Val Wilmer writes: Your obituary of Max Roach (August 20) wrongly credits the Greater London council with the naming of Max Roach park. It was on the initiative of then Labour councillor Sharon Atkin that Lambeth council named 27 sites in the borough in 1986 to acknowledge contributions by people of African descent. Thoroughfares were named or renamed after Francis Barber, servant to Dr Johnson - who had ties with Streatham - and Olympic javelin champion Tessa Sanderson, and other sites or buildings celebrated musical figures including Roach and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, as well as Jamaican saxophonists Joe Harriott and Harold McNair.
The opening of the Brixton park coincided with Roach's GLC-sponsored visit to London, happily enabling him to attend the opening in the company of Atkin and his old friend, the drummer Ken Gordon, uncle of Moira Stuart.
Leon Cohen writes: Whatever can Ronald Atkins mean by stating that Miles Davis and Max Roach left Charlie Parker "far behind", unless he means in the sense that they outlived him? Most jazz musicians think that they never caught him up, and emphatically, not by the time of Parker's death.
