Herlin Riley was born in New Orleans on February 15, 1957, into the musical Lastie family, and began playing drums at the age of three. He came up through Danny Barker's Fairview Baptist Church youth band before working the clubs of Bourbon Street, including a stint with Al Hirt's band. From 1984 to 1987 he toured and recorded with pianist Ahmad Jamal. In 1988 he joined Wynton Marsalis, becoming a cornerstone of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and helping shape the drum parts on Marsalis's Pulitzer Prize–winning Blood on the Fields. Today Riley leads his own quintet and the New Orleans Groove Masters, and lectures in percussion for the jazz studies program at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music.