Elvin Jones's passing has robbed jazz of one of its most influential and innovative drummers, and leaves pianist McCoy Tyner as the sole surviving member of one the greatest bands in jazz history, the classic John Coltrane Quartet of the 1960s.

Jones was a drumming giant in every way. He stood over 6ft tall and presented an athletic figure. He loved his work and one of the abiding memories of the last of his three Glasgow Jazz Festival appearances, in 1999, was seeing his limbs flailing loosely but purposefully, creating great waves of energy.

The drumming bug bit Jones early. At the age of two he was banging his mother's wooden spoons on a ''kit'' of pots and pans. His older brothers, Hank, who went on to become one of jazz's leading pianists, and Thad, a respected trumpeter, arranger and bandleader, were then beginning serious music studies. Elvin wasn't far behind them.

By the age of 13, he'd decided not to become a doctor (with 10 children his father, who worked for General Motors and sang in the church choir, wasn't in a position to fund further education). He was going to be a drummer, and practised eight to 10 hours a day, never leaving home without a pair of sticks.

Having played in marching bands at school, his first experience of stage work came in the army in 1946 when he toured with a Special Services variety show called Operation Happiness, as a stagehand. His off-duty time, however, was spent honing his drumming technique and when he left the army in 1949 he walked straight into a job with a band in Detroit.

Word of Elvin's abilities soon got round and he became resident drummer in Detroit's Bluebird Inn. He spent three years there, backing up visiting stars including Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt and Miles Davis. A disastrous audition with Benny Goodman got him a free ticket to New York. Rather than go home to Detroit, he stayed on, joined Charles Mingus's band and played with Bud Powell and Miles Davis, among others, and jammed offstage with Davis's saxophonist, John Coltrane.

Coltrane was getting ready

to form his own group and Jones was his drummer of choice. He had to wait until Jones was free from serving a drugs-related sentence on Rikers Island before the group could begin in earnest. But once the quartet of Coltrane, Jones, Tyner and bassist Jimmy Garrison got down to work, it was revolutionary.

Coltrane overlooked Jones's drinking and drugging, even being forced to dep out the drum stool in 1963 while Jones underwent rehab. When an over-the-limit Jones wrote off Coltrane's car after running an admirer home, Coltrane pooh-poohed his apologies by saying: ''I can always get a new car, but there's only one Elvin.''

Not all jazz aficionados approved of the quartet's

turbulent music. The Paris Olympia audience responded by throwing coins on to the stage, prompting Jones to remark that ''it could have

been worse, they could have thrown wine bottles - and

we can always use the money''. Albums such as A Love Supreme sold huge quantities, however, and it remains essential listening today.

Jones was more than Coltrane's engine. He was enamoured of Alla Rakha's tabla playing with Ravi Shankar and his brush work echoed Rakha's sensitive approach, although another audience member, showing his disdain by talking loudly through the quartet's reading of Mal Waldron's gorgeous Soul Eyes, was almost decapitated by a cymbal tossed full tilt by an irate Jones.

Jones left Coltrane in 1966, less than pleased that the

saxophonist had decided to add another drummer to the group, and briefly toured

with Duke Ellington in Europe. The same year he married Keiko, the Japanese woman who would become

his personal and business manager and his muse as well as a composer for his group, Elvin Jones's Jazz Machine. With Keiko around he straightened up and mellowed, leaving the notably business-like Keiko to tackle any problems, and a relaxed, affable Elvin would greet promoters with the suggestion that they have a beer while the stage was being readied.

His onstage energy remained phenomenal as he toured up to 10 months of the year, leading edition after edition of the Jazz Machine, which in the early 1990s included - poetically - Coltrane's son, Ravi, on saxophone. During his ''down time'' he would add to the 500-plus recordings that he featured on. He also made a brief detour into film acting, appearing as Job Cain in Zachariah in 1971, but drumming and the road were his life right up to a few weeks ago when, as his health began to fail, he took an oxygen tank onstage with him.

He is survived by Keiko, a son, a daughter and his older brother, Hank.

Elvin Ray Jones, jazz drummer; born September 9, 1927, died May 18, 2004.