Yesterday, the jazz world lost a pillar of its own malleability and crossover capacity with the death of Ramsey Lewis, a wildly prolific pianist and composer whose career stretches more than a half-century of consistent output. At 87-years-old, the Chicago native finally went off to meet the sun goddess at the spiritual and creative center of a particularly active period of searching and boundary-pushing alongside players of pure prestige.

Though his catalog, comprising dozens of albums in as many strains of jazz, dates back to 1956, Lewis hit a stride in the mid-1960s with The In Crowd, a live album built around and named after a cover of a charting r&b hit by Dobie Gray. Supported by Eldee Young and Redd Holt on bass and drums, Lewis’ version of the mid-tempo stomper injected it with a deep cool and bluesy swing; an early blueprint for the types of lush recalibrations he’d churn out in the coming years. The album earned him a No. 1 r&b chart position and genuine mainstream acclaim, which was, and remains, rare for a jazz musician of any era. “The In Crowd” won Lewis the first of his three Grammys. And while commercial successes would become fewer and farther between in subsequent years, Lewis remained a committed student and relentless practitioner, taking on and mastering myriad jazz modes.

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