Clinton Heylin:"Bob Dylan: Behind The Shades, a Biography"
Shepard, Sam: Rolling Thunder Logbook:
Smooth drums. Holy ancient American piano. The mellowest fellow I ever laid eyes on.
A slouched wool cap that seemed to be growing onto his head. I never saw him without it.
Upside-down Chinese splash cymbal. Black tennis shoes.
Enjoyed playing music like nobody's business.
Howard Pyle Wyeth, a rock drummer and jazz pianist best known for working with Bob Dylan in the mid-1970s, died on Wednesday night at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. He was 51 years old and lived in New York.
The cause was reported to be cardiac arrest.
Wyeth, the grandson of the artist N.C. Wyeth and the nephew of Andrew Wyeth, was born in 1944. He studied percussion with Alan Abel of the Philadelphia Orchestra and graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from Syracuse University in 1966. He moved to New York City in 1969.
Wyeth toured in 1975 and 1976 with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, an informal, constantly changing all-star tour that included Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and others; the tour was also filmed for the movie "Renaldo and Clara."
Wyeth played drums on two albums with Dylan, "Desire" and "Hard Rain"; he also performed on four albums by the rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, and on albums by Roger McGuinn, Don McLean, Leslie West, Kinky Friedman, James Moody and others. More recently Wyeth concentrated on piano, leading his own groups in ragtime, blues and early jazz at New York clubs.
He is survived by his companion of 17 years, Catherine Wheeler, and by four brothers, John and David of New York, Convers of Oakton, Va., and Andrew of Willimantic, Conn.
