Washington Post Staff Writer
Elvin Jones, 76, the drummer who lit the rhythmic fire under the transcendental jazz of saxophonist John Coltrane, died May 18 at a hospital in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. He had a heart ailment.
In his five years with Coltrane's quartet in the 1960s, Mr. Jones set the standard for modern jazz drumming, incorporating the polyrhythmic patterns of African drumming into his incendiary, almost overwhelming technique. McCoy Tyner, the group's pianist, called the quartet “four pistons in an engine." By that analogy, Mr. Jones was its drive train.
With Coltrane, he performed on some of the most important, and influential, albums in jazz history, including “My Favorite Things," “John Coltrane Live at Birdland" and “Love Supreme." He was, according to Whitney Balliett, jazz critic of the New Yorker, “the greatest of all modern drummers."
Mr. Jones exerted a towering influence over jazz for decades, performing on hundreds of albums and touring all over the world. He continued to perform until weeks before his death.
“Elvin seemed to invent new ways of playing the drums," said one of his drumming proteges, Peter Erskine. “Nobody else sounded like him."
Mr. Jones was born in Pontiac, Mich., the youngest of 10 children. His father worked at General Motors and was a Baptist deacon.
From an early age, Mr. Jones knew he wanted to be a drummer.
“I didn't want to play basketball," he told a jazz Web site in 2002. “I didn't want to play baseball, football or anything like that. All I ever thought about was playing drums."
For more information contact All About Jazz.
