The jazz and experimental music world lost a giant this past January 5 when drummer, pharmacologist, drum historian, and founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Alvin Fielder passed away near his Jackson, Mississippi, home. The drummer was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of drumming styles, as MD was told by David Dove, the Houston, Texas–based Fielder collaborator and founder of the philanthropic educational organization Nameless Sound. “He could break down the origins of every technique, innovation, and gesture in jazz drumming,” Dove says. Fielder’s interest in drumming was piqued in the ’40s after hearing a neighbor playing an LP that featured Max Roach. When Fielder was studying pharmacology in the early ’50s in New Orleans, he also studied with Ed Blackwell (Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry). Fielder cherished his relationship with Blackwell, and he owned a number of Blackwell’s method books, which […]

June 2019 Issue