The Reluctant Don (part II) - 18 complete classic albums, featuring the swinging sideman Jimmy Cobb on drums...
This time featuring 3 big hitters, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis & John Coltrane...

Cannonball Adderley...
Sophisticated Swing (EmArcy, 1956)
Cannonball Enroute (EmArcy, 1957)
Cannonball's Sharpshooters (EmArcy, 1958)
Jump for Joy (EmArcy, 1958)
Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago (Mercury, 1959)
Cannonball Takes Charge (Riverside, 1959)

Miles Davis...
Porgy and Bess (Columbia, 1958)
1958 Miles (Columbia, 1958)
Jazz at the Plaza (Columbia, 1958)
Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959)
Sketches of Spain (Columbia, 1960)
Someday My Prince Will Come (Columbia, 1961)
In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, Complete (Columbia, 1961)

John Coltrane...
Standard Coltrane (Prestige, 1958)
Stardust (Prestige, 1958)
Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane (Prestige, 1958)
Bahia (Prestige, 1958)
Giant Steps (on "Naima" only, Atlantic, 1959)
Coltrane Jazz (Atlantic, 1959)



Born in Washington, Jimmy was the son of Wilbur Cobb, a security guard and taxi driver, and his wife Katherine (nee Bivens), a domestic worker. As a teenager in the mid-1940s he became obsessed with jazz, staying up at night to listen to the American wartime DJ Symphony Sid’s broadcasts and washing dishes in diners to save money for a drumkit – on which he aimed to learn the polyrhythmic innovations of the bebop drum gurus Max Roach and Kenny Clarke. Largely self-taught, though he briefly studied with the National Symphony Orchestra percussionist Jack Dennett, Cobb had accompanied Billie Holiday in Washington and partnered Charlie Parker and Davis on Symphony Sid’s roadshow before he was 20.

By 1950, he was on the road with Bostic, whose hit-making R&B band of the period included such jazz-sax luminaries as Coltrane, Benny Golson, and Stanley Turrentine. Cobb and Kelly then accompanied Washington for some years, a period in which Cobb was having a relationship with her, and a young Quincy Jones was writing some of the singer’s arrangements.

The drummer’s antennae were retuned by the musical differences between his own Catholic background and Washington’s Baptist one. “When I heard that Baptist sound, it took me over,” Cobb later told the jazzwax.com’s blogger Marc Myers. “I wasn’t used to hearing that. It would make the hairs stand up on my arms and neck, where people are singing and shouting in church. That struck me right away. She taught me to put the passion into what I was doing.”

In 1956, Adderley hired Cobb to play on his Verve Records sessions Sophisticated Swing, Quintet In Chicago and Takes Charge, with the latter two staffed by the Miles Davis band without the trumpeter. Those connections led via brief stints with Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie to Kind of Blue, though Davis’s work in the period following ran on different tracks, with Coltrane and subsequently Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock exploring more modally stripped-down, scale-based music rather than the songlike forms Cobb had experienced with Bostic and Washington.

Cobb and Kelly played with the jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery between 1962 and 1965, formed a trio with Kind of Blue bassist Paul Chambers that recorded with guitarist Kenny Burrell, and from 1970 to 1978 the drummer partnered the operatically eloquent vocalist Sarah Vaughan. He worked thereafter with many leading younger musicians of the postbop generation including sometime Miles Davis saxophonist David Liebman, trumpeter Art Farmer, and pianists Kenny Drew and John Hicks.

Jimmy didn't record his first album as a leader until 1983 - but as prolific a sideman, he was a solid rock, with impeccable timing and played on some of the greatest jazz albums every made...Cobb's strength was always understatement, which meant that he didn't necessarily get the same accolades and attention as some of his peers behind the kit. But his simplicity and intuitive feel made Cobb's grooves a seamless part of any band's living organism, its backbone or heartbeat.

During his career, Cobb worked with Bill Evans, Clark Terry, Stan Getz, John Coltrane,Wes Montgomery, Art Pepper, Wayne Shorter, Benny Golson, Gil Evans, Kenny Dorham, Frank Strozier, Bobby Timmons, Booker Little, Johnny Griffin, Akiko Tsuruga, Bertha Hope, Hamiet Bluiett, Nat Adderley, Mark Murphy, Jon Hendricks, Joe Henderson, Fathead Newman, Geri AllenLarry Willis, Walter Booker, Red Garland, Richie Cole, Ernie Royal, Jerome Richardson, Jimmy Cleveland, Philly Joe Jones,Sonny Stitt, Nancy Wilson, Ricky Ford, Richard Wyands, John Webber, and Peter Bernstein, among many others...

He was alway comfortable as a session musician and it was only in his later years after outliving so many jazz legends and the last surviving band member, from the historic Kind Of Blue recording. He was forced into the driving seat and mentoring many up & coming stars... “We would go and get these little gigs and work around town, and that’s the group that became Cobb’s Mob. So they kind of forced me into being bandleader.” he said in an article in Jazz Times back in 2003 He went on to release 10 more albums under his own name up until last year...
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