Sam Lay, the masterful Chicago drummer known for his work with artists including Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, has died. Music journalist Chris Morris first reported Lay’s death on Facebook, and the Chicago Sun Times has confirmed it with Alligator Records and Lay’s bandmate Corky Siegel. Lay was 86.

Alligator shared this statement with the Sun-Times:

Lay has always been renowned for his trademark, hard-to-copy “double-shuffle” — based on the double-time hand-clapping from his childhood church. In addition to his work with Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, Lay was an original member of the hugely influential, racially integrated Paul Butterfield Blues Band, among the first groups to bring hard Chicago blues to the burgeoning rock and roll audience.

Lay was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1935. He got his start in the music business drumming for the Original Thunderbirds in 1957 and, after a stint with Little Walter, became Muddy Waters’ drummer in 1960, a gig he held down until joining the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1966. In between, he became a mainstay on releases by the legendary Chicago blues and R&B label Chess Records, drumming in sessions for artists like Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and Bo Diddley among many others. In 1965, he backed up Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, when Dylan famously defied folk purists by “going electric” and embracing rock ‘n’ roll. (Lay also drums on the title track from Dylan’s album Highway 61 Revisited.) He’s a member of the Blues, Jazz, and Rock And Roll halls of fame.