In the world of jazz, there are stories that echo long after the last note has faded. Some are whispered in the corners of smoky clubs, others are shouted from festival stages. But the story of Miles Davis and Jack DeJohnette—two icons whose collaboration redefined the very heartbeat of modern jazz—was a secret held close, a truth only revealed in the twilight of their lives.

For years, rumors swirled around the creative chemistry between Miles and Jack. Fans speculated, critics theorized, and musicians paid quiet homage. Miles Davis, ever enigmatic, remained silent on the matter, letting the music speak where words could not. Jack DeJohnette, meanwhile, kept working, his drums a living testament to the power of rhythm and restraint.

It wasn’t until the final chapters of their lives that the truth emerged. Before his death, Miles left behind a statement that would shake the jazz world. “Jack DeJohnette gave me a deep groove that I just love to play over,” he said in an interview from the early 1990s. The line was simple, but for those who understood Miles’s famously exacting standards, it was a rare mark of respect. In his autobiography, Miles wrote with concise clarity: “Jack was the future of the drums.” Even when Jack was in the present, Miles saw in him a spark—a new energy that would push jazz into uncharted territory.

In October 2025, the jazz world fell silent once again. Jack DeJohnette, the man Miles called “the soul of rhythm,” passed away in Woodstock, New York, at the age of 83. His wife Lydia and daughters Farah and Mina were at his bedside. Even in his final years, Jack never stopped working. He played with a carefully balanced schedule, choosing projects that matched his health and his spirit. In 2021, he released “Skyline,” a collaboration with Gonzalo Rubalcaba and John Patitucci—a dialogue between three generations of jazz, where Jack expressed his gift for connecting rhythm and space. “Skyline” won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album, marking more than six decades of devotion to music.

In early 2025, “The Art of the Quartet” was released—a reissue of earlier recordings, personally overseen by Jack. The album carried no commercial intent, but felt like a message to his musical companions. In the booklet, Jack wrote, “This music is a circle. It began with Miles and it’s still coming back to Miles.” Those words made many realize that, even though he had left Miles’s band in the 1970s, the bond between them had never been broken.

As tributes and melodies echoed around the world, people began recalling the fateful first moment that bound Jack’s name to Miles Davis—a meeting that was more than just a collision of talent. It was the birth of a new era in jazz.

Jack DeJohnette’s journey began in the 1960s, a time when jazz was in flux. He quickly established his name through projects with the Charles Lloyd Quartet, alongside Keith Jarrett, and later during a brief period with the Bill Evans Trio. There, he learned the art of restraint and the power of listening among three instruments—a lesson that would serve him well in the years to come.

It was during those years that Miles Davis began to take notice. After the golden era of the Second Great Quintet, Miles was searching for a new direction. Tony Williams, the prodigious drummer, had left to form Lifetime. Miles needed a successor—someone not only solid, but capable of expanding rhythmic boundaries. He heard Jack perform with Charles Lloyd in Los Angeles. After the show, Miles turned to Wayne Shorter and said that the young drummer from Chicago had exactly the groove he’d been searching for.

By the end of 1968, Miles invited Jack to jam with Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland, and Chick Corea in New York. There was no official recording of that session, but witnesses recalled that after just a few minutes, Miles nodded—the silent sign that Jack had been chosen. He officially replaced Tony Williams, becoming the new drummer of the Miles Davis Band.

The turning point came in August 1969, when Miles and the band entered Columbia Studio B in New York City to record “Bitches Brew.” Over three days, Miles, his ensemble, and Jack created an experiment unlike anything before. Producer Teo Macero meticulously documented every session with dozens of tape splices, reversals, and extensions. He called it “the sound of the future assembled in real time.” Teo later described Jack’s drumming as the backbone of the recording, something no one else could replace. Miles himself told the engineers, “He makes the drums breathe.” It was a short sentence, but it revealed how he saw Jack—as someone who could turn rhythm into a living being.

Years later, Lenny White, who took part in a few parallel sessions, recalled, “We recorded everything live, no overdubs, just three days from 10:00 in the morning until early afternoon. Miles barely spoke. He just gave signals. Jack looked at him, understood instantly, and followed.” “Bitches Brew” was released in March 1970 and immediately caused a sensation. Critics called it a revolution in sound. Rolling Stone wrote that the album “expanded in beauty, subtlety, and overwhelming scope.” Village Voice noted it was music that sat between jazz and rock, but transcended both. DownBeat named “Bitches Brew” Album of the Year, marking the birth of fusion jazz, where jazz intertwined with electronic and rock elements.

Remarkably, though Jack’s time with the band was brief, his imprint on “Bitches Brew” endured for decades. From funk and rock to later electronic jazz, traces of his touch could be heard—the slightly delayed pulse, the explosive controlled cymbals, the sense of order within freedom. It was the very finesse Miles once described: “He plays like time doesn’t exist. He’s not following the beat. He’s leading it.”

