From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3454590.ece

Virtuoso drummer who collaborated with Jimi Hendrix in Band
of Gypsys and found success with his own band, the Buddy
Miles Express

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