a rented room, uptown

Hank Jones, pianist, New Yorker, legend, eventual recluse, lived a career that spanned just about 7 decades of American Jazz as both a composer and band leader and, notably, as possibly the greatest accompanist in the post war era. The seminal albums he helped create - quietly, elegantly leading and urging and whispering his expert language to some of the greatest artists in history - lend him the aura of both therapist and brother, and, of course, shadow.

Hank Jones dies, leaves a Grammy statuette in a shoebox, Debussy and Chopin sheet music in piles, and a Yamaha electric piano still plugged into the wall - one of four that make up the 12 x 12 room he rented, uptown, until his demise. His meals delivered by the diner downstairs, his landlord a nice fellow who tried to keep Mr. Jones connected to the outside world - this is the stuff covered in the Times, along with a quality obit.

And he exits quietly, like he played, with grace and calm, leaving the theatrics to horns and his namesakes on the drums. Yet his expansive, limitless musical vision and imagination was stuck in a tiny room, without even a true piano for him to practice. His age, race, class, and his illness finalizing him as a sideman even in his own canonization story.