It’s been announced that a true jazz great – drummer Jack DeJohnette – has passed away at the age of 83.
DeJohnette played with an array of iconic names, including Sonny Rollins, Alice Coltrane, Keith Jarrett and Herbie Hancock, but it’s for his work with Miles Davis that he is probably best known.
He joined Davis’s band in the late '60s as the trumpeter was moving into jazz fusion. He played on the Bitches Brew, Live-Evil and On The Corner albums and contributed to Davis’s Jack Johnson soundtrack.
DeJohnette later described what it was like working with Davis during that period: “I’d start something and if it was OK he wouldn’t say anything and it would continue, then he’d cue each instrument in and get something going. When it would start percolating, then Miles would then play a solo over that and then let it roll, let it roll until he felt it had been exhausted.”
He left the Davis band in 1971, explaining that: “I wanted to play a little freer. Miles was moving into a more specific thing that he wanted from the drums, not as much freedom to elaborate.”
He went on to release albums with Keith Jarrett (Ruta and Daitya), and with a series of his own aggregations - Compost, Gateway and New Directions, as well as those under his own name. And he made regular appearances on Sonny Rollins’ albums.
DeJohnette was said to have a unique dynamic style, which was in part a result of a long period studying classical piano as a child growing up in Chicago. Certainly, he did a lot more than provide a mere backbeat. “I am hearing orchestrally,” he once said. “I guess one example would be the cymbals are to my drum set what the sustain pedal is on the acoustic piano. So I am hearing colours.”
He won two Grammys during his long career. The first, in 2009, was for Best New Age album of all things, for Peace Time. He managed to bag Best Jazz Instrumental album in 2022 for Skyline, a series of recordings with Ron Carter and Gonzalo Rubalcaba that were inspired by the city of New York.
