Jimmy Madison

James Henry "Jimmy" Madison III was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 17 February 1947. He grew up in a musical family and was regarded as a child prodigy on the drums, playing professionally from about the age of 10 and appearing in public by the age of 12. As a young teenager he was playing on the radio every week in Cincinnati.

In 1966 Madison worked in Ohio with the cornetist Don Goldie before being hired, at about 19, by Lionel Hampton. He divided his time between Cincinnati and New York in the late 1960s and by 1969 had joined the pianist Marian McPartland, playing with her until 1972.

In New York he became a first call drummer across jazz and funk. He recorded with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Mark Murphy, Carmen McRae, Lee Konitz, Joe Farrell, Art Farmer, Urbie Green, Yusef Lateef, Stanley Turrentine, Red Rodney and Jack Walrath, and played on James Brown's albums Sho Is Funky Down Here (1971) and Hell (1974). In 1978 he drummed on Nina Simone's album Baltimore, recorded in Brussels. Over the years he also worked with Quincy Jones, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, George Benson, Gerry Mulligan, the Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Joffrey Ballet.

As a leader he ran small groups from the 1970s whose members at times included Tom Harrell, Harold Danko, Kenny Barron and Dennis Irwin, and led a big band in New York in the early 1980s. His own albums included Bumps on a Smooth Surface (1978), Full Cycle (1983), 90 Degrees With 100% Humidity (1996), Sketch (2004) and The Watcher (2007). In the 1980s and 1990s he also worked as a recording engineer and ran his own Jimmy Madison Studio in New York. In 2020 he won a Grammy as an accompanist on Joyce DiDonato's album Songplay.

Madison was married for 42 years to Silvia Zehn. He was an avid mountaineer who climbed well known peaks around the world, among them Mont Blanc, and he wrote about both his music and his climbing in his self-published memoir, Drummer Boy, My Life Playing for the Greats of Jazz and Funk. He was survived by his wife, his sister Gail, and a niece and nephew.

Jimmy Madison died of cancer in New York City on 29 October 2026, at the age of 79. His family announced the death in obituaries published through Legacy Remembers on 30 October 2026 and in a death notice in The New York Times, and the Dutch site jazz.nl reported it on 31 October. The family asked that, in place of other tributes, people donate to the Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame or the Jazz Foundation of America.

The pianist Isaac ben Ayala, who led a band with Madison for 30 years, wrote: "If you heard us anywhere in the world over the last three decades, you heard Jimmy. He was the pulse."

Madison is remembered as a dependable, swinging drummer whose name runs through the credits of six decades of American jazz and soul, from Lionel Hampton's band and Marian McPartland's trio to the CTI label, James Brown and Nina Simone. He was inducted into the Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame and was recognised by the Jazz Foundation of America.