Rashied Ali: 1933-2009

Innovative drummer credited with steering John Coltrane towards free jazz in the 1960sWhen the drummer Rashied Ali, who has died aged 76, was a young man in the late 1950s, he sometimes sat in a Philadelphia park listening to the sound of a saxophone coming from the top-floor window of a nearby house. The obsessively practising horn player was John Coltrane, already a famous name in jazz through his work with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. A few years later, Ali's introduction as a member of C...

Read full article Share article