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Jimmy Madison, Jazz Drummer Who Played With Lionel Hampton and Nina Simone, Dies at 79
Jimmy Madison, the Cincinnati-born drummer and producer who began playing professionally as a child and went on to work with Lionel Hampton, Nina Simone, James Brown and Chet Baker, died of cancer on Oct. 29 in New York City. He was 79.
Jimmy Madison, a drummer and producer whose career in jazz and funk stretched across more than six decades, died of cancer on Thursday, Oct. 29, in New York City, according to a death notice published on Oct. 30. He was 79.
The notice describes Madison as a child prodigy and a Grammy-winning jazz musician and producer who played with "a Who's Who of modern jazz performers and musical ensembles," naming Quincy Jones, James Brown, Nina Simone, Chet Baker, the Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Joffrey Ballet. He told the story of his career in a self-published memoir, Drummer Boy, My Life Playing for the Greats of Jazz and Funk.
James Henry Madison III was born in Cincinnati in 1947. According to the Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame, which counts him among its 2026 inductees, his mother played trumpet in big bands in the city and his father was a composer. He was playing weekly on a University of Cincinnati radio jazz show at 13 and working club dates in Cincinnati at 14, when, the Hall of Fame says, he was modeling himself on Dave Brubeck's drummer Joe Morello. During a family trip to New Orleans that same year, Gerry Mulligan invited him on stage; years later Madison worked with Mulligan professionally.
At 17 he met arranger David Matthews, then studying at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and became the drummer in Matthews' big band, a connection the Hall of Fame describes as a profound influence on his career. After touring with trumpeter Don Goldie, he was hired by Lionel Hampton and moved to New York.
The Hall of Fame lists Marian McPartland, Bobby Hackett, Joe Farrell, Roland Kirk, Carmen McRae, Harold Danko, Urbie Green, Michel Legrand, Don Sebesky, George Benson, Art Farmer and Lee Konitz among the musicians he played with, and says he recorded more than 50 LPs as a sideman and as a leader. It credits him with a Grammy for his work on mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato's album Songplay.
Away from the drums, Madison was a committed mountaineer whose climbs, according to the Hall of Fame, included Mont Blanc in the Alps. He is survived by his wife of 42 years, Silvia Zehn, as well as his sister, niece and nephew. The family has suggested donations to the Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame or the Jazz Foundation of America.