Jimmy Cobb
When people say Miles Davis marched to the beat of a different drummer, they were talking about Jimmy Cobb. As the backbone of Miles’s rhythm section on the epic “Kind of Blue” record, Jimmy could have put down his sticks in 1960 with a secure seat in Jazz Heaven. But he’d go on to play for another four decades behind the likes of Bill Evans, Stan Getz, John Coltrane and Nancy Wilson, laying down beats that will inspire drummers for centuries to come. Jimmy Cobb left us in May 2020.