Bill Bruford has made his own way through the music world, making choices and taking paths others wouldn’t have made nor followed.

He drummed for one of the most progressive bands of the 1970s, but quit them at the height of their success. He released a number of semi-solo albums and played with other groups that were considered groundbreaking for their time. And he founded his own jazz band to “cure” himself of being “a rock guy on vacation.”

Born William Scott Bruford on May 17, 1949, in Sevenoaks, Kent, England, he took up the drums at age 13. Bruford said he was influenced by American jazz drummers who he saw on Saturday night BBC television programs. His sister gave him his first set of brushes as a gift, and Bruford took a few lessons from Lou Pocock of the Royal Philharmonic.

Mostly, though, Bruford picked up his techniques by listening, watching and playing. If he heard an effect or technique he didn’t know how to do, he usually figured it out on his own.

Bruford was recruited to replace drummer Bob Hagger by the founding members of Yes, vocalist Jon Anderson and bassist Chris Squire, who saw an ad Bruford had placed in “Melody Maker.” The drummer had played only three gigs with the band Savoy Brown before jumping to Yes. Along with guitarist Peter Banks and keyboardist Tony Kaye, added to replace Clive Bailey, Yes was formed. Yes played their first gig on Aug. 4, 1968, at East Mersey Youth Camp in England, but by the end of the year they were opening for Cream’s farewell tour at Royal Albert Hall.

The group’s first two albums were a mix of original songs and covers of prior works by bands that influenced Yes. “The Yes Album,” released Feb. 19, 1971, and including the hit “I’ve Seen All Good People,” started a run of three progressively more successful albums, including “Fragile” and “Close to the Edge,” both released in 1972. Despite the building success, Bruford left the band shortly after recording for “Close to the Edge” was wrapped. Bruford, who had come to fisticuffs with bassist Squire after one concert, left primarily because Squire was notoriously late for everything, from rehearsals to departures. Bruford in a more recent interview called tardiness for band activities “the most grievous form of offense that one musician can visit upon another.”

Bruford would be invited by guitarist Robert Fripp to join another progressive band, King Crimson, whose work is often difficult to categorize. With elements of rock, jazz, metal, psychedelic, new wave, folk and even classical music, the band never received much airplay, but did develop a fan base. Though membership in the band (and the existence of the band itself) has been quite fluid, Bruford was a part of a dozen King Crimson album releases, dating from 1973 to 2001. The “reconstituted” King Crimson of the early 1980s offered Bruford the platform for innovating with electronic drums by Simmons.

Four “solo” albums were released by “Bruford,” an eponymous band that originally included Dave Stewart on keyboards, Jeff Berlin on bass, Allan Holdsworth on guitar and of course Bruford himself on the kit. The first album, “Feels Good to Me,” also included Annette Peacock on vocals and Kenny Wheeler on flugelhorn. The second album, “One of a Kind,” was largely instrumental, and bassist Berlin provided the vocals for the third album, “Gradually Going Tornado” in 1980. The band also had released a live album called “The Bruford Tapes” from material recorded during a performance on New York’s famed WLIR radio station in 1979 and a live television appearance on BBC’s series “Rock Goes to College” from 1979 was reissued as a DVD in 2006-07.

Through the years, Bruford has made appearances on dozens of other recordings, as part of the short-lived band UK, filling in with Genesis, collaborating friends and other artists like Kazumi Watanabe, Patrick Moraz and Tony Levin, and even reuniting with ex-Yes bandmates to form (and record two albums as) Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe. All the while, Yes forged on with a varying array of members, and in 1991-92 Bruford and Anderson would rejoin for the “Union” album and tour. Bruford found it dissatisfying – “God awful … the worst album I’ve been on” – and slipped away to do his own thing.

That “thing” was, in part, his jazz band, Earthworks, formed by Bruford in 1986. Though the lineup keeps changing, Bruford has recorded nine albums with the group.

Bruford told The San Diego Union-Tribune, “I have this image that I might be a ‘rock guy on vacation.’ That idea is anathema to me – and I’ve cured it … with Earthworks.”