{"id":9966,"date":"2026-04-04T18:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T18:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/james-gadson-death-drummer-dies-diana-ross-bill-withers-1236215434\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T18:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T18:55:10","slug":"james-gadson-death-drummer-dies-diana-ross-bill-withers-1236215434","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/james-gadson-death-drummer-dies-diana-ross-bill-withers-1236215434\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary Drummer James Gadson, Who Backed Diana Ross, Bill Withers & Marvin Gaye, Dies at\u00a086"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tLegendary drummer James Gadson, who backed iconic artists including Diana Ross<\/a>, Bill Withers<\/a> and Marvin Gaye<\/a>, has died. He was 86.<\/p>\n

\n\tGadson\u2019s wife, Barbara, confirmed his passing to Rolling Stone<\/a><\/em> on Thursday (April 2), noting that he had recently faced health challenges, including a surgery and a fall that injured his back.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cHe was a wonderful man,\u201d Barbara said. \u201cHe was a great husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and one hell of a drummer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGadson became one of the defining funk, soul, and disco drummers of the 1970s, providing the beats on classics such as Withers\u2019 \u201cLean on Me\u201d and \u201cUse Me,\u201d The Jackson 5\u2019s \u201cDancing Machine,\u201d and Ross\u2019 \u201cLove Hangover.\u201d During that decade, he also played on Gaye\u2019s \u201cI Want You,\u201d Thelma Houston\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Leave Me This Way,\u201d and Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band\u2019s \u201cExpress Yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMost grooves, especially for dance music, are very simple,\u201d Gadson told Modern Drummer<\/a><\/em> in 2007. \u201cEven so, to learn them, you have to slow them down. A lot of times we do all these rudimental things to see how fast we can play. I think you have to slow it all down and simplify it. Then you can kind of feel whether it\u2019s danceable or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a highly in-demand session player, Gadson also recorded with the Temptations, Leonard Cohen, Bobby Womack, B.B. King, Barbra Streisand, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Herbie Hancock, Paul McCartney, D\u2019Angelo, Beck, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake, Lana Del Rey, and Harry Styles.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn on June 17, 1939, in Kansas City, Missouri, Gadson grew up in a musical family. His father was a drummer who bought him and his brother cornets to play in their school\u2019s drum and bugle corps. As a teenager, he sang doo-wop with a group called the Carpets and later discovered funk music while stationed in Louisiana with the Air Force, according to Rolling Stone<\/em>. After leaving the service, he joined his brother\u2019s band, playing keyboards and singing, while also teaching himself to play the drums.<\/p>\n

\n\tGadson later began playing drums with Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band and recorded several albums. He also served as a drummer at various times for artists touring through Kansas City, including Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, Jimmy Reed, Sam Cooke, and Otis Redding.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt first, during the time I didn\u2019t really know how to play R&B, it was awful,\u201d he told Modern Drummer<\/em>. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even charge them it was so bad. I felt bad about wasting their studio time. I couldn\u2019t keep a steady pattern because I was coming from a free-jazz mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNumerous artists paid tribute to Gadson following his passing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy heart is heavy at the passing of my old friend the legendary drummer James Gadson,\u201d Beck wrote on Instagram<\/a>. \u201cHe played drums on many of my records over the decades, from midnite vultures on and has been a significant part of the sound of so many of my songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe musician added, \u201cI feel fortunate to have known this gentle giant of a man who was such a musical force and left his mark on so much classic music, from bill withers to I will survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tQuestlove also remembered Gadson, writing on Instagram<\/a>, \u201cSome drummers are soulful. Some drummers are funky. Some drummer are a rockin. Some drummers are swinging\u2014\u2014but NO drummer, has impacted the art of breakbeat drummer (danceable drums) like James Gadson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRay Parker Jr. commented on Instagram<\/a>, \u201cWe played together over 50 years. He changed the world.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Legendary drummer James Gadson, who backed iconic artists including Diana Ross, Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye, has died. He was 86. Gadson\u2019s wife, Barbara, confirmed his passing to Rolling Stone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,96,94,95,392],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genre-rb","category-music","category-music-news","category-nsfs","category-obituary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}