Joy Spring – Max Roach – Drum Transcription (PDF)

For the full product description and drum solo analysis, make sure to check out the accompanying post: Joy Spring – Max Roach – Drum Transcription

Joy Spring – Drum Transcription:

Joy Spring is a jazz standard written by Clifford Brown and made famous by the Capitol recording of the 1954 album; Clifford Brown & Max Roach. The song, named after the pet name for his wife Larue, became his signature work. The anecdote goes that before Clifford and Larue met, she was a classical music student writing a classic versus jazz thesis. The idea was to prove the superiority of classical music over jazz and even refute that jazz music was art. Their mutual friend, Max Roach, introduced the two to each other. Clifford took Larue aside with the statement: Honey, the world is not just built around tonic/dominant progressions. Larue became Clifford’s wife and a big jazz fan afterwards.

Personnel on the Brown (trumpet) and Roach (drummer) album are; Harold Land on tenor saxophone, Richie Powell on piano and George Morrow on double bass. Six days after the first recording, they made another recording on an arrangement of Jack Montrose. Joy Spring and the album are typical for the band’s Hardbop music style. In addition, the album is famous as one of the strongest studio albums up to that time (Ben Ratliff, New York Times). Next to Jordu and Daahoud from the same album, the track became well-known and regularly played.

Online Education:

In 2017, I finished two university degrees at the Luca School Of Arts in Leuven, Belgium. My first degree is a master’s degree in drums and percussion. The second degree is a bachelor’s in jazz studies. As a part of graduating in jazz, I researched the link between four Max Roach drum solos and their jazz standard’s melody. I wrote the initial document in dutch, although, over time, I converted these to English. Here you can download the (free) PDF for the drum transcription of Jordu, one of the Max Roach drum solo’s I analysed. Below that, I will include a brief analysis of the drum solo. If you have any questions, send me a message on the contact page or leave a comment!

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