Having worked next to musicians like: Horace Silver, Junior Mance, George Benson, Kenny Burble, Stanley Turrentine, Randy Brecker, Michael Brecker, John Abercrombie, Freddie Hubbard, Don Grolnick, Esther Phillips and others, it was inevitable that Miles Davis, always worry and seeking for talented young men for his projects, fixed him.

Cobham also worked with John McLaughlin from 1971 until 1973 in the at vanguard group "Mahavishnu Orchestra".

Billy Cobham, was one of the first drummers who could bring together the paces of the rock with the jazz polirritmic, founding this way, with Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette a new style in jazz drumming that has many followers now a days.