Last Sunday, the late jazz pianist was sent to the hospital after his condition worsened. Upon hearing the news, Ellis Marsalis III traveled from Baltimore to New Orleans to visit father. The rest of the musical clan, which includes six sons, spent time at the hospital with their dying father.

In an interview with Associated Press, Ellis Marsalis III explained the complications, “Pneumonia was the actual thing that caused his demise. But it was pneumonia brought on by COVID-19.”

Throughout his remarkable career, Marsalis performed at the Playboy Club and appeared on national television. After joining trumpeter Al Hirt and his band, Marsalis played at The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. At the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, where Harry Connick Jr. was one of his students.

Late Wednesday night, Wynton Marsalis tweeted, “He went out the way he lived: embracing reality.”

Here are five quotes from the jazz great himself:

When asked how could teach jazz improvisation, Marsalis said, “We don’t teach jazz, we teach students,” per CBS News.

In a 2014 interview with NUVO, the patriarch described how quality is brn, “The quality of your music is going to be reflected in the nature of the culture that you come out of. If you go back and listen to a lot of European music, at various points you can hear that there’s a very militaristic aspect to what is taking place. That had a lot to do with the culture that they came out of.”

In a 2019 interview with the University of Virginia, the jazz legend remembered passing music to his children, “Al [Hirt] said, ‘Well don’t worry about it,’ When we get home, he said, ‘I got trumpets. I’ll give you one.’ So he gave me a trumpet to give to Wynton. And it sat in the closet for about six years, before Wynton got serious and started to practice.”

Marsalis once said, “At a time when individualism is becoming an endangered species, jazz represents a celebration of the individual.” per Jazz Quotes.

The jazz professor also paid tribute to past jazz greats, “Louis Armstrong is the master of the jazz solo. He became the beacon, the light in the tower, that helped the rest of us navigate the tricky waters of jazz improvisation,” per AZ Quotes.