Ben Riley, jazz drummer known for his work with Thelonious Monk - obituary

Died: November 18, 2017

BEN Riley, who has died aged 84, was one of the great jazz drummers of the past 60 years. He was best known for his relatively short period as the drummer who gave pianist Thelonious Monk’s idiosyncratic music its heartbeat during the 1960s but his CV and recording history contained a wealth of experience with a Who’s Who of jazz, including Nina Simone, Duke Ellington and Abdullah Ibrahim.

The man who would become respected among his peers for his dedication to attentive accompaniment was born in Savannah, Georgia, where he first became interested in drumming after watching a marching band as a toddler. When he was four his family moved to Harlem and he joined the school band before being called up by the army in 1952. Two years later he was married, back living in New York and working as a film editor but he was unhappy in this job and he and his wife agreed that he should try for a year to make a living as a drummer.

He soon started getting gigs and made friends with the musicians who lived in his neighbourhood including fellow drummers Roy Haynes and Mel Lewis, developing a camaraderie that helped them all develop. He described the Harlem of that era as the School Yard due to its many opportunities to play and learn from other musicians.

By the late 1950s, having turned professional well before his trial year ended, Riley was playing every night, working mostly with piano trios and singers in clubs and restaurants. Regular work with saxophonists Johnny Griffin and Eddie Lockjaw Davis, with whom he recorded over a dozen albums in a two-year period in the early 1960s, led to Riley coming to the attention of Thelonious Monk.

Unbeknown to the drummer, Monk started listening to him as he played with various bands at the Five Spot, where Monk had a residency. Monk had noticed that Riley changed his style of playing to accompany every soloist, picking up on their different personalities and enhancing their improvisations, and out of the blue Monk’s manager called Riley to play on the recording date that produced the album It’s Monk’s Time.

At the end of the session Monk asked Riley if he had a passport because the band was leaving for Europe in a few days and for the next four years Riley became used to the pianist’s unpredictability.

All the time he was with Monk, on down time Riley worked with an array of other musicians including pianists Earl Hines and Andrew Hill and trumpeter Clark Terry, and having missed an opportunity to record with John Coltrane when the saxophonist died just days before they were due to go into the studio, he began an on and off association with Coltrane’s pianist and harpist widow, Alice before taking a job as a music teacher to allow him to spend more time at home.

After five years he was back on the road and after Monk died in 1982 Riley formed the group Sphere with Monk’s long-standing saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist Buster Williams and pianist Kenny Barron, originally to celebrate Monk’s compositions but going on to feature the musicians’ own music.

Having finally released his first of three albums as a bandleader, Weaver of Dreams, in 1996, Riley continued to work with Barron well into the noughties. He spent his final years in a nursing home, still making music with another musician-resident.

He is survived by his wife, Inez, daughters Kim and Gina and sons Corey and Jason.

ROB ADAMS