NEW YORK — Jack DeJohnette, a celebrated jazz drummer who worked with Miles Davis on his landmark 1970 fusion album and collaborated with Keith Jarrett and a vast array of other jazz greats, has died at 83.
The acclaimed drummer, bandleader and composer died Sunday in Kingston, New York, of congestive heart failure, surrounded by his wife, family and close friends, his assistant, Joan Clancy, told The Associated Press.
A winner of two Grammy awards, the Chicago-born DeJohnette began his musical life as a classical pianist, starting training at age 4, before taking up the drums with his high school band. He was in demand in his early years as both a pianist and a drummer.
Over the years he collaborated not only with Davis and Jarrett but also with names like John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Betty Carter — “virtually every major jazz figure from the 1960s on,” wrote the National Endowment for the Arts, which honored him in 2012 with a Jazz Master Fellowship.
In an interview for the NEA at the time, DeJohnette described what he felt was the nature of his talent.
“The best gift that I have is the ability to listen, not only listen audibly but listen with my heart,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate enough to play with a lot of musicians and leaders who allowed me to have that freedom.”
He added: “I just never doubted that I would be successful at this because it just feels like something’s going through me and lifting me up, and carrying me. All I had to do was acknowledge this gift and put it to use.”
In 1968, DeJohnette joined Davis and his group to work on music leading up to Davis’ 1970 influential studio album, “Bitches Brew.”
In a Sessions Panel interview, DeJohnette spoke of how he he’d been freelancing in New York when the opportunity arose to join Davis in the studio, at a time when experimentation with genres had become “the new frontier, so to speak.”
“Miles was in a creative mood,” DeJohnette said, “a process of utilizing the studio to go in every day and experiment with grooves. A lot of the music is not that structured … it was a matter of grooves, and sometimes a few notes or a few melodies. You’d turn the tape on and just let it roll.”
“Days and days and days of this would go on,” DeJohnette added. “We never thought about how important these records would be, it was just we knew it was important because Miles was there and he was moving forward with something different.”
Rolling Stone, which listed DeJohnette as one of the top 100 drummers of all time (at No. 40), cited the drummer’s “own innate knack for turning a memorable tune.”
Born Aug. 9, 1942 in Chicago, DeJohnette grew up in a family that placed great importance on music and its appreciation, according to background material on his website. He studied classical piano as a child privately and then at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. He turned to the drums at age 14, when he joined his school band.
“I listened to opera, country and western music, rhythm and blues, swing, jazz, whatever,” his website quotes him as saying. “To me, it was all music and all great. I’ve kept that integrated feeling about music, all types of music, and just carried it with me.”
As a sideman on piano and drums and also with his own groups, DeJohnette had become part of the Chicago jazz scene by the mid-1960s. He was active with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and later drummed alongside Rashied Ali in the John Coltrane Quintet. It was his involvement with Charles Lloyd’s quartet, where he first performed with Jarrett, that brought him international recognition.
In 1968, DeJohnette joined Davis’ group ahead of the recording of “Bitches Brew,” and remained with him for three years, contributing to further albums while also recording his own as a leader, beginning with the 1969 release “The DeJohnette Complex.”
DeJohnette recorded on various labels during his career but mostly on ECM. In addition to his own many projects and bands, he was a member of the Standards Trio, with Jarrett and Gary Peacock, for more than 25 years.
His two Grammys were for new age album (“Peace Time”) in 2009, a continuous, hourlong piece of music, and for jazz instrumental album (“Skyline”) in 2022.
DeJohnette is survived by his wife, Lydia DeJohnette, and two adult daughters, Farah DeJohnette and Minya DeJohnette, Clancy said.
