Farewells

, a revered drummer whose love of jazz inspired and sustained him for a lifetime—and who was best known to the world as a member of the Rolling Stones for 58 years—died Aug. 24 in a London hospital. He was 80. Although Watts will forever be associated with rock & roll, his primary musical interests lay elsewhere; the illustrated tribute to Charlie Parker that he published in 1964,, was an early clue. From the 1980s on, his non-Stones time was increasingly spent playing, recording, and touring with jazz groups: the Charlie Watts Orchestra, the Charlie Watts Quintet, the Charlie Watts Tentet, and finally, beginning in 2009, the ABC&D of Boogie Woogie. In a famous 1996 quote, Watts said that while playing arenas around the globe, “I’ve always had this illusion of being in the Blue Note or Birdland with Charlie Parker in front of me. It didn’t sound like that, but that was the illusion I had.”