Yesterday, a couple hours before I heard about the passing of jazz giant Stanley Cowell, Kate was doing ordering some supplies for Wesleyan’s Art Department and I saw the piece of paper full of hyper-specific color names – indigo blue, poppy red, royal blue, and so on. As I think about Prof. Cowell’s legacy as a pianist, composer, and conceptualist, it is like that. He may not have invented “blue” or “green,” but you can be sure that there is a shade that is uniquely and identifiably his and so much jazz of the last 50-plus years has been enriched by that indirectly and directly.

What a gift that a soul as wise and deep and creative as Sonny Rollins has been around for 90 years as of today and is still with us, playing retirement notwithstanding. Even if he never played a note, I would be moved by his approach to art and his wise words about life. But fortunately for us he did play notes, sometimes lots of them. I’m reticent to describe his style in a setting like this, but his mixture of stunning fluency (on the horn and with harmonic structures) and relentless pursuit of idea-development is incredibly inspiring, and if you add to that his robust sound and the extreme clarity of his articulation, the results are incredible. And I mean that literally – I listen to Newk sometimes and think “how is this even possible for a human to come up with this?” I can confidently say (and, mind you, I would cite John Coltrane as my favorite musician, period) that no greater saxophonist has ever lived than Walter Theodore Rollins.

This world is crazy, but I’m not sure it can be deemed beyond redemption if Charlie Parker walked it for a few decades. Happy 100th born day Bird!

Ironically, I began this list a few days ago as part of a determination to recognize some of my favorite living musicians while they’re still around. Obviously not fast enough in this case, as yesterday was time to say goodbye to maestro Cobb after 91 profoundly productive years. If all he’d ever done was play with Miles Davis for a few years, his place in the history books would be secure, but his pocket was more versatile than that, while at the same time being so swinging that it helped define a musical generation (when I was in my early 20s, I recall observing that there were young drummers on the scene in NY who sounded more like Jimmy Cobb than Jimmy Cobb did). Without any further ado, here is a sampling of some of my favorite Jimmy Cobb moments among many (and with apologies for all I omitted), presented in chronological order.

Every day is a good day to listen to and celebrate Mickey Tucker’s music, but it’s his 79th birthday today, so it’s a particularly good day for it. In early 1996 I was formally introduced to Mickey Tucker’s music. I don’t always remember precise timings of such things (and had heard several of the recordings…

While I knew it was coming, it is surreal to now inhabit a world without McCoy Tyner. If the ONLY thing he had ever done was play in the classic Coltrane quartet, people would be quite rightly eulogizing him left and right. But at the same time, he was playing on some other superlatively important albums, including some of his own, and (with apologies to fans of Paul McCartney, Diana Ross, etc.) I can’t think of a single artist whose work AFTER leaving an acknowledged “supergroup” can match McCoy’s output in terms of sheer amount, consistent quality, and scope of influence. That’s just one way in which he was a singular figure in music.