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Albert Heath, a virtuoso jazz drummer who collaborated with luminaries like John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone and Herbie Hancock; performed and recorded with his older brothers, Percy and Jimmy; and for a few years played alongside Percy in one of the great jazz ensembles, the Modern Jazz Quartet, died on Wednesday in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 88.<\/p>\n
The cause of his death, it a hospital, was leukemia, his stepson Curt Flood Jr. said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Heath, who was known as Tootie, was primarily a bebop and hard bop drummer but was adept in a range of styles. In 2020, the National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master<\/a>, an honor that his brothers had received earlier.<\/p>\n He accepted the news with a mixture of humility and self-confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cI am honored that they acknowledged me,\u201d he told The Santa Fe New Mexican, \u201cbut it doesn\u2019t mean anything because I\u2019ve always thought I was a master.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Heath\u2019s career had its origins with his family in Philadelphia, where his father played clarinet in an Elks marching band, his mother sang in a church choir and his brother Jimmy, a saxophonist, brought members of his big band \u2014 including his fellow saxophonist John Coltrane \u2014 to the Heaths\u2019 house.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThey\u2019d have section rehearsals in our parents\u2019 house because it wasn\u2019t big enough to have the whole band in there, 18 pieces or so,\u201d Mr. Heath said in an interview with the website All About Jazz<\/a> in 2015. \u201cSo the trumpets would come one day, the reeds the next. The drummers and the bassists would be there a third day.\u201d<\/p>\n His career began early. As a teenager, Tootie \u2014 he was given the nickname by his paternal grandfather because he loved tutti-frutti ice cream \u2014 played a weeklong gig as part of a pickup ensemble backing Thelonious Monk at the Blue Note in Philadelphia. Monk did not tell the musicians what he wanted them to play.<\/p>\n \u201cHe never turned around and said hello,\u201d Mr. Heath said in an interview for the N.E.A.<\/a> in 2021. \u201cHe never turned around and said, \u2018Thank you,\u2019 \u2018Goodbye,\u2019 \u2018I hated you guys\u2019 or \u2018I liked you guys,\u2019 or whatever, and I never heard him say a word in the microphone to anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1957, when Coltrane was working with Mr. Heath, the pianist Red Garland and the bassist Paul Chambers at a club in Philadelphia, he hired them for what became the album \u201cColtrane,\u201d his first as a leader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Over the next two years, Mr. Heath began a prolific career as a session musician, appearing on albums by Mr. Garland (\u201cGroovy\u201d), the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley (\u201cCannonball Takes Charge\u201d), <\/span>Coltrane (\u201cLush Life\u201d) and Ms. Simone (\u201cLittle Girl Blue\u201d).<\/p>\n He went on to perform with the trombonist J.J. Johnson\u2019s band and, briefly, with the Jazztet, a sextet led by the trumpeter Art Farmer and the tenor saxophonist Benny Golson.<\/p>\n Reviewing a Jazztet performance in San Francisco in 1961, Russ Wilson of The Oakland Tribune described Mr. Heath\u2019s drumming as \u201cextraordinary.\u201d He added, \u201cBesides fast hands and excellent rhythm, he is graced with the good taste that marks great drummers and is evidenced by their willingness to subordinate their sound to that of the group.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Heath left for Europe in 1965 and stayed there for a decade, living in Sweden and Denmark. He found more opportunities to perform there and in Western Europe than he had in the United States, where he had to deal with racism, Mr. Flood said in a phone interview. In Europe, Mr. Flood said, \u201cHe was treated like a rock star.\u201d<\/p>\n He returned often enough to become part of Mr. Hancock\u2019s sextet in the late 1960s and to record two albums with him, \u201cThe Prisoner\u201d and \u201cFat Albert Rotunda.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1970, Mr. Heath released his first album as a leader, \u201cKawaida\u201d (Mr. Hancock and Jimmy Heath were among the musicians who accompanied him). Three years later he released another, \u201cKwanza (The First).\u201d His other albums included \u201cTootie\u2019s Tempo\u201d (2013) and \u201cPhiladelphia Beat\u201d (2014), with Ethan Iverson on piano and Ben Street on bass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Albert William Heath was born on May 31, 1935, in Philadelphia. His father, Percy Sr., was an auto mechanic. His mother, Arlethia (Wall) Heath, was a hairdresser. His brother Jimmy, who was eight years older, was his first music teacher, but he also took lessons from Specs Wright, the drummer in Jimmy\u2019s band.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Albert, Jimmy and Percy had played together on occasion, but in 1975 they made their partnership official when they formed the Heath Brothers, initially with Stanley Cowell on piano.<\/p>\n Their freewheeling brand of jazz was captured on several albums, including \u201cMarchin\u2019 On\u201d (1975), \u201cPassin\u2019 Thru (1978) and \u201cStraight Ahead\u201d (2009), which was released after Percy died in 2005.<\/a><\/p>\n