Artist: Dannie Richmond

Charles Daniel Richmond was an American jazz drummer who is best known for his work with Charles Mingus. He also worked with Joe Cocker, Elton John  and Mark-Almond. 

Richmond was born Charles Daniel Richmond on December 15, 1931, in New York City and grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. He started playing tenor saxophone at the age of thirteen, and went on to play R&B with the Paul Williams band in 1955. 

His career took off when he took up the drums, which he had taught himself to play in his early twenties, through the formation of what was to be a 21-year association with Charles Mingus. Mingus biographer Brian Priestley writes that "Dannie became Mingus's equivalent to Harry Carney in the Ellington band, an indispensable ingredient of 'the Mingus sound' and a close friend as well". 

That association continued after Mingus' death when Richmond became the first musical director of the group Mingus Dynasty in 1980. 

Further information about Dannie Richmond is found here.

This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dannie_Richmond, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).