Avant-garde jazz drummer Rashied Ali played with John Coltrane up until his death in 1967, appearing on final recordings like The Olatunji Concert and Interstellar Space. After Coltrane's death, Ali soon formed his own quartet, with Fred Simmons on piano, Stafford James on bass violin and Carlos Ward on alto sax and flute. The quartet's first release, New Directions In Modern Music, released on Ali's own Survival Records in 1973, exploded onto the free jazz scene, influencing the likes of Don Cherry and Archie Shepp (as well as many outside the jazz idiom), becoming a kind of manifesto for avant-garde music of the period.