Art by Evan Solano
Chris Robinson is going to be MC Hammer Meets Vampire for Halloween.
If he wasn’t already your favorite jazz drummer, Jack DeJohnette is probably your favorite drummer’s favorite drummer. In a career that spanned seven decades, DeJohnette played with just about every jazz luminary: Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, George Benson, Pat Metheny, Hank Jones, and on and on.
DeJohnette, who passed away on October 26 at the age of 83, was one of those prodigiously gifted musicians who could play with anybody, in any style, at any time. He was just as comfortable driving Miles’ nastiest avant-funk bands as he was bringing new life to worn out jazz standards like “Autumn Leaves.” His drumming was always powerful and propulsive, but never overbearing. He layered polyrhythms layered upon polyrhythms, but never became inaccessible. His drum breaks left crate diggers drooling. One of his most astounding characteristics was his sheer range. His piano chops were astounding, perhaps only comparable to Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis. DeJohnette was the type of giant of whom there are very few remaining and the likes of which we will likely never see or hear again.
As a child growing up in Chicago, DeJohnette spent the first ten years of his musical life studying classical piano. He didn’t take up the drums until high school. Some earlier gigs demonstrated his range: after all, few people could play with T-Bone Walker and Roscoe Mitchell. Beginning in the mid-1960s DeJohnette recorded with some of Blue Note’s leading stars like Joe Henderson; he had stints in Charles Lloyd’s and Bill Evans’s bands. Then he joined up with Miles Davis to make Bitches Brew, ushering in the fusion revolution.
From there, he moved in different directions – almost simultaneously – from playing drums, organ, and clavinet for the fusion/psychedelic rock band Compost to various one-off record dates for the CTI label. He recorded his own fusion classic Sorcery in 1974 and a few years later contributed to a series of quieter and austere albums for the ECM label, including acoustic guitarist Ralph Towner’s understated 1978 masterpiece Batik. DeJohnette thrived at ECM, appearing on many of the label’s classic releases – including almost twenty albums alone as part of Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. As funky or straight ahead as DeJohnette might play, he could go just as far out, as displayed on albums he made with free jazz avatars Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Wadada Leo Smith.
In honor DeJohnette’s life and career, here are ten of my favorite albums that he appeared on in chronological order by recording date. These are by no means a “Top 10” or a “Best Of” list. It’s hard enough for me to choose my favorite Special Edition album. Some choices might seem obvious, others less so. Take them as a starting point for your own DeJohnette rabbit hole and as an appreciation of one of the master musicians of our times.
By 1965, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean was at the forefront of Blue Note musicians who were toying with the fringes of the avant garde. Jacknife wasn’t quite as wild as his albums Destination Out or Right Now! At just 23, DeJohnette was at the beginning of his recording career, and played with unwavering strength and energy. His use of snare and cymbals to mirror the piano figure at the beginning of “Climax” displayed his command of the entire kit; his full integration into the title track’s tricky arrangement and his accentuation of the soloist’s lines showed that he was already much more than a time keeper.
Aptly named, Forces of Nature, this newly released live record hits immediately and keeps hitting for nearly 90 minutes. The rhythm section, especially DeJohnette and Henry Grimes, play as though they leveled up just before the gig. The force of their playing does not dip, even on the two tracks that approach the half-hour mark. This is DeJohnette at his most fiery and bombastic hard bop playing. Just get this.
I was frankly surprised to learn that DeJohnette played with Evans. His strengths–as more than adequately displayed on Forces of Nature–ostensibly didn’t match Bill Evans’s melodicism and subtle approach. What’s astounding about this album is that DeJohnette both changes the Bill Evans Trio sound and adapts his playing to fit their aesthetic. Where he bashed his kit at Slugs, he takes a much lighter approach here.
On “Nardis” DeJohnette relies on a light ride cymbal when accompanying Evans, and although he’s typically active during his drum solo, he keeps things dialed back in volume. The mark of a consummate professional is their ability to cast ego aside and come to where the music demands they be. DeJohnette was a pro’s pro.
