If there was ever a year that killed more musical talent, I don’t want to know about it. Prince, Keith Emerson, Bowie, George Martin, Jimmy Haskell, Maurice White, Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell, Glenn Frey, Dan Hicks, Gato Barbieri, Merle Haggard, Bernie Worrell, Scotty Moore, Rob Wasserman, Pete Fountain, Bobby Hutcherson, John D. Loudermilk, Toots Thielemans, Pierre Boulez, Buckwheat Zydeco, Al Caiola. Two of the founding members of the Jefferson Airplane — Paul Kantner and Signe Toly Anderson — died on the same day at the same age. And now Mose Allison. The one thing we can learn from most of these people: to live a longer life, play a musical instrument.
Everybody knows who the legends are but the legends always know who the legendary are — and Mose Allison was surely legendary. Honored in 2013 as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, he had six decades in the music business under his belt with songs covered by the Who, the Clash, the Bangles, the Yardbirds, Elvis Costello, Van Morrison (who recorded an entire album of Mose songs) and many others. I saw him perform several times. When he was 75 he was still doing over 100 shows a year, many in London. When he was 83, I thought that he’d slowed down a bit. I never thought he’d stop touring. I imagined that he’d just die on stage and be buried in whatever grand piano he was playing. Instead, he died at home, four days after his 89th birthday.
A native of Tippo, Mississippi, and definitely…