Elvin Jones

Jones began his professional career in 1949 with a short-lived gig in Detroit's Grand River Street club. Eventually he went on to play with artists including Miles Davis and Wardell Gray. In 1955, after a failed audition for the Benny Goodman band, he found work in New York City, joining Charles Mingus's for the Blue Moods album on Mingus's co-owned Debut label. During the late 1950s, Jones was a member of a Sonny Rollins trio that recorded most of the album A Night at the Village Vanguard, an album cited as a high point for both Rollins and for 1950s jazz in general.[6][7]

In 1960, he began playing with John Coltrane.[3] By 1962, he had become an integral member of the classic John Coltrane Quartet along with bassist Jimmy Garrison and pianist McCoy Tyner.[3] Jones and Coltrane would often play extended duet passages. This band is widely considered to have redefined "swing" (the rhythmic feel of jazz) in much the same way that Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and others had done during earlier stages of jazz's development. He stayed with Coltrane until 1966. By then, Jones was not entirely comfortable with Coltrane's new direction, especially as his polyrhythmic style clashed with the "multidirectional" approach of the group's second drummer, Rashied Ali.

Elvin Jones at Keystone Korner, San Francisco, California. April 22, 1980.

Jones remained active after leaving the Coltrane group, and led several bands in the late 1960s and 1970s that are considered influential groups. Notable among them was a trio formed with saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Joe Farrell and (ex-Coltrane) bassist Jimmy Garrison, with whom he recorded the Blue Note albums Puttin' It Together and The Ultimate. Jones recorded extensively for Blue Note under his own name in the late 1960s and early 1970s with groups that featured prominent as well as up and coming musicians. The two-volume Live at the Lighthouse showcases a 21- and 26-year-old Steve Grossman and Dave Liebman, respectively. Jones played on many albums of the modal jazz era, such as The Real McCoy with McCoy Tyner as well as on saxophonist Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil.

In 1969, Jones played drums for beat poet Allen Ginsberg's 1970 LP Songs of Innocence and Experience, a musical adaptation of William Blake's poetry collection of the same name.[8]

Other musicians who made significant contributions to Jones's music during this period were baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, tenor saxophonists George Coleman and Frank Foster, trumpeter Lee Morgan, bassist Gene Perla, keyboardist Jan Hammer and jazz–world music group Oregon.

He appeared as the villain Job Cain in the 1971 musical Western film Zachariah,[9] in which he performed a drum solo after winning a saloon gunfight.[9]

Jones performed and recorded with his own group, the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine, whose line up changed through the years. Both Sonny Fortune and Ravi Coltrane, John Coltrane's son, played saxophone with the Jazz Machine in the early 1990s, appearing together with Jones on In Europe on Enja Records in 1991.

Jones, who taught regularly, often took part in clinics, played in schools, and gave free concerts in prisons. His lessons emphasized music history as well as drumming technique. In 2001, Jones was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.[10]