Collection: Tony Williams

Tony Williams grew up in Boston, studied with drummer Alan Dawson from age eleven, was playing professionally with Sam Rivers at thirteen, joined Jackie McLean in New York at sixteen, and was sitting behind Miles Davis at seventeen. Davis later wrote in his autobiography that Williams was "the centre that the group's sound revolved around," and that hearing him play for the first time made him "excited all over again." That is not a small thing to say about a teenager. The Second Great Quintet, with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter alongside Williams and Davis, made a sequence of records between 1964 and 1968 that remain the most studied rhythm section recordings in jazz history, not for their conservatism but for the opposite: Williams played behind the beat, ahead of it, across it, treating the ride cymbal and the snare as melodic instruments rather than timekeeping devices, and pulling the entire band with him. He also found time to make his own Blue Note records during those years: "Life Time" (1964) and "Spring" (1965), both recorded while still a Davis sideman. In 1969 he formed the Tony Williams Lifetime with guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young, releasing "Emergency!" on Polydor, a double album of blown-out guitar, organ and drums that the jazz community largely rejected and that Miles Davis found so compelling he asked to lead the group himself. Williams declined. The Lifetime ran through several incarnations before disbanding, and Williams spent the 1980s and early 1990s leading a working quintet that included Wallace Roney and Donald Harrison, recording a series of Blue Note albums beginning with "Foreign Intrigue" (1985). He died on 23 February 1997, aged 51, weeks after completing his final album "Wilderness," which featured Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny and Stanley Clarke.