Ascension

Rashied Ali has died: Rashied Ali, Free-Jazz Drummer, Dies at 76

Rashied Ali, whose expressionistic, free-jazz drumming helped define the experimental style of John Coltrane’s final years, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 76.

The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Patricia Ali.

Mr. Ali, who first encountered Coltrane in their Philadelphia neighborhood in the late 1950s, made the leap from admiration to collaboration in the mid-1960s, when he joined Elvin Jones as a second drummer with Coltrane’s ensemble at the Village Gate in November 1965.

Mr. Ali recorded with Coltrane and Jones on the 1965 album “Meditations” and, after replacing Jones as Coltrane’s drummer, on the duet album “Interstellar Space” (1967), one of the purest expressions of the free-jazz movement.

“I didn’t know what it was, but he called it multidirectional rhythms,” Mr. Ali said of his drumming in an interview for the documentary “The World According to John Coltrane” (1990). On Mr. Ali’s Web site, rashiedali.org, Rashid Ali's Web site his playing is described as “a multirhythmic, polytonal propellant, helping fuel Coltrane’s
flights of free-jazz fancy.”

Thus, dies one of the last living links to John Coltrane. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't McCoy Tyner and Pharaoh Sanders the last living members of his various groups?

Ali was an unjustly obscure figure, even among jazzheads. He didn't just take over Elvin Jones' drum chair in the classic Coltrane Quartet; he usurped it. His style was wholly original, too. Where Jones was loud and propulsive, Ali tended to create a pulsing percussive bed over which Coltrane ranged freely. He was a true collaborator with one of the 5 or 6 leading lights of jazz, not a bad legacy at all.

A lot of people consider "Interstellar Space" to be the highlight of Ali's time with Coltrane, but if you want to hear him at his best, listen to the epic "Live In Japan." His playing is subtle, spare, and often surprising, certainly not the "noise" that his detractors accused him of playing.

Ali is survived by his wife and nine kids. Here's to a unique life well lived.