Billy Higgins, who would come to play on more than five hundred albums, including three of the biggest jazz crossover hits of the 1960s (Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man,” Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder,” and Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance”), was born in 1936 and grew up in Los Angeles. He began playing drums at a very early age, influenced first and foremost by Kenny Clarke but also by non-drummers like pianist Art Tatum and saxophonist Charlie Parker. In an October 2001 Style & Analysis piece in MD, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s John Riley wrote that in terms of drumming inspirations, “Billy dug the melodiousness of Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey’s groove, Elvin Jones’s comping, Ed Blackwell’s groove orchestration, and Roy Haynes’ individualist approach.”
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