Drums | b. 1944

Cobham's drumming works at a level of technical precision that sits closer to jazz than rock, even when the material is loud and electric: he phrases across bar lines, comps behind soloists, and constructs solos with a logic that reflects his hard bop roots as much as his fusion ambitions. Raised in Brooklyn after being born in Colón, Panama, he attended New York's High School of Music and Art, passed through the U.S. Army Band, and joined Horace Silver's quintet in 1968 before becoming an in-demand session drummer for CTI Records, appearing on dates with George Benson, Freddie Hubbard, and Grover Washington Jr. His recordings with Miles Davis, particularly "A Tribute to Jack Johnson" (1971), and his two studio albums with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, "The Inner Mounting Flame" (1971) and "Birds of Fire" (1973), brought him to wider attention and established the style that his debut solo album "Spectrum" (Atlantic, 1973) then documented in his own name. That record's opening track "Stratus" has been sampled more times than any other performance in his catalogue, with Massive Attack's use of its drum and bass figure on "Safe from Harm" being the most widely heard example. The Atlantic albums through the mid-1970s, especially "Crosswinds" (1974), represent the peak of his work as a leader.