"Style? No, I just play, man. I don't really have a style. Just being able to play music is a style, you know?" says the veteran drummer master Idris Muhammad in his laid-back and understated style.

Others know better than to take that self-effacing comment at face value. His style developed into a unique sound over the years, a New Orleans-based rhythm that has influenced many other drummers that followed. He's always had a special "something" and others know it, hiring him repeatedly for settings ranging from the R&B of Sam Cooke and Fats Domino to the modern groove music of John Scofield. He tours with Joe Lovano and Ahmad Jamal. He's played behind singers Betty Carter, Etta Jones and Roberta Flack. Played with jazzmen as diverse as Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Pharoah Sanders as well as Horace Silver and Herbie Hancock. His background comes from the funk of Arthur Neville and Curtis Mayfield. Over the years Idris has made music with so many legendary and renowned musicians that it's hard to keep track — he's on 136 albums recorded in Rudy Van Gelder's legendary New Jersey recording studio alone!

Idris Muhammad, born Leo Morris in New Orleans in 1939 into a family where his brothers also played the drums, readily admits he doesn't consider himself a jazz drummer. He's recorded with a Who's Who list in that genre after "the jazz guys" found out who he was, how well he played, and how he could bring different elements to the music. But to Muhammad, he's just a drummer.

This drummer may be under appreciated to those outside music — but not those inside. Only in the last few years, however, has he actually acknowledged his own greatness, finally ready to say that, yeah, he's pretty damn good. "Because I'm getting older now and getting kind of sentimental and saying, ‘Did I really do that? Did I pass that much time?'" he says with a laugh.

You see, Idris Muhammad is just a flat-out nice guy. He'd rather just play than have people brag on him — a lesson he learned from Paul Barbarin, a New Orleans drummer who played with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and Sidney Bechet. Barbarin told a very young Leo Morris that the accolades would come one day, but to let them roll off his back.

Idris is an agreeable fellow, all right. Talkative, amusing, descriptive, but not demonstrative. Twice he was awakened from a sound sleep by an inquiry into finding interview time within his busy schedule. Rather than being irritated, he was cordial and patient. The second time, rather than postpone, it was: "Let's do it. Let's see what questions you want to ask, so I can answer them," and off he went on an open and enlightening discussion of music and his career. Idris Muhammad is not full of himself. And unlike many musicians who feel the need to play right up until the end, Muhammad — an immeasurably in-demand drummer — wants to step aside soon and "retire," satisfied that he has lived a good life; a life of his choosing; a life that already has its share of accomplishments.

"I would like to stop traveling and just go fishin' and smoke my Cuban cigars [delightfully pronounced CIGì-gars in a New Orleans-tinted way] and drink Diet Coke. I would like to enjoy a little bit of my life, come off of the road. I've done a lot of great things in my lifetime. And I know I can play. Some guys never reach their goal of what they're trying to achieve in life, you know? My life has been quite fruitful," says Muhammad. "I'm 62 now and I've been on the road 47 years and I'm thinkin' that I don't really want die out here."

If he does go out, he's sure had a life that any musician would be proud of.

"I grew up in New Orleans. I started out with the Neville Brothers. That's my family. Arthur Neville had a band when I was 14 or 15 [the Hawkettes]. They needed a drummer. All of my brothers are drummers. They just happened to grab a hold of me because everybody else was workin'. That was the launching of my career, playin' professionally," says Muhammad.

Awake and not groggy, Idris Muhammad embarked on a discourse of his career with All About Jazz.

All About Jazz (AAJ): Were you self-taught?

Idris Muhammad (IM): I had played in school bands. I used to listen a lot to different bands play. My brothers was playin'. I couldn't play a lot and practice a lot because I didn't have a set of drums. In my neighborhood, there was a lot of schoolteachers and musicians. Uptown in New Orleans. It's actually the 13th Ward. There were bands that used to march through the streets. They would call it a "dry run." We had a lot of bars where we lived. Nightclubs. A restaurant in the neighborhood. So it was that kind of active place.