Jack DeJohnette, versatile jazz drummer known for Miles Davis CD recordings, dies at 83 | jazz

Jack DeJohnette, the jazz drummer celebrated as one of the genre’s true greats – who worked with stars including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Charles Lloyd – has died at the age of 83. A press representative for ECM, the record company that released many of his recordings, confirmed the news, while his personal assistant added that he died of congestive heart failure.

For his ability to bring dynamic, highly musical playing to extroverted free jazz, R&B-oriented grooves, and everything in between, DeJohnette is perhaps best known as the drummer of the Davis fusion period, contributing to albums such as Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner. He was also celebrated as a regular member and bandleader on ECM’s elegant progressive fusion releases in the 1980s.

DeJohnette was born in Chicago in 1942 and played the piano since he was five or six years old, he remembers, continuing to play the instrument along with the drums he picked up in his early teens. “Piano and drums are part of the percussion family,” he later said. “There is no separation: learning one thing feeds the other.”

He began singing doo-wop in a singing group and playing rock and roll, but gradually gravitated towards jazz, and from the late 1950s had his own trio. He’s hosted Sun Ra and his Arkestra, fraternized with the city’s leading names like Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, and sat in with Elvin Jones in John Coltrane’s band when they played in Chicago: “A truly wonderful physical and spiritual experience,” DeJohnette said of the last gig.

He dropped out of college and moved to New York in the mid-1960s to pursue music more seriously, packing his drums with only $28 to his name. He soon began working with Freddie Hubbard and Jackie McLean, then a more sustained collaboration with Charles Lloyd in his quartet where he played alongside Keith Jarrett – a frequent collaborator over the years in various units.

His time with pianist Bill Evans led him to the edge of Davis’ band at the end of the 1960s, with Davis bringing electric instrumentation and pushing the boundaries of pop music. When drummer Tony Williams left, DeJohnette was recalled. “I think playing with Miles, with Dave Holland and Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter was a very exciting time,” DeJohnette said of the band that produced Bitches Brew, Big Fun and a series of acclaimed live LPs. “We couldn’t always wait to get on the bandstand to see what kind of mischief we could get into.”

Davis would ask his band to work on huge grooves, starting with DeJohnette: “I’d start something, and if it was going well, he wouldn’t say anything and keep going, and then he’d point to each instrument and start something. When it would start filtering out, and then Miles would play a solo on top of that and then let it roll, let it roll until he felt it was exhausted.”

After making Live-Evil in a group, which DeJohnette described as one of his favorites of the era because of its “funky sound, grunge sound, dirty kind of sound”, Davis left in 1971, explaining: “I wanted to play more freely. Miles was moving into something more specific that he wanted from the drums, not as much freedom in detail.”

DeJohnette also recorded his eponymous debut in 1968, The DeJohnette Complex – the first of about 50 LPs he eventually made as a bandleader or co-leader, including return forays into piano.

His relationship with ECM began in 1973 with Ruta and Daitya, a duet album with Jarrett, as well as releases on his own groups such as Compost, Gateway and New Directions, and DeJohnette played with Jan Garbarek, Pat Metheny and others for the label.

DeJohnette became a regular feature on Sonny Rollins albums from the 1970s onwards, made a number of recordings with Herbie Hancock, and later became part of Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet – among a plethora of other recordings. He also appeared in the Blues Brothers sequel, Blues Brothers 2000.

All the while, he brought thoughtful musicianship to the drums rather than treating them as just a backbeat. “I hear an orchestra,” he said. “I think one example of this is that the cymbals in my drum kit are like the sustain pedal on an acoustic piano. So I’m hearing the colors.”

DeJohnette has won two Grammy Awards, most recently in 2022 when Skyline (a collaboration with Ron Carter and Gonzalo Rubalcaba) won for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, and DeJohnette received the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Award in 2012.

DeJohnette was married twice, first to Deirdre Davenport, whom he met at junior college in Chicago. He met his second wife Lydia backstage at Ronnie Scott’s in London in 1966 and she later moved with him to the United States. They had two daughters, Farah and Monia. He named a track after Lydia on his 2001 album Time and Space, which was produced with Dave Holland.