THE youngest of three brothers who each became internationally famous jazz musicians, Elvin Jones was arguably the most innovative, and as a member of John Coltrane’s quartet in the early 1960s he revolutionised jazz drumming.

Not only were his technical accomplishments remarkable, in that he was capable of playing several metrically contrasting rhythms at the same time, but he fundamentally altered the role of the jazz drummer, from one whose job it was to keep time to an improvising partner equal to the other members of a group.

Most avant garde and free jazz drumming styles of the 1970s and 1980s were built on his innovations, and he remained a formidably adventurous instrumentalist himself until this year, when his appearances were limited by the need for an oxygen cylinder to assist his breathing on stage.

Jones’s own groups — usually under the name of the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine — brought a number of players to international attention in the 1980s and 1990s, including the trumpeters Wallace Roney and Nicholas Payton, and the saxophonists Javon Jackson, Greg Tardy and Ravi Coltrane (the son of Jones’s former colleague, John Coltrane).

In addition to advancing their careers, Jones became the stylistic bridge between older bebop drummers such as Max Roach and Art Blakey, and a younger generation who adopted his more colouristic approach, including Rashied Ali and Pheeroan AkLaff.

Jones grew up in a musical household in Pontiac, Michigan, not far from Detroit, where he gained his early playing experience at the Bluebird Inn. His eldest brother, Hank, had already left for New York in 1949 when Jones began playing at the inn, but the band was usually led by his middle brother, Thad (who later became the posthumous leader of Count Basie’s band). Other members of the Bluebird Inn house band included the pianist Tommy Flanagan, and the saxophonist Billy Mitchell.

By his early twenties, Jones had accompanied such visiting luminaries as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, and he organised weekly jam sessions at his mother’s home that involved most of Detroit’s burgeoning collection of future stars, such as the guitarist Kenny Burrell and the pianist Barry Harris. These sessions and his work at other clubs including the World Stage and Del Ray bar gave Jones not only playing experience but many contacts in the jazz world.

He went on the road with Charles Mingus and Bud Powell in 1955, and ended up in New York, where he worked with a cross-section of musicians, from veterans such as Harry Sweets Edison and Tyree Glenn to young Turks such as Donald Byrd.

However it was his move to join Coltrane in 1960, when the tenor saxophonist left Miles Davis to form the first regular band of his own, that made Jones famous. This quartet also included the pianist McCoy Tyner and bassist Jimmy Garrison, and collectively they developed stylistically at an astonishing rate, adopting modal harmonies, a fluid approach to rhythm, an interaction as intense as their leader’s own passionate solos, and the ability to sustain and develop ideas over a long period of time.

It was not uncommon for one tune to last an entire 50-minute set in a club, and Jones’s thrashing, energetic drums were a goading, prodding inspiration to Coltrane. Apart from a brief period when he was imprisoned for drug offences in 1963, Jones stayed with Coltrane from 1960 to 1965, and he played on the hugely important album A Love Supreme, as well as the cacophonous, inspirational Ascension. By this time he had abandoned the conventional principle of marking time on the cymbals, and instead implied the underlying beat in a much looser way, while interweaving polyrhythms and dense washes of percussion that added texture and depth to the group’s sound.

Jones left when Coltrane added Rashied Ali as the band’s second drummer, but he continued to develop his own music along similar lines, even after Coltrane’s death in 1967, notably in a group with Garrison and the saxophonist Joe Farrell. Jones toured incessantly in the 1970s, playing at most of the world’s major festivals and recording for the Impulse, Atlantic and Blue Note labels. He featured numerous star soloists, but the most significant after Farrell’s departure in 1971 was the tenor saxophonist Pat LaBarbera.

Jones’s work frequently took him to Japan, where he played with many local musicians including Fumio Karashima and Takehisa Tanaka. With the assistance of his Japanese wife Keiko, he set up his own club in Nagasaki in 1985, which became his base for the rest of the 1980s, until he returned to New York at the end of the decade.

Nevertheless his international touring continued unabated, and in the 1990s he led some of his most forward-looking and unusual groups, combining young players and new repertoire with an artistic certainty of direction born of his long years of expertise. The results, which were released mainly on the Enja label, include some of his most successful recordings as a leader.

His aggressive energy was still evident on his visits to Ronnie Scott’s at the start of the 21st century, but gradually illness and age took their toll on his flamboyant style, and his final playing appearances were marked by shortness of breath and the inability to sustain the long and varied sets of his earlier career.

He is survived by his wife.

Elvin Jones, jazz drummer and bandleader, was born on September 9, 1927. He died on May 18, 2004, aged 76.