William Cobham spent his first two years listening to his cousins play the textured rhythms of Panama as a child, before moving to New York around his third birthday. After graduating from New York’s prominent school of Music and Art, Cobham spent from 3 years in the U.S. Army Band, before landing a gig with the Horace Silver Band.

Cobham left the hard bop of Silver’s group to help form the jazz-rock group Dreams with the Brecker brothers before landing in Miles Davis’ legendary fusion ensemble. After playing on highly-influential Davis albums such as Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Cobham and fellow Davis alumni John McLaughlin walked away from Davis, forming the Mahavishnu Orchestra in an effort to play a more powerful brand of rock fusion.
 
Cobham left the group he helped create to form Spectrum, a group hoping to continue pushing the boundaries of fusion by adding the new funk sound that was becoming popular in the early 1970s. As the Seventies progressed, Cobham’s sound became more accessible to the mainstream, making him significant more commercially viable. Despite numerous successful albums as a leader, Cobham never relented in working as a sought after session drummer. Besides having been essentially the house drummer for the CTI label, Cobham toured with the Grateful Dead, recorded with Peter Gabriel, and worked as a member of the famed Saturday Night Live Band.