The tragic news has been confirmed on his website.
Thought it seems inconceivable now, Rashied was long the object of widespread scorn and even anger, for the crime of daring to be the guy that Coltrane picked to succeed Elvin. But the approach he pioneered, his way of sustaining a breathless surge of momentum in free time, has been so widely emulated that whole great swaths of jazz today are unimaginable without his influence. Pretty much anytime you hear a modern drummer play with a rubato feeling, they are coming out of a Rashied thing. But of course he could play great time, too, gloriously swinging unadorned straightahead time, and that was often the mode he operated in with the bands he'd been leading in recent years.
I first heard him live in a truly revelatory masterclass at New England Conservatory back in 2000. I caught him a few times since, most recently at last year's Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, and his playing was never less than thoroughly transfixing.
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