Ronald Shannon Jackson, drummer
extraordinaire, has left us. A sideman for
Cecil Taylor,
Ornette Coleman and
Albert Ayler he became an icon for the
free jazz movement in the sixties.
Later on he set out to explore further boundaries as the
dominant force behind his own
Decoding Society and with
Sonny Sharrock,
Bill Laswell and
Peter Brötzmann in the heavy flavoured
Last Exit quartet. I will remember
Shannon Jackson playing an extended drumsolo, reciting the
poem "Puttin' on Dog" by Sterling A. Brown on top. Imagine
this on Belgian national television in prime time. Rarely
seen ever since.
Photo taken at the Moers 2011 festival by
Michael Hoefner
