Joe Gallivan

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Joe Gallivan (b. September 8, 1937, Rochester, New York) is an American jazz drummer.

Gallivan's first professional experience came at the age of 15 while in Miami. He played early on with Eduardo Chavez, Art Mooney, and Charlie Spivak, as well as with the Modern Jazz Orchestra. He attended the University of Miami and then moved to New York in 1961, where he played with Donald Byrd and Eric Dolphy before returning to Miami the next year. There he conducted for the TV show Music U.S.A. and led the band A Train of Thought. In the 1960s he became interested in electronic music and musique concrete, and began meeting with Vladimir Ussachevsky. Robert Moog had Gallivan help test his Moog drum system, which Gallivan used on the 1974 Gil Evans album There Comes a time.

In addition to his two years with Evans, Gallivan worked in the 1970s with Charles Austin and Larry Young (for the album Love Cry Want). He moved to Europe in 1976, living in various major cities across the Continent through 1989. While in London he was considered as a replacement for Robert Wyatt in the band Soft Machine, but did not end up joining the group, instead collaborating with its former members Elton Dean and Hugh Hopper. They worked together with Gallivan and Keith Tippett for the 1977 album Cruel But Fair. While living in Frankfurt in the 1980s, Gallivan worked with Albert Mangelsdorff, Heinz Sauer, and Christopher Lauer.

After returning to the U.S. in 1989, he settled in Hawaii for much of the 1990s, where he led his own trio at the Pacific O with Brian Cuomo on piano and Jackie Ryan on vocals.