In the late 1960s Jimi Hendrix came under heavy criticism from the US black power movement because his band, the Experience, consisted entirely of white musicians. In response to this and because he wanted to find a new sound, he broke up the group at the height of its success and in 1969 assembled an all-African-American trio called the Band of Gypsys.

The man he turned to as his drummer was Buddy Miles, a versatile and virtuoso player with the attack of a steam train and a proven track record with the band Electric Flag as a pioneer of the fusion of psychedelic rock with soul, jazz and blues. His powerhouse drumming helped to provide a distinctly funkier beat to several of Hendrix’s later live and studio recordings. After the guitarist’s death in 1970 Miles tasted success with his own band as both singer and drummer and worked with Carlos Santana, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and the Funkadelic axis.

He was born George Miles in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1947. His father was a bassist who had played with such jazz giants as Duke Ellington and Count Basie. A child prodigy, Miles was drumming in his father’s band, the Bebops, by the age of 12 and while in his teens backed several vocal groups on tour, including Ruby & the Romantics, the Ink Spots and the Delfonics and the soul singer Percy Sledge.

It was after one such gig in Brooklyn in 1967 that he was approached by the guitarist Mike Bloomfield, who had just left the Butterfield Blues Band. Bloomfield explained his vision of a new kind of group that played what he called “American music”, fusing blues, jazz, rock, soul, gospel and even country. With Barry Goldberg on keyboards, Harvey Brooks on bass and singer Nick Gravenites completing the line-up, Bloomfield initially named the group the American Music Band, although they had become the Electric Flag by the time they made their debut appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival that summer.

After writing and performing the soundtrack to Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda’s 1967 film The Trip, the band’s debut album, A Long Time Comin’, appeared in 1968. A powerful melange of blues, soul and pyschedelic rock with blaring horns and Miles taking the lead vocal on several tracks, it was critically well received but within a month of its release both Bloomfield and Brooks had left the group. The Flag continued to flutter briefly under the direction of Miles before the drummer formed his own band, the Buddy Miles Express.

Around the same time Hendrix, whom he had met in Canada in the mid-1960s when they were touring as backing musicians, invited him to a session in New York. Miles appeared as a guest drummer on the songs Rainy Day, Dream Away and Still Raining, Still Dreaming on the third Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Electric Ladyland (1968).

Hendrix repaid the compliment by producing and writing the liner notes on Expressway to Your Skull (1968), Miles’s own debut album with the Express. Hendrix also found time to produce the Express’s second album, Electric Church (1969), and after playing his final gig with the Experience, that summer began rehearsals with a new band featuring Miles and the bassist Billy Cox, a friend from his army days.

Miles missed Hendrix’s performance at Woodstock in August 1969 when Mitch Mitchell, of the Experience, returned to the drum stool, but eventually made his live debut with Hendrix and Cox as the Band of Gypsys four months later at the Fillmore East, New York, where concerts on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were recorded for the live album Band of Gypsys (1970).

Within a month, however, it all went wrong when an LSD-induced meltdown forced Hendrix to abandon a concert at Madison Square Garden in the middle of the second number.

“That’s what happens when Earth f***s with space,” he told the crowd before walking off. Somewhat more coherently, Miles announced: “I’m sorry, we just can’t get it together.”

Back stage the drummer was fired by Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffery, and that was the end of the Band of Gypsys. Nevertheless, the two musicians remained friends, and Miles’s Express was the support act to Hendrix on several gigs on his final US tour. Several studio tracks featuring Miles also emerged on posthumous albums, including the Hendrix classics Ezy Rider and Room Full of Mirrors.

After Hendrix’s death Miles scored a substantial hit with Them Changes, which he had written for the Band of Gypsys. The song became his signature tune and featured on his 1972 collaborative album with Carlos Santana, recorded live in an extinct volcano in Hawaii. After an ill-fated Electric Flag reunion in the mid-1970s Miles had a quiet spell but re-emerged in the late 1980s with California Raisins, a cartoon band inspired by a TV advert.

After a spell in prison on drugs charges, he continued to record and perform sporadically until his death, appearing as a guest singer with Santana and reforming the Buddy Miles Express.

Buddy Miles, drummer, was born on September 5, 1947. He died of congestive heart failure on February 27, 2008, aged 62