Drummer

Rashied Ali, a free-jazz drummer who backed John Coltrane and accompanied him in a ground-breaking duet album in the final months of the jazz master's life, died Wednesday in New York City. He was 76. His wife, Patricia Ali, said he died at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital of a blood clot in his lung. Ali joined Coltrane's group in the mid-1960s during the saxophonist's period of avant-garde jazz experimentation. When Coltrane decided to use two drummers in a concert at the Village Gate in November 1965, he chose Ali to back up drummer Elvin Jones.

Levon Helm is most widely known for the songs he sang that found their way onto the pop charts during his long tenure as drummer and singer for the Band: "Up On Cripple Creek," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "Don't Do It," earthy and infectious conglomerations of gospel, country, blues, folk and rock music. But the one that might crystallize his approach to music throughout his life was "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," an ode to the kind of freewheeling gatherings in which the musician, who died of cancer Thursday at 71 in New York, thoroughly reveled.

Stuart Nevitt, 55, composer, drummer/percussionist and one of the early members of the Grammy-winning world beat band Shadowfax, died March 15 of complications from diabetes and heart disease at his home in Rio Rancho, N.M. Born in Elizabeth, N.J., Nevitt learned the rudiments of drumming at age 4 from his father, who was also a drummer. Nevitt played in rock bands and orchestras throughout high school before going off to the University of Miami to study music. He moved to Chicago in the early 1970s and met woodwind player Chuck Greenberg, bassist Phil Maggini and guitarist G.E. Stinson.

Dick Harter Former Oregon Ducks coach Dick Harter, 81, the University of Oregon men's basketball coach whose Ducks team ended UCLA's 98-game home winning streak in 1976, died Monday at a South Carolina hospital, according to Island Funeral Home in Hilton Head. The cause was not given. Harter compiled a college record of 295-196 at Rider University, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Penn State. He won two Ivy League championships with Pennsylvania. In the NBA, Harter was the first head coach of the expansion Charlotte Hornets in 1988.

My favorite new yoga position -- you should try this -- is slanted kind of sideways in a loge-level seat, a bag of peanuts balanced on my knee, a foamy beverage in my left hand like a six-gun. This position stretches the torso and loosens the hamstrings. A couple of innings like this and you'll feel like a new man -- or a new woman, if that's your preference. Honestly, I can't recommend this yoga stuff enough. It's a good season to stay loose, we all know that. The Dodgers are obviously saving their best for the playoffs, which makes these next 15 games sort of a chore for purists like you and me. So it goes.

Jazz drummer Ed Thigpen, who often was described as "Mr. Taste" for his sensitive accompaniment of instrumentalists and singers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell and Billy Taylor, died Wednesday at Hvidovre Hospital in Copenhagen. He was 79. Thigpen, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, was hospitalized before Christmas with heart and lung problems. His son, Michel, noted on Thigpen's website that his father "passed away very peacefully . . . in the company of his friends and family."

James "The Rev" Sullivan, drummer for the Orange County heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold, whose apocalyptic songs full of biblical imagery resurrected for a new generation the sonic template of '80s hard rock laid down by acts such as Guns N' Roses and Metallica, died Monday at his home in Huntington Beach. He was 28. A statement released by the Orange County coroner's office said Sullivan was found unresponsive inside his home, and that no other information is available because a death investigation is underway.

Allen Shellenberger, the drummer for the multiplatinum-selling Orange County rock band Lit, has died. He was 39. Shellenberger died of brain cancer Thursday at his mother's home in Artesia, said Ken Phillips, the band's publicist. Shellenberger was diagnosed with malignant glioma in May 2008 and began undergoing treatment; he performed with the band until last fall. "To know Al was to know laughter," band members Kevin Baldes, Jeremy Popoff and A. Jay Popoff said in a joint statement.

When touring musicians complain of being on the run, they are,of course, speaking figuratively. But the 13 members of Japan's Ondekoza troupe, also known as the "demon drummers," are literally running across virtually the entire United States on a three-year tour. On Tuesday, 10 of Ondekoza's athletic young musicians ran from La Mesa into Seaport Village, where they set up their drums in a small plaza for a short al fresco concert. Sunday at 7 p.m.

Jake Hanna, a versatile drummer who played with such jazz figures as Woody Herman and was a longtime member of the band on Merv Griffin's television show, has died. He was 78. Hanna died Friday at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center of complications from a bone marrow disease, said his wife, Denisa. Hanna was equally at home playing with big bands or small groups. He performed with Herman in 1957 and the early 1960s, then joined Griffin's band, in which he played until 1975.

Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe says his favorite four-letter word — OK, his second-favorite four-letter word — is "risk. " "We've always prided ourselves on being the first band to do things," the drummer adds, citing as an example his nightly solo on the hair-metal group's 2011 tour, which involved him playing while strapped into a miniature roller coaster made specifically for the stage. "That's how we do things, and we definitely take some chances. Sometimes you're biting your nails — like, 'I hope this is the right move.'" The band's latest gamble?

Members of the category-defying band NRBQ knew from the outset that their prospects of mainstream success were slim to none. With a sound and attitude that embraced the seminal rock of Chuck Berry and no-borders expanse of free-form jazz experimentalist Sun Ra, the invigorating dance rhythms of zydeco kingpin Boozoo Chavis and dreamy multilayered pop of Brian Wilson, the quartet spent the '70s, '80s and '90s recording and touring chiefly for the...

Paul Motian, an influential and much-admired jazz drummer who first gained renown in the late 1950s as part of the Bill Evans Trio and later became a composer and the leader of his own groups, has died. He was 80. Motian died Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City of complications from myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disorder, said Tina Pelikan, a spokeswoman for ECM Records. During his nearly six-decade career, Motian (pronounced like "motion") spent a substantial amount of time with two of the finest jazz pianists: Evans and Keith Jarrett.

Assessing Chris Holmes' place in popular music often results in cinematic comparisons. "He has a Zelig-like ability to insert himself into any event that matters," explains Greg Kot, music critic for the Chicago Tribune. "He's Forrest Gump for all these little subcultures," notes Brian Liesegang, former member of alt-rock hitmakers Filter and Nine Inch Nails and Holmes' current partner in the band Ashtar Command. Holmes agrees. "I've lived my life on the sidelines of all this stuff that's happening" he says.

Musician Shannon Leto of 30 Seconds to Mars has purchased a bank-owned house in the Sunset Strip area for $900,000. The gated contemporary Mediterranean features a family room, an office, two fireplaces, a master suite with a sitting area, two other bedrooms and three bathrooms in about 2,600 square feet. Stairs off the back of the house lead to a wrought-iron enclosed swimming pool. Leto, 41, is the drummer for the rock band, whose latest album is "This Is War" (2009).

There is an element of calm amid the chaos in Travis Barker's dressing room. It's hours before showtime at Blink-182's concert at the Honda Center in Anaheim, and Barker's three kids are running wild, banging on his drum kit, spinning on a skateboard, playing an unplugged electric guitar, happily tumbling and laughing. The drummer watches it all with genuine serenity. Even on tour, he keeps the three children close whenever possible. "My kids were very healing for me," he says. At 35, Barker looks much as he always has, in a backward baseball cap and elaborate tattoos etched across his wiry, muscular body.

Stewart Copeland, former drummer for The Police, is revising his opera, "Holy Blood and Crescent Moon," which opened last fall in Cleveland to lukewarm reviews. "There's a lot more that the opera has to offer that we didn't achieve," said Copeland, who is being assisted by the Texas Christian University orchestra. The new version is expected to make its premiere Nov. 16 at the Tarrant County Convention Center.

Orange County's Avenged Sevenfold has long been known by heavy-metal fans for its riffs and its death-obsessed imagery. "Sometimes I don't know why we'd rather live than die," sang frontman M. Shadows in the band's 2005 hit "Bat Country," which topped the chart on MTV's "Total Request Live" and earned Avenged the best new artist prize at 2006's Video Music Awards. Those elements are in no short supply throughout "Nightmare," the band's fifth full-length, released this week. (Sample song titles include "Buried Alive," "Natural Born Killer" and "Tonight the World Dies."

Cue Simpsons-Comic-Book-Store-Guy voice: Best. Band. Ever! If you're a good drummer, it's a physically demanding job. To be the greatest, you must follow a training regimen that goes beyond the lighted stage. A recent reader's poll in Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed my fellow Canadian Neil Peart of Rush to be the greatest living drummer, and I, many drum magazines and TV's "Family Guy" agree. Accordingly, I endeavored to snag an interview with a man who rarely gives interviews.

Jocelyn Mull recalled finding the lifeless body of her 18-year-old son, Eron, lying in an alley near the Beverly Center. She had rushed to the scene after receiving a phone call from her sister alerting her of a possible shooting involving her son. She saw Eron's mouth gaping wide, she said. He had been shot once in the neck. Blood was everywhere. "A mother never expects — it's unthinkable — to bury her child," Mull said in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Friday as she demanded the maximum sentence for his killer, Kenneth Webb.