Rashied Ali - A Photo Tribute

Free-jazz drummer and John Coltrane sideman Rashied Ali died in New York August 12, 2009. He was 76.
He died after becoming too ill to preform at The Newport Festival 55 Festival, and had been hospitalized, and apparently died after leaving the hospital hospital of a blood clot in his lung.

I had the privilege of photographing him, and getting to know him over the last 2 years,

This gallery is my tribute to him.

He joined John Coltrane's group in the mid-1960s during the saxophonist's late period of avant-garde jazz experimentation.
He recorded with Coltrane on the 1965 album "Meditations" and on "Interstellar Space" in 1967.
After Coltrane died in 1967, Ali toured Europe before returning to New York.
He ran the jazz club Ali's Alley before it closed in 1979 and continued to perform and record until his death.
Ali was born Robert Patterson on July 1, 1933, to a musical family in Philadelphia, Pa.