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New Orleans drummer Herlin Riley is a third-generation member of the musical Lastie family. He played with Ahmad Jamal (1982–87, 2009–14) and spent 17 years with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Blood on the Fields. He leads his own groups and the New Orleans Groove Masters.

Herlin Riley was born in New Orleans on February 15, 1957, into the Lastie family, a lineage of drummers whose patriarch, Frank Lastie, played beside a young Louis Armstrong at the Colored Waif's Home. Riley began playing drums at age three, came up through Danny Barker's Fairview Baptist Church band and the Bourbon Street club scene, and toured and recorded with pianist Ahmad Jamal from 1982 to 1987 and again from 2009 to 2014. In 1988 he joined Wynton Marsalis, beginning a 17-year tenure with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra that included the Pulitzer Prize–winning Blood on the Fields, for which he composed his own drum parts. He has recorded with George Benson, Dr. John, Harry Connick Jr., Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson and Marcus Roberts, among many others. Riley has released four albums as a leader — Watch What You're Doing (2000) and Cream of the Crescent (2005) on Criss Cross Jazz, and New Direction (2016) and Perpetual Optimism (2019) on Mack Avenue — and leads his own quartet and quintet as well as the New Orleans Groove Masters.