Jazz drummer Elvin Jones of Coltrane Quintet dies

Jazz drummer Elvin Jones, who rose to fame as a driving force behind the John Coltrane Quintet ensemble of the 1960s, has died of heart failure, his wife said yesterday. He was 76.

Keiko Jones, who was married to the drummer for 38 years and also served as his business manager, said Mr Jones had been in and out of hospital for five months before passing away on Tuesday at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey.

"He was fighting," she said, adding that he played his last show with his five-piece jazz group at Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland, California, last month while drawing oxygen from a tank he had with him on stage.

Known for his explosive drumming style, Mr Jones was a fixture in Coltrane's influential quintet from 1960-66.

A pioneer of greater improvisation among jazz percussionists, he was viewed by some jazz critics as the best drummer in the world.

"His main achievement was the creation of what might be called a circle of sound, a continuum in which no beat of the bar was necessarily indicated by any specific accent, yet the overall feeling became a tremendously dynamic and rhythmically important part of the whole group," the Encyclopedia of Jazz wrote about Mr Jones.