The Individualism of Roger Humphries
Around 9 p.m. on gala night of the 2026 Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, I was obliged to exit an immensely satisfying concert by Samara Joy and her cohesive septet in the August Wilson Cultural Center’s auditorium to emcee a set by drum grandmaster Roger Humphries. A familiar and beloved figure in Pittsburgh’s hardcore jazz circles for most of his 82 years, Humphries reached the global stage during his 1964–’67 tenure with Horace Silver, during which he developed a creative, still-fresh, swing-meets Afro-Latin beat matrix to propel bandmates Joe Henderson, Carmel Jones, Woody Shaw and J.J. Johnson on albums like Song For My Father, The Cape Verdean Blues and The Jody Grind, thereby stamping his tonal personality in the volatile mix of contemporaneous drum expression then being developed by individualistic, virtuosic generational contemporaries like Tony Williams, Joe Chambers, Jack DeJohnette, Lenny White and Billy Cobham.
