Drummer, bandleader, a powerful influence in jazz and a prodigious nurturer of jazz talent, since 1954, leader of Jazz Messengers, a virtual conservatory for up-and-coming musicians, as drummer, perfected unmistakable beat, polyrhythmic and propulsive, and thunderous signature style in 1940s, the bebop era, in 1950s pioneered bop offshoot known as hard bop, which brought drums to center of the music and the music closer to its roots in blues, as leader of the Jazz Messengers (founded with Horace Silver), recruited and graduated veritable who's who of musicians, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Branford and Wynton Marsalis, Donald Byrd, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Terence Blanchard, Jackie McLean, and Donald Harrison.

Drummer, bandleader, a powerful influence in jazz and a prodigious nurturer of jazz talent, since 1954, leader of Jazz Messengers, a virtual conservatory for up-and-coming musicians, as drummer, perfected unmistakable beat, polyrhythmic and propulsive, and thunderous signature style in 1940s, the bebop era, in 1950s pioneered bop offshoot known as hard bop, which brought drums to center of the music and the music closer to its roots in blues, as leader of the Jazz Messengers (founded with Horace Silver), recruited and graduated veritable who's who of musicians, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Branford and Wynton Marsalis, Donald Byrd, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Terence Blanchard, Jackie McLean, and Donald Harrison.

Bio by: Kris 'Peterborough K' Peterson