Jack DeJohnette, Visionary Jazz Drummer and Miles Davis Collaborator, Dies at 83

Jack DeJohnette, the innovative jazz drummer whose explosive yet fluid playing helped define Miles Davis’ electric period and reshaped modern jazz rhythm, has died at 83. His assistant, Joan Clancy, confirmed that DeJohnette passed away on Sunday from congestive heart failure. “He was very comfortable and at peace,” she said, adding that the drummer was surrounded by his wife, Lydia, family, and close friends in his final hours.

Born in Chicago in 1942, DeJohnette began his musical life at the piano, studying classical repertoire before moving to drums at 18, a relatively late start that never limited his range. Immersed in Chicago’s thriving avant-garde scene, he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an incubator for experimental players who reimagined the structure of jazz. Those early years placed him in contact with some of the most influential musicians of the era, including John Coltrane, and led to his first high-profile role in saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s quartet, a band that unexpectedly crossed into the pop charts in the late 1960s.

By the end of that decade, DeJohnette had performed and recorded with a roster of major bandleaders, including Jackie McLean, Stan Getz, and Joe Henderson, appearing on Henderson’s 1969 LP Power to the People, as well as pianist Bill Evans, whose Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival earned a Grammy Award. His versatility and forward-leaning sensibility made him an ideal choice for Davis’ next major reinvention.

In 1969, DeJohnette replaced Tony Williams as drummer in Miles Davis’ touring band, just as the trumpeter began to fuse jazz improvisation with rock and funk rhythms. That lineup, featuring Davis, DeJohnette, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, and Dave Holland, became known retrospectively as “the Lost Quintet,” celebrated for its blistering, shape-shifting live shows, though it never recorded in the studio.

Their performances, preserved decades later on Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2, remain landmarks of collective improvisation. DeJohnette also played on a string of Davis’ key electric albums, including Bitches Brew (1970), which redefined the sound of jazz-fusion, as well as portions of Jack Johnson and On the Corner. His rhythmic elasticity, capable of moving from thunderous propulsion to delicate counterpoint, helped bridge the gap between acoustic swing and the heavier rhythmic ideas of rock. “It was great to play with Miles, because Miles loved the drums,” DeJohnette told Jazz.com in 2009. “Everything came from the drums. He saw drumming in jazz as having the same kind of physical energy as boxing.”

Following his tenure with Davis, DeJohnette became one of the most sought-after drummers in the world, playing with Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, and Michael Brecker, among many others. As a leader, he launched The DeJohnette Complex in 1969 and went on to release more than three dozen albums, often exploring spiritual and cross-cultural themes. His long-running Gateway trio with bassist Dave Holland and guitarist John Abercrombie became a model of collaborative interplay, while 2007’s Peace Time won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.

Beyond his technical command, DeJohnette was admired for his compositional instincts and his ability to fuse disparate musical ideas, from AACM-style abstraction to deep, groove-based swing. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2012 and consistently appeared in polls ranking the world’s greatest drummers; Rolling Stone placed him at Number 40 on its “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time” list.

Across more than six decades, Jack DeJohnette remained a drummer of uncommon curiosity, a musician who refused to see genre boundaries as limits. His playing connected jazz’s experimental roots to its modern forms, shaping generations of drummers and bandleaders who followed.

As Clancy said, “His legacy will go on for generations.”