By the end of 1969, the Miles Davis Band was no longer a traditional jazz group. What they created inside the “Bitches Brew” sessions became a living philosophy, and Jack DeJohnette was at the center of that evolution. For him, rhythm was not something to count. It was something to breathe, to move with, to guide.

When the final mixes played during the listening session, Miles stayed silent for a long time. Then he said only one sentence, calm and decisive: “That’s the sound I’ve been hearing in my head.” In that moment, “Bitches Brew” was no longer just an album. It was the birth of an era—and Jack DeJohnette had risen from being an exceptional drummer to one of the men who would shape the future of jazz.

After the studio sessions, Miles Davis took the band to the stages of Europe. There, Jack became the heartbeat of those fiery nights, where his drumming did not merely support the music—it defined its entire atmosphere.

In the summer of 1969, the group began their European tour. The opening performance took place at the Festival Mondial du Jazz d’Antibes in France, captured in archival recordings. The set list began with “Directions,” flowed seamlessly into “Bitches Brew,” “Spanish Key,” “Sanctuary,” and closed with the theme. The audience at Antibes had never heard a kind of jazz like this before. Jack’s drumming filled the stage—powerful, fast, controlled. Miles gave cues with his trumpet, and the band instantly understood where to go.

Right after Antibes, the group performed at Fillmore West in San Francisco. It was one of the rare occasions when Miles appeared with an electric ensemble among rock artists. The atmosphere was chaotic, magnetic. On stage, Jack was not only the timekeeper, but also the pulse that drove the music forward. In a 1970 interview, Miles described it perfectly: “Jack was like a third horn. He didn’t just keep time, he created time.” That statement captured Jack’s role precisely. He did not play the drums merely to hold tempo. He used them as a melodic instrument, reshaping the music in real time.

Every strike he made propelled the band forward, making Miles’s sound more fluid and fiery than ever. In 1970, the band continued their major European tour, highlighted by their performance at the Isle of Wight Festival in England. The event drew over 600,000 spectators—an unprecedented number for a jazz artist. Under the glaring lights in the sea wind, Miles and his group brought to the stage a sound both ferocious and surreal. NME called it “an electronic storm, pushing jazz beyond its old boundaries.” Melody Maker described Miles as “standing at the eye of the storm, signaling with his trumpet, while Jack DeJohnette was the heartbeat of it all.”

Official recordings from this period were later unearthed in Columbia’s archives. In 2013, the complete performances from Antibes, Stockholm, and Berlin were restored and released as “Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2.” The sound was raw, direct, untouched by studio polish. Listeners could clearly hear every offbeat cymbal Jack struck to open space for Miles to enter, or the sharp hi-hat he snapped before Shorter’s solos. It was pure control within chaos.

By the end of 1970, as the tour came to a close, Miles Davis reflected on the journey and told the band they had stood “on the edge of everything.” That remark became the perfect epitaph for the lost quintet—the band that left no official studio album, but carved the deepest mark in modern jazz history. From those stormy nights on stage, Miles saw the shape of the electronic jazz future, and Jack, through his drumming, was the one who kept that storm alive and seamless.

When the tour ended, Miles and Jack returned to the studio, carrying with them the explosive energy of the stage to create legendary recordings where sound itself became a tool to reinvent the world.

In early 1970, Miles began work on a tribute to Jack Johnson. Inspired by the black boxer Jack Johnson, the first man to break racial barriers in American sports, Miles wanted to create music that was, in his words, “as strong, fiery, and defiant as the man himself.” In that lineup, Jack was on drums, John McLaughlin on electric guitar, Herbie Hancock on piano, along with several other musicians. There were no written charts, only repeated riffs and spontaneous cues. Miles said simply, “I could put together the greatest rock and roll band you ever heard.” And he did exactly that.

Jack laid down a heavy, fast, rock-infused rhythm while keeping the soul of jazz alive. “Right Off” and “Yesternow” blended snapping drums, distorted guitar, and soaring trumpet, giving birth to the sound of fusion rock. When the album was released in 1971, critics called it “the greatest rock record never made by a rock band.”

That same year came “Live-Evil,” a hybrid project combining live performances from the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., with studio sessions from Columbia Studio B in New York. Once again, Teo Macero employed complex tape splicing techniques to create a seamless stream of sound. Jack played drums throughout, from “Sivad” to “Little Church.” His drumming was thick, dark, groove-laden—the pulse that kept the entire structure breathing like a living organism.

