Biography:

Jack DeJohnette (August 9, 1942 – October 26, 2025) was an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer.

Known for his extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians including Charles Lloyd, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, John Abercrombie, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, and John Scofield, DeJohnette was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2007.[1] He won two Grammy Awards and was nominated for six others.[2]

Early life and musical beginnings

DeJohnette was born on August 9, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois,[3] to Jack DeJohnette (1911–2011) and Eva Jeanette DeJohnette (née Wood, 1918–1984).[4] Although of predominantly African-American heritage, he stated that he had some Native American ancestry, specifically Seminole and Crow.[5] He began his musical career as a pianist, studying from age four with Antoinette Rich, the leader of an all-female symphony orchestra in Chicago, and first playing professionally at the age of 14.[6] When Jack was 13, he switched to drums and was taught drumming techniques from a local jazz drummer, Bobby Miller Jr, who lived in the same neighborhood.[4][7] DeJohnette credits his uncle, Roy Wood Sr. (1915–1995), a Chicago disc jockey and vice president/co-founder of the National Black Network of Black Broadcasters, as his inspiration to play music.[8]

DeJohnette played R&B, hard bop, and avant-garde music in Chicago. He led his own groups in addition to playing with Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and other eventual core members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (founded in 1965).[8] He also occasionally performed with Sun Ra and his Arkestra, and later in New York as well. In the early 1960s, DeJohnette had the opportunity to sit in for three tunes with John Coltrane and his quintet, an early foray into playing with big-name jazz musicians.[9][10]

In 1966 DeJohnette moved to New York City, where he became a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet.[4] A band that recognized the potential influence of rock and roll on jazz, Lloyd’s group was where DeJohnette first encountered pianist Keith Jarrett, who would work extensively with him throughout his career.[11] However, DeJohnette left the group in early 1968, citing Lloyd’s deteriorating, “flat” playing as his main reason for leaving.[12] While Lloyd’s band was where he received international recognition for the first time,[8] it was not the only group DeJohnette played with during his early years in New York, as he also worked with groups including Jackie McLean, Abbey Lincoln, Betty Carter, and Bill Evans.[4] DeJohnette joined Evans’ trio in 1968, the same year the group headlined the Montreux Jazz Festival and produced the album Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival. In November 1968, he worked briefly with Stan Getz and his quartet, which led to his first recordings with Miles Davis.[10]

The Miles Davis years

In 1969, DeJohnette left the Evans trio and replaced Tony Williams in Miles Davis’s live band. Davis had seen DeJohnette play many times, one of which was during a stint with Evans at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London in 1968, where he also first heard bassist Dave Holland.[13] Davis recognized DeJohnette’s ability to combine the driving grooves associated with rock and roll with improvisational aspects associated with jazz.[14]

DeJohnette was the primary drummer on Bitches Brew. DeJohnette and the other musicians saw the Bitches Brew sessions as unstructured and fragmentary, but also innovative: “As the music was being played, as it was developing, Miles would get new ideas … He’d do a take, and stop, and then get an idea from what had just gone on before, and elaborate on it … The recording of Bitches Brew was a stream of creative musical energy. One thing was flowing into the next, and we were stopping and starting all the time.”[15] While he was not the only drummer involved in the project, as Davis had also enlisted Billy Cobham, Don Alias, and Lenny White, DeJohnette was considered the leader of the rhythm section within the group.[16] He played on the live albums that would follow the release of Bitches Brew, taken from concerts at the Fillmore East in New York and Fillmore West in San Francisco. These ventures were undertaken at the behest of Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records.[17]

DeJohnette continued to work with Davis for the next three years, which led to collaborations with other Davis band members John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, and Holland; he also drew Keith Jarrett into the band.[8] DeJohnette contributed to such Davis albums as Live-Evil (1971), Jack Johnson (1971), and On the Corner (1972), along with sessions later released on the 1981 compilation album Directions.[18] He left the Davis group in mid-1971, although he returned for several concerts through the rest of that year.[10]

Solo and bandleader in the 1970s and ’80s

DeJohnette’s first record, The DeJohnette Complex, was released in 1968; on the album, he played melodica as well as drums, often allowing his mentor, Roy Haynes, to sit behind the set. He also recorded, in the early 1970s, the albums Have You Heard, Sorcery, and Cosmic Chicken.[8] He released these first four albums on either the Milestone or Prestige labels,[8] and then switched to ECM for his next endeavors; ECM gave him a “fertile platform” for his “atmospheric drumming and challenging compositions.”[19] He was also featured on First Light, an album by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, released by CTI in 1971.

The musical freedom he had while recording for ECM offered DeJohnette many dates as a sideman and opportunities to start his own groups.[19] He first formed the group Compost in 1972, but this was a short-lived endeavor, and DeJohnette cited the music as far too experimental to achieve commercial success. During this period, DeJohnette continued his career as a sideman as well, rejoining Stan Getz’s quartet from 1973 to October 1974, and also enticing Dave Holland to join Getz’s rhythm section.[10] This stint briefly preceded the formation of the Gateway Trio, a group that DeJohnette helped form but did not lead. This group came directly out of DeJohnette’s time with Getz, as Holland joined him in this group along with guitarist John Abercrombie, both of whom would become associated with DeJohnette throughout his career.[8] His next group effort was Directions, a group formed in 1976 featuring saxophonist Alex Foster, bassist Mike Richmond, and Abercrombie, showing the links between the members of the Gateway trio. This was another short-lived group, yet it led directly to the formation of DeJohnette’s next group, New Directions, which featured Abercrombie again on guitar along with Lester Bowie on trumpet and Eddie Gómez on bass. This group coexisted with another DeJohnette group, Special Edition, which was the first DeJohnette-led group to receive critical acclaim.[10] This group also helped the careers of many lesser-known young horn players, as it had a rotating front line that included David Murray, Arthur Blythe, Chico Freeman, and John Purcell, among others.[10]

During this period, especially with Special Edition, DeJohnette offered “the necessary gravity to keep the horns in a tight orbit” in his compositions while also treating his listeners to “the expanded vocabulary of the avant-garde plus the discipline of traditional jazz compositions.”[20] DeJohnette’s work with Special Edition was interrupted regularly by other projects, the most significant of which are his recordings in 1983 and tours from 1985 as a member of Keith Jarrett’s trio, which was totally devoted to playing jazz standards.[10] The trio included his long-time compatriot Jarrett and bassist Gary Peacock, and all three have been members of the group for over 25 years.[8]

At the start of the 1980s, DeJohnette played on the album 80/81 with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker. In 1981, DeJohnette performed at the Woodstock Jazz Festival, held in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Creative Music Studio.

Credits:

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