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)

I can't deny that I once played under the name La Roca, but I have to insist that my name is Peter Sims with La Roca in brackets or in quotes. For 16 or 17 years, when I have not been playing the music, people have known me as Sims....When I was 14 or 15, I thought ["La Roca"] was clever; right now, it's an embarrassment. I thought that it would be something that people would probably remember - boy, was I ever right on that one! I can't make my conversion.[4]

In 1957,

In 1968, with the market for acoustic jazz in decline, Sims decided to enroll in law school.[5] 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.^[4] 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, was released under Chick Corea's name without his consent, Sims filed and argued a lawsuit against Douglas Records, 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).

He died in New York of lung cancer at the age of 74.^[6]

Discography

As leader

• 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)

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 (Atlantic, 1961)

With Joe Henderson

• 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

• Booker Little and Friend (Bethlehem, 1961)

With Charles Lloyd

• Of Course, of Course (Columbia, 1965)
• Nirvana (Columbia, 1965)
• Charles Lloyd - Live at Slugs' (Resonance, 2014)^[7]

With Jackie McLean

• New Soil (Blue Note, 1959)
• Bluesnik (Blue Note, 1961)

With Helen Merrill and Dick Katz

• The Feeling Is Mutual (Milestone, 1967)

With

• The Message (Jaro, 1960)

With Sonny Rollins

• A Night at the Village Vanguard
  (Blue Note, 1957)
• St Thomas – Sonny Rollins Trio in Stockholm 1959 (Dragon, 1984)
• Oleo (recorded 1959, Jazz Hour, 1992)

With George Russell

• The Outer View (Riverside, 1962)

With Tony Scott

• Gypsy (Signature, 1959)
• Golden Moments (recorded 1959, Muse, 1982) with Bill Evans and Jimmy Garrison
• I'll Remember (recorded 1959, Muse, 1982); both Muse LPs reissued on CD as At Last (32 Jazz, 1999)

With the Paul Serrano Quintet

• Blues Holiday (Riverside, 1961) with Cannonball Adderley a.o.

References

External links

• Pete LaRoca Sims Discography at JazzDiscography.com
• Pete La Roca at
  AllMusic