So the obvious Miles pick would have been Bitches Brew. But given how that album was largely a studio creation, the listener doesn’t really get to hear how DeJohnette worked with the band in a live setting. Live-Evil features a few live cuts from the group’s appearance at the Cellar Door in Washington DC. “What I Say” is a 21-minute workout, where DeJohnette and electric bassist Michael Henderson are unyielding, locking the menacing groove down tight. Then fifteen minutes in, DeJohnette launches himself into orbit.
A friend just hipped me to this, and I included it in this list not just because it’s good, but because it’s an excellent example of DeJohnette’s musical range and his skills on the keyboard. A mixture of jazz fusion, funk, and psychedelic rock, Life Is Round features DeJohnette on clavinet, organ, and piano on six of the nine tracks and drums on the other three. His vocals and lyrics on “Restless Wave” are a bit cheesy, but he shreds the organ on the opening cut “Seventh Period.”
DeJohnette teams up with his fellow Miles alumni, bassist Dave Holland, and bass clarinetist Bennie Maupin for his own bandleader take on fusion. “The Rock Thing” is a rock thing. The drum break that opens the spaced out “Epilog” must have been chopped and flipped a million times by now. And as on Life Is Round, DeJohnette breaks out the clavinet on “Four Levels of Joy.”
The 14-minute opener “Sorcery #1” shows the profound influence of the two years he spent with Miles – although its more relaxed and less cluttered groove gives guitarist John Abercrombie plenty of space to stretch out. It also gives listeners more of a chance to hear Maupin extended over several minutes as opposed to the flashes of color or handfuls of phrases in Bitches Brew.
80/81 might feature one of the greatest jazz supergroups of all time, or at least of the ’70s and ’80s: DeJohnette appears alongside guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Charlie Haden, and saxophonists Dewey Redman and Mike Brecker.
For me, this album is mostly about the soloists, especially Brecker, who ignites everything he touches. There’s occasionally an alluring tension between Brecker and the rest of the band, especially when Brecker sounds like he’s at the wrong gig. DeJohnette holds everything together. I could be perfectly content listening to just his ride cymbal throughout the whole album and ignoring everything else.
Over the course of its four albums, DeJohnette’s band Special Edition changed personnel slightly. In some ways, it was a curious group. They weren’t fully straight-a-head, but they weren’t all the way into the avant garde either. Featuring saxophonists John Purcell and David Murray, bassist Rufus Reid, and Harold Johnson on tuba baritone saxophone, Album Album has a quirky playfulness and bounce.
There’s a wonderful three saxophone arrangement of “Monk’s Mood,” although by now DeJohnette’s synth sounds quite outdated. “New Orleans Strutt” has yet another tasty drum break. All of Special Edition’s albums are worth checking out.
Jarrett’s trio released their first album on ECM in 1983. They remained together for over thirty years, and ECM still seems to have no end of their material to release. The Standards Trio’s albums are almost universally good, and some of them are divine examples of the piano trio format.
I picked the two-disc After the Fall, which was recorded live in Newark, because when it appeared in 2018 I needed to hear some straightforward swing and it delivered. The aural equivalent of comfort food. Nothing bonkers or off the wall. Nothing loud or grating, just a mature trio bringing new life to old songs: “Scrapple from the Apple,” “Doxy,” “Moment’s Notice,” and the like. Somehow the inclusion of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is not a dealbreaker. The whole concert is impeccable.
In Movement is maybe my favorite album on this list. In a way it comes full circle. While DeJohnette was not a member of Coltrane’s classic quartet, here he joins Coltrane’s son saxophonist Ravi and bassist Matthew Garrison, the son of Coltrane’s bassist Jimmy Garrison. It’s a unique take on the tenor saxophone, bass, drums format that fans of Sonny Rollins and Branford Marsalis are familiar with. Sometimes those recordings can be exhibitions of unrestrained fireworks. Not here. In Movement finds DeJohnette in an introspective, quieter mode.
The opening track is a spacious rendering of John Coltrane’s “Alabama” while Miles Davis’s “Blue in Green” is a lovely ballad featuring DeJohnette on piano and Ravi Coltrane on soprano saxophone. The powerful DeJohnette we all know and love, however, comes back in full cry on “Rashied” (presumably dedicated to drummer Rashied Ali) and “Two Jimmys” has an ominous snarl. There’s a special aura around this album.
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