The Legendary Jack DeJohnette: Beyond Just a Jazz Percussionist – A Superhuman Force in Music

My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. It was the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette resisted being pigeonholed and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic thrilled me as Jarrett held a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette told me, “is linked to the very nature of our existence. We don’t expect our life to evolve without changing and we never know what lies ahead – why should music be any different?”

He went on to clarify that every component of his percussion setup he considered to be a musical being “with its own identity.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals to his own specification. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of significant talent – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident all of the time, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Musical Expression

Numerous percussionists tune their kit to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was entirely his own. To hear him play on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to be amazed by seemingly boundless energy as he sustained a powerful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who additionally performed on Davis’s epoch-defining Bitches Brew, had by 1970 become the trumpeter’s drummer of choice in a collision of brilliant artists. His drums anchored the track firmly and allowed Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to experiment, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Artistic Independence

His own 1968 debut album, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a voice intimately connected with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The pieces DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he issued Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and duetted on some tracks with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was sparse and bare-bones in contrast to Untitled.

Landmark Collaborations and Key Albums

His 1981 ECM album with saxophonist John Surman, The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, emerged as a pivotal point for both musicians, and a highly regarded work too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside richly arranged compositions of natural themes. A further critical record was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which dealt up large-scale structures with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles mirroring the elemental force unleashed by the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, it recalled an previous experience with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band Special Edition perform in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance took its time to stake out its terrain, as atmospheric, gradual developments slowly condensed towards rhythmic blows.

Philosophical Insights on Art and Existence

Conversing with DeJohnette much later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale became clearer. He explained that he enjoyed performing those funk figurations with Davis because “I could sit in grooves and let them saturate me,” but also spoke of his desire to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always open-ended and therefore healthy for the brain. He complained about the “predictable limits” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you’re open to a complete spectrum of options. People are capable of very creative yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, ceased harming the planet and restored balance, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

Undoubtedly DeJohnette heard his music as reflecting those utopian goals. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that purification, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”