NYC Radio Live · David Ellenbogen, host

Jack DeJohnette: A conversation with the jazz legend

November 7, 2025·1 hr 18 min·6 clips

DeJohnette's mother wrote the lyrics to 'Stormy Monday,' one of the most recorded blues songs ever, and sold them to T-Bone Walker for $50.

1. NYC Radio Live host David Ellenbogen presents a tribute to drummer Jack DeJohnette, who died two weeks before this episode, airing a previously unreleased 2010 interview recorded at WKCR FM New York. 2. DeJohnette is characterized as having created the soundtrack to Ellenbogen's own life, specifically through his work on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson, the Keith Jarrett Trio with Gary Peacock, and collaborations with Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, Alice Coltrane, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, and Sun Ra. 3. The episode's central throughline is DeJohnette's ability to bridge deep groove and free exploration — and his philosophical framework for how he achieves this. 4. DeJohnette's mother wrote the lyrics to 'Stormy Monday,' sold them to T-Bone Walker for $50 in a common era practice, and the song became one of the most recorded blues standards. 5. As a child, DeJohnette's uncle — a jazz DJ — took him to the Persian Room where T-Bone Walker was playing; the young DeJohnette sat in on a toy instrument with Walker's full band, playing a melody he'd memorized from his uncle's 78-rpm records. 6. His earliest influences on his uncle's Victrola included Slim Gaillard, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Tommy Dorsey, and Nat King Cole, whom DeJohnette calls 'a serious bebop pianist, very suave.' 7. He began classical piano lessons young, added doo-wop singing as a teenager, and did not switch to drums as his primary instrument until his late teens after a gig at Minton's led to his first paid drum job. 8. In Chicago, DeJohnette was part of Muhal Richard Abrams's circle that created the AACM, alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, and Joseph Jarman, as an alternative performance and rehearsal space. 9. He also spent years playing with Sun Ra, John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, and Ronnie Boykins — including wearing the band's handmade outer-space costumes — calling Sun Ra an 'amazing composer and visionary' who read science fiction comics constantly. 10. DeJohnette arrived in New York at the tail end of Minton's and Birdland, sat in with Freddie Hubbard, was hired by organist John Patton from the audience, and decided that night to make drums his main instrument. 11. He filled in for Elvin Jones with the Coltrane quartet — playing alongside McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison — before officially becoming a drummer, describing it as validation rather than surprise, given his AACM and Sun Ra preparation. 12. Miles Davis came to hear him with Jackie McLean, and Jackie told DeJohnette: 'You're going to be playing drums with Miles one day.' DeJohnette filled in for Tony Williams several times before joining permanently. 13. DeJohnette describes Miles Davis's bandleading style as entirely non-verbal — Miles would announce the next tune on his trumpet and the band would follow, operating on pure intuition. 14. He frames his own drumming philosophy as being 'plugged into the library of creative consciousness' — a Zen-like state of total engagement where he never repeats himself and goes there immediately on the first beat. 15. He collaborated with kora player Foday Musa Suso on Hearts of the Masters after hearing Suso on an obscure 1974 Herbie Hancock record, tracking him down backstage at a Philip Glass concert in London, and inviting him home for three days of recording. 16. The Fifth World project drew on his induction into the Seneca nation through his grandmother Twyla Nietzsche — a Seneca elder whose book 'Other Council Fires Were Here Before Ours' describes the movement from the fourth world into the fifth world of truth and integration. 17. Fifth World featured Will Calhoun and Vernon Reid from Living Color, John Scofield on guitar, and singer Joan Henry, whose composition 'Dohee Yi Circle' uses Cherokee language and sounds, Ellenbogen notes, remarkably like Pygmy polyphony. 18. The conversation is wide-ranging and calm — Ellenbogen as a knowledgeable jazz-radio host asking specific discographic questions; DeJohnette answering with brief, precise anecdotes delivered in a reflective register. 19. Best for jazz listeners and musicians interested in the lived history of free jazz, fusion, and world music as told by a first-hand participant. 20. Less suited for listeners seeking technical drumming instruction or who have no prior exposure to the key figures named throughout.

As heard by us

A warm radio tribute that treats DeJohnette as both legend and working musician.

This plays like a memorial first and a musician profile second, with the host taking time to honor Jack DeJohnette's drumming, the long line of giants he worked with, and the way his music settled into a personal listening life.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a heartfelt radio tribute to Jack DeJohnette with musician talk that stays close to the moment.

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