Jazz legend Jimmy Heath stars at Healdsburg Jazz Festival

Jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath, a living legend at age 90, has played with every big name in the genre - John Coltrane,? Miles Davis, Chet Baker - and he’s quick to correct you if you get his credits wrong.

“No, I didn’t play with Coltrane,” Heath says. “He played with ME.”

It’s true. In 1946, Heath formed his own band, which dominated the Philadelphia jazz scene until 1949. The young Coltrane was one of four saxophonists with the Heath band, which performed with Charlie Parker and played gigs at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Coltrane, of course, is gone. He died in 1967, but Heath is still going strong. He’ll perform June 3 at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival with his younger brother, 81-year-old drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, and the rest of the current Heath Brothers band lineup.

Heath has outlived many of his jazz contemporaries, and attributes his longevity and continued vitality to the simple maxim that “Life is music, and music is life.”

Many jazz musicians have lived and worked well into their ‘90s, and while Heath can’t offer a simple explanation for that, he speculates that it might to due to the “medication of dedication.”

Speaking by phone from his new home in Loganville, Ga. (near Atlanta,) Heath said he also still has his New York City apartment. “I’ve been there since 1964.”

Heath has never really stopped working.

“I was off for a few weeks to have a cataract removed from my eye, and I’ll go back to work when I play at Healdsburg,” he said.

Making her first-ever Healdsburg Jazz Festival appearance on June 9, is popular Bay Area jazz singer Lavay Smith - an experienced performer still in her 40s. She fronts an eight-piece ensemble featuring 80-year-old alto and tenor saxophonist Jules Broussard, famed for his work with Carlos Santana and others.

“Jules is my inspiration. He works so hard. Every morning when he gets up, he’s working on music,” Smith said. “It keeps him so young. He looks like he’s 15 when he’s on the saxophone.”

The Healdburg Jazz Festival always presents an eclectic mix of musical styles. This year, that includes the authentic bebop sound of the Heath Brothers, rooted in the ‘40s, as well as the classic blues, swing and jazz for the ‘30s through the ‘50s, favored by Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers.

“Really, that was a golden age, when that was the mainstream popular music,” Smith said. “You had all the greatest talent. I like it not much because it’s in the past, but I love the art form and the feeling. What I love about the music is it’s timeless. And it’s still going.”

This year’s festival also includes a tribute to the late vibraphone master Bobby Hutcherson, Latin jazz by the Pacific Mambo Orchestra and traditional New Orleans jazz by solo pianist Henry Butler.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.