This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Obituaries Top Stories
Steve Reid dies
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 14 April 2010
Legendary and highly prolific jazz drummer Steve Reid died in his sleep some time between Monday night and Tuesday morning in New York. He was 66 and had been suffering from cancer.
Born in 1944, Reid grew up surrounded by music and played from an early age. He told CMU last year: “I was born in the Bronx and grew up on Lyman Place, across the street from Thelonious Monk (his wife Nellie used to babysit his daughter Ruby and me). Meanwhile, in the flat above my family’s lived Elmo Hope, a true piano giant. The walls had music. I used play on my mother’s furniture and pots and pans from the kitchen”.
He turned professional at the age of sixteen, his first recorded work being with Martha And The Vandellas, working as part of the Apollo Theatre House band under the direction of Quincy Jones. In subsequent years he played with all manner of artists, including Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, James Brown, Fela Kuti and Sun Ra, as well as working as a session drummer for Motown. He continued to write and perform right up to the present day with The Steve Reid Ensemble, with whom he performed his last UK show at The Jazz Café in London in October.
In recent years, he also worked with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, describing Hebden as his “musical soul mate”. The pair released four albums together: ‘The Exchange Session Vol. 1’ and ‘The Exchange Session Vol. 2’ in 2006, ‘Tongues’ in 2007 and most recently, ‘NYC’ in 2008.Hebden said in a statement yesterday: “Steve was one of my great friends and the most wonderful musician I have ever encountered. The music and adventures we shared have been some of the most happy and meaningful experiences I’ve ever had. A true inspiration. He lived a great life and gave us incredible music. I’ll miss him forever”.
Asked about his future ambitions last year, Reid told CMU: “I do not have ambitions, but my goal is to play and record some meaningful stuff that people will enjoy long after I have left the planet. My offering is the music I play. Joy and fun should be shared with love as a motive”.
Read Steve’s Same Six Questions interview in full here
