Music, like most things these days, is considered a young person’s game. Most songwriters do write the bulk of their material early. Very few performers make a splash late in life. If a musician such as Miles Davis or Bob Dylan goes through several incarnations over the course of a lifetime, that becomes his signature, with the implication that most people just don’t do this. Jones, by his example, put the lie to that kind of thinking. He wasn’t splashy, but by maintaining a restless, yearning spirit all his long life, he reminded us that there are no boundaries in music, that it’s never settled, that you can always learn more, do more, notch it up to a new level, no matter how old you are.

Anyone who plays music with any seriousness, at any age, knows this implicitly, but most of us aren’t Hank Jones, so we think, “Well, if I played and practiced as much, I might somehow attain the level of [your hero here].” We don’t stop to think that, in fact, there’s never any stopping, never any “good enough.” Jones, having no one he had to look up to, saw clearly that he was just getting his feet wet in the great ocean of music. There was always room for something new. You could say, in that respect, that he was cut down in midcareer. What a hero. Go listen.