MUMBAI: Jazz saxophonist Sam Rivers who defined avant-garde jazz scene passed away due to pneumonia in Florida.

Rivers made several numbers of groundbreaking albums for Blue Note records including �Fuchsia Swing Song,' and also performed with the likes of bassist Dave Holland and drummer Tony Williams. He embraced bebop in the 1950s and toured with singer Billie Holiday before joining the Miles Davis group in 1964 and appeared on the "Miles in Tokyo" live album.

"My father, in my eyes, was on vacation all his life. He used to tell me, 'I'm working, but I love every minute of it. Retirement was not in his vocabulary. 'Why do we even have that word?' he used to ask me. There should be no such thing," his daughter and manager Monique Rivers Williams told a daily.

Aged 88, Rivers was born into a family of musicians in Oklahoma. In the 1970s, Rivers along with his wife Bea threw opened Studio Rivbea for other musicians and jazz fans which became a keystone of the decade's innovative performance-loft scene.In the 1980s, Rivers played with Gillespie's United Nations Band for four years and settled in Orlando where he formed his own band.