We lost one of the greats this past weekend when Jack DeJohnette died at the age of 83.
I discovered Jack in my initial immersion into jazz. He kept turning up in various places, and the Special Edition group was riding high earning praise for its playing and the leader's compositions. Any exploration of jazz history of the last sixty years or so will find DeJohnette in various corners - the AACM, Blue Note sessions, Miles Davis' electric explorations, the development of fusion, the beginnings of the ECM sound, the high Marsalis-Era's Neo-classicism, Pat Metheny and Ornette Coleman's mighty collaboration, Kieth Jarrett's Standards Trio, and collaborations with masters old and new.
What's presented here is a broad yet arbitrary selection covering forty years or so. As our old friend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act restricts how many tracks from a single artist I can use in a single post, we feature many appearances of Jack the role that the tribute in this week's ECM newsletter describes as "an energizing participant across a broad range of styles and idioms"
See the playlist after the jump...
