Taught by Worn-Out 78s, the Off-Screen Drummer in a Yujiro Ishihara Drum Battle, Later the Man Who Took a Japanese Band to Carnegie Hall

On October 4, 2024, Takeshi Inomata died of old age at 88, six years and a day after Tadao Kitano, the pianist he had played U.S. military camps with as a teenager in a Krupa-style trio. The son of a Takarazuka Revue oboist, he learned drums by copying 78s until they wore out, moved to Tokyo in 1956, and the next year played the off-screen drums in the climactic drum battle of Nikkatsu's The Man Who Causes a Storm: most accounts have him drumming for Yujiro Ishihara's rival while Hideo Shiraki drummed for Ishihara, though film historian Toshiaki Sato has it the other way round. He went on to lead the West Liners, went to America alone in 1967, and came back to form Sound Limited, whose 1970 Sounds of Sound L.T.D. is still prized as jazz-rock. In 1976 he opened the Rhythm Clinic Center drum school, with Alan Dawson's blessing; in 1994 he took a band to Carnegie Hall.