Note, 1965)
* ''Turkish Women at the Bath's name on Muse, 1973)
* ''Swingtime'' (Blue Note, 1997)

As sideman

With Anamari
*''Anamari'' (Atlantic, 1964)
With Bill Barron
*''Modern Windows'' (Savoy, 1961)
With Paul Bley
* ''Footloose!'' (Savoy, 1963)
With Rocky Boyd
* ''Ease It'' (Jazztime, 1961)
With Jaki Byard
* '' Hi-Fly'' (New Jazz, 1962)
With Sonny Clark
* '' My Conception'' (rec. 1957, Blue Note compilation, 1979)
* '' Sonny Clark Quintets'' a.k.a. '' Cool Struttin' Volume 2'' (rec. 1958, Blue Note, 1965)
With Johnny Coles
* ''Little Johnny C'' (Blue Note, 1963)
With Ted Curson
* '' Plenty of Horn'' (Old Town, 1961)
With Art Farmer
* '' To Sweden with Love'' (Atlantic, 1964) with Jim Hall
* '' Sing Me Softly of the Blues'' (Atlantic, 1965)
With the Don Friedman Trio
* ''Circle Waltz'' (Riverside, 1962) with Scott LaFaro
* ''Scott LaFaro – Pieces of Jade'' (rec. 1961, Resonance, 2009)
With Slide Hampton
* ''Slide Hampton and His Horn of Plenty'' (Strand, 1959)
* ''Sister Salvation'' (Atlantic, 1960)
* ''Somethin' Sanctified
* '' Page One'' (Blue Note, 1963)
* '' Our Thing'' (Blue Note, 1963)
With Freddie Hubbard
* ''Blue Spirits'' (Blue Note, 1964)
* ''The Night of the Cookers'' (Blue Note, 1965)
With the Steve Kuhn Trio
* ''1960'' (rec. 1960, PJL (J), 2005) with Scott LaFaro
* ''The Country and Western Sound of Jazz Pianos'' (Dauntless, 1963) with Toshiko Akiyoshi
* ''Three Waves'' (rec. 1966, Flying Dutchman (J), 1975) with Steve Swallow
* ''Sing Me Softly of the Blues'' (Venus, 1997) with George Mraz
With Booker Little

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