Ellis Marsalis Jr., the jazz pianist, teacher and patriarch of a New Orleans musical clan, died late Wednesday after battling pneumonia brought on by the new coronavirus, leaving six sons and a deep legacy. He was 85.
"Pneumonia was the actual thing that caused his demise. But it was pneumonia brought on by COVID-19," Ellis Marsalis III confirmed in an Associated Press phone interview.
He said he drove Sunday from Baltimore to be with his father, who was hospitalized Saturday in Louisiana, which has been hit hard by the outbreak. Others in the family spent time with him, too.
Four of the jazz patriarch's six sons are musicians: Wynton, trumpeter, is America's most prominent jazz spokesman as artistic director of jazz at New York's Lincoln Center.
Branford, saxophonist, led The Tonight Show band and toured with Sting. Delfeayo, a trombonist, is a prominent recording producer and performer.
And Jason, a percussionist, has made a name for himself with his own band and as an accompanist. Ellis III, who decided music wasn't his gig, is a photographer-poet in Baltimore.
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He went out the way he lived: embracing reality, Wynton tweeted, alongside pictures of his father.
My dad was a giant of a musician and teacher, but an even greater father. He poured everything he had into making us the best of what we could be, Branford said.
Branford's statement included a text he said he got from Harvard Law Professor David Wilkins: We can all marvel at the sheer audacity of a man who believed he could teach his black boys to be excellent in a world that denied that very possibility, and then watch them go on to redefine what excellence means for all time.
In a statement, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said of the man who continued to perform regularly until December: Ellis Marsalis was a legend. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz.
He was a teacher, a father, and an icon and words aren't sufficient to describe the art, the joy and the wonder he showed the world."