Percussionist James "Chief" Bey was born as James Hawthorne Bey in Yamassee, South Carolina in 1913.



Soon after moved with his family to Brooklyn and then to Harlem, where he began playing drums and singing in church choirs.



In the 1950s, Chief Bey performed in an international tour of Porgy and Bess starring Leontyne Price and Cab Calloway. He also began a busy recording career performing on Herbie Mann's At the Village Gate (1961), Art Blakey's The African Beat (1962), as well as albums by Harry Belafonte, Pharoah Sanders and others.



James Hawthorne Bey took his stage name Chief Bey after joining the Moorish Science Temple of America, a Muslim sect. He taught the shekere, a West African percussion instrument, at the Griot Institute at Intermediate School 246 in Brooklyn.



Chief Bey died of stomach cancer at the age of 90.



His widow, Barbara Kenyatta Bey, a priestess of the Yemaja religion, collapsed at his funeral and died on April 17. April 17th 2004 would not only have been Bey's 91st birthday, but the couple's 31st wedding anniversary.