John Malveaux: NYTimes.com: Ellis Marsalis Jr., Jazz Pianist and Music Family Patriarch, Dies at 85

Ellis Marsalis with three of his sons, Delfeayo, left, Branford 
and Wynton, in 2011.  Credit...Chad Batka for The New York 
Times

John Malveaux brings this article to our attention:

The New York Times

The father of Wynton and Branford Marsalis and a 
prominent performer and educator, he 
succumbed to complications of the coronavirus.

By Giovanni Russonello and Michael Levenson

• Published April 1, 2020
• Updated April 2, 2020, 4:47 p.m. ET

This obituary is part of a series about people who 

have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about 

others here.

Ellis Marsalis, a pianist and educator who became the 

guiding force behind a late-20th-century resurgence 

in jazz while putting four musician sons on a path to 

prominent careers, died on Wednesday in New Orleans. 

He was 85.

The cause was complications of Covid-19, the 

disease caused by the coronavirus, his son Branford said 

in a statement.

Mr. Marsalis spent decades as a working musician and 

teacher in New Orleans before his eldest sons, Wynton 

and Branford, gained national fame in the early 

1980s embodying a fresh-faced revival of traditional 

jazz.

Mr. Marsalis’s star rose along with theirs, and he, 

too, became a household name.

“Ellis Marsalis was a legend,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell 

of New Orleans wrote on Twitter on Wednesday 

night. “He was the prototype of what we mean when 

we talk about New Orleans jazz.”