By 1972, Miles embarked on “On the Corner,” his most daring project, merging jazz with street funk and the sonic philosophy of Stockhausen. Jack took part in the early sessions, laying down the foundational groove alongside Michael Henderson. The band recorded dozens of takes, none alike. Miles’s only direction was, “Play what you feel, but make it move.” Jack understood immediately. He built swirling, overlapping drum patterns that made the music feel as if it were spinning through an urban vortex.

Teo Macero later spliced over twenty recordings into the final structure—a jagged, continuous block of sound that pulsed with raw life. In an interview that year, Miles said of Jack, “Jack understood where I was going before I did.” That line was more than praise. It was an admission: Jack DeJohnette was the only one who truly understood the direction Miles was heading, even before Miles himself did.

After “On the Corner,” Jack left the group—not out of conflict, but to pursue his own musical path. “Miles taught me to see music as a moving shape, but I needed to find my own movement,” Jack said. Their collaboration lasted only three years. What they created changed jazz forever. “Jack Johnson” carried the breath of rock, “Live-Evil” expanded the groove, and “On the Corner” pioneered electronic funk. Through it all, Jack’s drumming remained the backbone, the heartbeat of a revolution.

In September 1991, Miles Davis passed away in Santa Monica, California, after weeks of treatment for pneumonia and stroke. He was 65. In the bright white hospital room, Miles asked for “Sketches of Spain” to be played. The funeral was held quietly at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, attended by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Quincy Jones, and Cicely Tyson. Miles’s death marked the end of an era—that of a man forever ahead of music itself. But in every recollection, the name Jack DeJohnette stands as proof of the boldest chapter in Miles’s life, when two souls turned rhythm into an immortal language.

After Miles’s passing, Jack continued his own path—more than half a century of relentless creativity, shaping his sound while keeping the spirit of his mentor alive in every beat he played.

After leaving Miles Davis’s band, Jack never tried to recreate his past glory. He chose his own path—quieter, deeper, and more enduring than that of any drummer of his generation. In 1973, Jack signed with ECM Records, beginning a lifelong collaboration with producer Manfred Eicher. His debut album, “Ruta and Daitya,” recorded with Keith Jarrett, was not a display of virtuosity, but a dialogue between drums and piano—simple, meditative, and expansive, blending jazz, classical, and environmental sound.

It was the first sign that Jack had moved away from the stormy energy of Miles to seek his own realm of calm. In the following years, he released albums in various formations and ensembles. Though each phase had its own character, Jack’s signature remained creative independence. He was not just a drummer but also a composer, arranger, and occasionally a pianist. Many critics remarked that his ECM-era music was spiritual rather than technical, aiming to create an emotional connection between listener and space.

In the early 1980s, Jack formed a group that would later become legendary: the Standards Trio, with Keith Jarrett and Gary Peacock. From 1983 to 2014, they released more than twenty albums. The trio became a symbol of modern jazz interplay, where every performance was a free conversation, and Jack’s drumming defined precision through minimalism, each strike timed to the thousandth of a second.

In 2005, Jack founded Golden Beams Productions to release his personal projects, focusing on the fusion of jazz, ambient, and world music. Albums such as “Music in the Key of M” and “Peace Time” embodied his introspective philosophy, where rhythm became a form of moving meditation. “Peace Time” earned him the 2009 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. When asked why a jazz drummer ventured into that genre, he smiled and said, “Music is breath, not category.”

That same year, Jack received the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship, the highest honor for jazz artists in the United States. The organization’s statement described him as “the artist who turned rhythm into a living space, not just a measure of time.” The award recognized not only a career spanning more than fifty years, but also his profound influence on generations of musicians who followed.

By the 2010s, Jack continued to perform steadily despite his age. In “Made in Chicago,” he reunited with longtime friends Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, closing the circle of a career that began with the free jazz movement in Chicago during the 1960s.

In an interview with NPR, Jack recalled his time working with Miles Davis, saying that Miles was always in a state of creation. Each day in the studio was an experiment with rhythm and structure. He spoke not with nostalgia, but with gratitude. For Jack, those days with Miles were a lesson in how to work with risk, where every drum beat could go wrong. If it went wrong the right way, it opened a new direction.

When asked what the greatest lesson he learned from Miles was, Jack simply said he learned to stay silent at the right moment. Sometimes what isn’t played can have the greatest impact.

At 80, when most had long ceased creating, Jack was still remembered by critics as the timekeeper of the Miles Davis era. Now that his drums have fallen silent, what continues to resonate is the rhythm of a lifetime of creation. To the world of jazz, Jack DeJohnette remains a symbol of freedom. And in the memory of Miles Davis, he will always be the man who made the drums breathe.

If you believe the journey of Jack DeJohnette and Miles Davis is proof of jazz’s boundless spirit of creation, share the musical moment that moved you most. Their story is not just a chapter in jazz history—it is the heartbeat of innovation, risk, and the endless search for new sound.