Muhammad Ali was born Raymond Patterson on December 23, 1936, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, three years after his older brother Robert, who would grow up to become the drummer Rashied Ali. Their father and his sons converted to Islam together, and both Patterson brothers took new names and drum kits into Philadelphia's jazz scene: Robert as Rashied Ali, Raymond as Muhammad Ali. A third brother, Umar Ali (also known as Omar Ali), became a jazz percussionist as well, making theirs a rare family of three working drummers. Muhammad Ali is not related to the world heavyweight boxing champion of the same name; reference sources on him take pains to note the distinction, and this profile is exclusively about the drummer.

His first significant recording date was Your Prayer (ESP-Disk, 1967), cut in New York with saxophonist Frank Wright's quintet alongside altoist Arthur Jones, trumpeter Jacques Coursil, and bassist Steve Tintweiss. That session began a partnership with Wright that would define most of Ali's career. In 1969, like a number of American free-jazz players facing a contracting New York scene, Ali relocated to Europe alongside Wright, saxophonist Noah Howard, and pianist Bobby Few. Before leaving, he recorded two sessions with Albert Ayler at Plaza Sound Studios in New York, August 26-29, 1969, issued as Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe (Impulse!, 1970) and The Last Album (Impulse!, 1971); Discogs credits list Muhammad Ali, not his brother Rashied, as the drummer on both records, a mix-up that recurs often enough in secondary sources that it is worth stating plainly. That same period also produced a rarer overlap: Alan Shorter's Orgasm (Verve, 1969), recorded across three 1968 sessions, credits both Ali brothers as drummers, though Discogs does not specify which sessions belong to which brother.

In Europe, Ali, Wright, Few, and bassist Alan Silva formed the Center of the World Quartet, a cooperative unit that became one of the signature bands of the Paris-based free-jazz diaspora of the early 1970s, releasing its own records on the Center of the World label: Center of the World. Volume I (1972, recorded live in Rotterdam), Last Polka in Nancy? (1973, recorded live at the Nancy Jazz Pulsations festival), and More or Less Few (1973), the latter billed to Few. In 1974 Ali and Wright cut Adieu Little Man, recorded live at the American Center in Paris and billed as a duo, "Muhammad Ali Duo Frank Wright" - his only outing as a credited co-leader from this era, and the source of one of the few surviving photographs of him, a double-exposure portrait of the two musicians on the album's back cover. Alongside the Center of the World records, Ali also drummed on a run of Paris sessions for Archie Shepp (Pitchin' Can and Coral Rock, both recorded July 23, 1970, with a large ensemble including Alan Shorter, Lester Bowie, and violinist Leroy Jenkins) and for Noah Howard (The Black Ark, Space Dimension), and appeared on Dutch saxophonist Hans Dulfer's El Saxofón (1972).

Work slowed through the later 1970s and 1980s, with scattered dates for Few (Rhapsody in Few, 1983) and German reedman Michel Pilz (Jamabiko, 1984). In October 2006, Ali took part in a concert marking John Coltrane's 80th birthday in Philadelphia, appearing alongside his brother Rashied Ali, pianist Dave Burrell, and bassist Reggie Workman; he played again with Noah Howard in the summer of 2008. His most consequential late-career turn came in 2010, when saxophonist David S. Ware brought him into a quartet with pianist Cooper-Moore and bassist William Parker - Ali's first recording in nearly thirty years. The quartet, billed simply as "David S. Ware / Cooper-Moore / William Parker / Muhammad Ali," recorded Planetary Unknown on November 23, 2010, at Systems Two Studio in Brooklyn, released by AUM Fidelity in June 2011, and documented a further live set at the Jazzfestival Saalfelden in Austria on August 27, 2011 - Ware's final public performance - issued in 2012 as Live at Jazzfestival Saalfelden 2011.

A further archival release surfaced in 2014: Ascent of the Nether Creatures (NoBusiness Records), recorded in the Netherlands on July 12, 1980, with saxophonist Idris Ackamoor, bassist Rashied Al Akbar, and trumpeter Earl Cross, and left unissued for thirty-four years. Ali's most recent documented recording is a 2017 date with Bobby Zankel's septet, Celebrating William Parker @ 65 (Not Two Records). No death has been reported for him in any source consulted for this profile; Wikipedia's own article on him remains in present tense with no death date, and he would be about 89 as of 2026.

Ali's playing across the Frank Wright and Center of the World records is a driving, high-energy free pulse built to match Wright's raw, gospel- and blues-inflected tenor sound - closer in spirit to the "energy music" wing of the free-jazz scene than to the more abstracted, texture-based drumming some of his contemporaries favored. He belongs to the generation of American free players who found steadier work and a more receptive audience in Europe after 1969 than at home, alongside Wright, Noah Howard, and Bobby Few. His career has been persistently overshadowed by two namesakes: his own older brother Rashied Ali, far better documented as John Coltrane's last drummer, and, inescapably, the boxer who shares his adopted name. His unexpected late-career turn in David S. Ware's Planetary Unknown quartet, arriving four decades after his ESP-Disk debut, drew renewed critical attention and stands as one of the more notable comeback stories in the free-jazz generation of the 1960s and '70s.