Farewell, Maestro Jack DeJohnette

A look back at a piece from 2008 on the career of drumming great Jack DeJohnette

I had the immense privilege and pleasure of having seen drumming great Jack DeJohnette, who died on Oct. 26 at age 83, perform on numerous occasions over the years, as both leader and sideman. The very first time was during the summer of 1976 at the sonically-brilliant Amazingrace performance space in Evanston, Illinois. A few friends and I had driven up from Milwaukee to see Jack’s Directions band shortly after their Cosmic Chicken album had come out on Prestige. In a previous incarnation, when it was located in Shanley Hall on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Amazingrace had been strictly a folk music emporium as well as a focal point for student protests in the wake of shootings at Kent State University in Ohio. But by 1974, after moving to the Main, a commercial development near the corner of Main Street and Chicago Avenue, across the street from the “L” station, Amazingrace gradually began mixing in adventurous jazz acts into its regular folk programming. So in addition to the Steve Goodmans, John Prines, Jim Posts and David Brombergs that might be showcased there in a given month, along with the occasional screeing of Reefer Madness and special appearances by mandolin ace Jethro Burns, fiddler Vassar Clements, the comedy team of Proctor & Bergman of Firesign Theatre fame and folk icon Odetta, you suddenly started seeing bookings for Oregon, the Gary Burton Quintet, Pat Metheny Group, Eddie Harris, Jean-Luc Ponty, John Klemmer and Keith Jarrett. Even McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins and Charles Mingus played at Amazingrace in the mid-’70s.

But on this particularly transcendent night, June 4, 1976, DeJohnette was fronting a superb group of guitarist John Abercrombie, bassist Mike Richmond and saxophonist Alex Foster. He walked on stage holding a transitor radio, which he proceeded to turn on while holding it up to the mic and switching from station to station in such a rhythmic manner that I can only describe it as a precursor to turntable scratching. Then he proceeded to unleash on the kit with uncanny freedom and flow, accompanied by Abercrombie’s post-Hendrixian wailing on guitar and Foster’s Herculean blowing on tenor sax, anchored by Richmond’s muscular low-end groove. Their set was swinging yet avant garde, part performance art yet purely improvisational. It was one of my early jazz epiphanies.

Aside from that eye-opening introduction, I came up with 15 other memorable concerts that I attended featuring the great Jack DeJohnette:

• Gateway Trio (with bassist Dave Holland, guitarist John Abercrombie) at Irving Plaza, May 12, 1985.

• Song X (with Pat Metheny, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Denardo Coleman) at Town Hall, May 8, 1986.

• Special Edition (with guitarist Mick Goodrick, alto saxophonist Greg Osby, tenor saxophonist Gary Thomas, bassist Lonnie Plaxico, percussionist Nana Vasconcelos) at The Bottom Line, Feb. 7, 1988.

• Keith Jarrett Standards Trio (with bassist Gary Peacock) at Town Hall, April 21, 1990.

• Gateway Trio (with bassist Dave Holland, guitarist John Abercrombie) at the Blue Note, Sept. 11, 1995.

• Oneness Quartet (with pianist Michael Cain, guitarist-bassist Jerome Harris and percussionist Joakim Larty) at Montreal Jazz Festival, June 26, 1996.

• Michael Brecker Quintet (with guitarist Pat Metheny, pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Dave Holland) at Birdland, Feb. 4, 1997.

• Duo (with baritone saxophonist John Surman) at Theatre du Gesú, Montreal Jazz Festival, July 7, 2002.

• Translinear Light (with pianist-harpist Alice Coltrane, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, bassists Drew Gress and Reggie Workman ) at Prudential Hall in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Oct. 22, 2006.

• Trio Beyond (with guitarist John Scofield, organist Larry Goldings) at the Blue Note New York, June 6, 2007.

• Bruce Hornsby (with bassist Christian McBride) at J&R Music Festival, Manhattan’s City Hall Park, Aug. 25, 2007.

• Trio (with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, electric bassist Matthew Garrison) at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn, May 10, 2015.

• Hudson (with guitarist John Scofield, keyboardist John Medeski, bassist Larry Grendadier) at the Newport Jazz Festival, Aug. 6, 2017.

• Tribute to John Abercromie at Roulette in Brooklyn, March 26, 2018 (Jack performed “Timeless” and “Ralph’s Piano Waltz” with guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Marc Copland, bassist Drew Gress).

• Remembering John Abercrombie: An All-Star Salute for his 75th Birthday at Birdland, Jan. 23, 2020 (Jack performed with pianist Marc Copland, bassist Drew Gress, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano).

  
  

The last time I saw Jack in person was for a recording session on Jan. 24, 2020 at Sear Sound Sutdio in Manhattan for the elegant Swiss trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti’s 2021 album Lost Within You. Pianists Uri Caine and Renee Rosnes, guitarist John Scofield and bassist Scott Colley were also on that session.

In 2008, I wrote a 10,000-word piece for the short-lived drumming publication TRAPS!, which ceased publication with a Winter 2009 issue featuring Steve Gadd on this cover (which I also wrote). Here’s that lengthy story on Jack which spead across 20 pages in the the magazine: