What age do you become a great, an icon, a jazz hero; and what happens when all the greats, the icons, the heroes, aren’t there any more?

Surely the greats don’t suddenly become greats or icons when they are old enough to qualify for their bus pass?

Maybe we’re just more comfortable about using the term when people are getting on a bit. After all the old stagers have nothing to lose if they are, well, greats so they don’t mind the respect; and the bestower of enthusiastic titles has little risk in the bestowing beyond the small matter of giving one to someone who patently doesn’t seem to fit the bill. Unless the miscast ‘great’ in question is a Kenny G, his Kozness, or Najee. That might cause a few raised eyebrows.

The ‘what happens when there are no greats?’ question is more intriguing. Can this happen?

My take is that the baton is passed on, elder to senior, senior to old hand, old hand to young lion.

But more than this we don't lower our expectations, if anything we raise them. Yet we just know say when someone can be compared potentially in all seriousness to any great you care to think of... Louis Armstrong or a Duke, a Django, a Billie, a Coltrane, or a Miles... even when they’re a youngster like Andreas Varady or Taylor Eigsti or years ago when Wynton was first spotted.

Age rarely defines in jazz, its best practitioners can still cut it, health permitting, when they’re in their eighties.

Surely the greats were just born to play. And they just keep on doing it through the good times and the bad.

Peak of achievement: left-to-right above Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Miles Davis