Artist: Lenny White


Lenny White is an American jazz drummer, who was a member of the band Return to Forever led by Chick Corea in the 1970s. White has been called "one of the founding fathers of jazz fusion". He has won three Grammy awards, two nominations and one Latin Grammy. 

Born in Queens, New York City, it was at The Gold Lounge club where he had his first gig with saxophonist Jackie McLean. During the late 1960s he began performing with Mclean around Queens. Through this, White was recommended to play on  Miles Davis' landmark 1969 LP Bitches Brew, and feature on Freddie Hubbard's 1970 LP Red Clay.  Within 1972 White joined the jazz group Return to Forever. 

In 1975 White released his debut solo album entitled ‘’Venusian Summer,’’which featured guitarists Al DiMeola and fusion guitar pioneer, Larry Coryell. Big City was released in 1977. During 1978 he released his Space opera inspired The Adventures of Astral Pirates and his third solo album Streamline. He eventually formed the jazz/soul group  Twennynine, who went on to issue three studio albums, 1979's Best of Friends,  Twennynine with Lenny White in 1980, and 1981's Just Like Dreamin'. 

White then made a guest appearance on Chick Corea's 1982 album  Touchstone and produced Chaka Khan's 1982 LP Echoes of an Era. He later released his 1983 album Attitude and co-produced Pieces of a Dream's 1986 LP Joyride. White now teaches at NYU Steinhardt where he has an ensemble as well as a lecture class on Bitches Brew called “The Miles Davis Aesthetic.” 

Further information about Lenny White is found here and here.

Photography credit: Tore Saetre, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0.

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

Lenny White - Wolfbane live

Lenny White: Videos

Lenny White: Montreal Drum Fest 2008

Lenny White