16 Facts About Elvin Jones

Elvin Ray Jones was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era.

Elvin Jones was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1995.

Elvin Jones was ranked at Number 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Drummers of All Time".

Elvin Jones was born in Pontiac, Michigan, to parents Henry and Olivia Jones, who had moved to Michigan from Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Elvin Jones served in the United States Army from 1946 to 1949.

Elvin Jones began his professional career in 1949 with a short-lived gig in a club on Detroit's Grand River Street.

Elvin Jones remained active after leaving the Coltrane group, and led several bands in the late 1960s and 1970s that are considered influential groups.

Elvin 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.

Elvin Jones played on many albums of the "modal jazz era", such as The Real McCoy with McCoy Tyner and Speak No Evil with Wayne Shorter.

In 1969, Elvin 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.

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

Elvin Jones, who taught regularly, often took part in clinics, played in schools, and gave free concerts in prisons.

Elvin Jones's lessons emphasized music history as well as drumming technique.

In 2001, Elvin Jones was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.

Elvin Jones died of heart failure in Englewood, New Jersey, on May 18,2004.

Elvin Jones was survived by his first wife Shirley, children: Elvin Nathan Jones and Rose-Marie Jones, and his second common-law wife Keiko Okuya.