The 43-year-old Tony Williams is not only the most admired and imitated drummer of his generation but one of a handful of landmark drummers who have helped to reshape and redefine the instrument’s role.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
From that point on, everything Williams played had an international audience, and he was riding on the crest of one of the most significant leader-band marriages that jazz had ever produced, the legendary Miles Davis Quintet: Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Williams. Each of the eight Columbia albums recorded with this basic personnel has become a jazz classic–the cream of 60s jazz. Williams’s explosive yet singing drums added significantly to their vitality and appeal, especially with younger listeners.
When Williams left the group in 1969, just three months after Hancock’s departure, the curtain came down on what many consider to be the most significant period of Davis’s music making. Says Williams, “It was time for a change. Six years of Miles Davis was enough, believe me. Anytime you’re living in someone else’s world and you’re subject to their decisions and desires, especially as the least-paid member of the band, it’s very difficult. Miles was going in a different direction, and I didn’t feel that he needed me to go there–he could have gotten any drummer to do what he wanted.”
More recent is Williams’s appearance in ‘Round Midnight, playing a New York drummer; his playing can be heard on the Oscar- and Grammy-winning sound track. Williams claims never to have seen the film: “It’s just not my kind of movie. There’s no chase scenes, gunfights, or alien monsters in it, so why would I want to see it?”
