Pete La Roca

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. (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 (Douglas, 1967). In 1968, with the market for acoustic jazz in decline, Sims decided to enroll in law school. 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 (without Sims' consent), 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 (Blue Note, 1997). Sims died in 2012 in New York of lung cancer, at the age of 74.

• Name — Pete La Roca • Birth Name — Peter Sims • Born — 7 April 1938 • Birthplace — Harlem, New York, United States • Died — 20 November 2012 • Genre — * Post-bop • Latin jazz • Occupation — Drummer

• Basra (Blue Note, 1965) • Turkish Women at the Bath (Douglas, 1967; also released as Bliss! under Chick Corea's name on Muse, 1973) • Swingtime (Blue Note, 1997)

With Anamari • Anamari (Atlantic, 1964) With Bill Barron • Modern Windows (Savoy, 1961 [1962]) With Paul Bley • Footloose! (Savoy, 1962–63 [1963]) With Rocky Boyd • Ease It (Jazztime, 1961) With Jaki Byard • Hi-Fly (New Jazz, 1962) With Sonny Clark • My Conception (Blue Note, 1957 [1979]) • Sonny Clark Quintets (Blue Note, 1958 [1976]; reissued as Cool Struttin' Volume 2 on Blue Note, 1983) With Johnny Coles • Little Johnny C (Blue Note, 1963 [1964]) 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 Don Friedman • Circle Waltz (Riverside, 1962) – with Scott LaFaro With Slide Hampton • Slide Hampton and His Horn of Plenty (Strand, 1959) • Sister Salvation (Atlantic, 1960) • Somethin' Sanctified (Atlantic, 1960 [1961]) With Joe Henderson • Page One (Blue Note, 1963) • Our Thing (Blue Note, 1963 [1964]) With Freddie Hubbard • Blue Spirits (Blue Note, 1964 [1967]) • The Night of the Cookers: Live at Club la Marchal, Volume 1 (Blue Note, 1965) • The Night of the Cookers: Live at Club la Marchal, Volume 2 (Blue Note, 1965 [1966]) With Steve Kuhn • 1960 (PJL, 1960 [2005]) – with Scott LaFaro • The Country and Western Sound of Jazz Pianos (Dauntless, 1963) – with Toshiko Akiyoshi • Three Waves (Contact, 1966) – with Steve Swallow • Sing Me Softly of the Blues (Venus, 1997) – with George Mraz With Scott LaFaro • Pieces of Jade (Resonance, 1961 [2009]) With Booker Little • Booker Little and Friend (Bethlehem, 1961) With Charles Lloyd • Of Course, of Course (Columbia, 1965) • Nirvana (Columbia, 1962, 1964–65 [1965]) • Live at Slugs (Resonance, 1965 [2014]) With Jackie McLean • New Soil (Blue Note, 1959) • Bluesnik (Blue Note, 1961 [1962]) With Helen Merrill and Dick Katz • The Feeling Is Mutual (Milestone, 1965 [1967]) With J.R. Monterose • The Message (Jaro, 1959 [1960]) With Sonny Rollins • A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957) • St Thomas: Sonny Rollins Trio in Stockholm 1959 (Dragon, 1959 [1984]) • Oleo (Jazz Hour, 1959 [1992]) With George Russell • The Outer View (Riverside, 1962) With Tony Scott • Gypsy (Signature, 1959) • Golden Moments (Muse, 1959 [1982]) – with Bill Evans and Jimmy Garrison • I'll Remember (Muse, 1959 [1982]) With Paul Serrano • Blues Holiday (Riverside, 1960 [1961]) – with Cannonball Adderley a.o.