And he smiled a lot. Back in 1966 when he was still blowing harp for The Muddy Waters Band, I went to The Troubadour on Santa Monica Blvd. to hear their amazing sound. I went to all the shows that week, maybe ten or twelve performances. They had Otis Spann on piano. I think it was Luther Allison on guitar and probably Francis Clay on drums, Cotton, of course, and the transcendent Muddy up front. I'd only been playing harp 3 or 4 years at the time and I was transfixed by these guys. It looked so effortless and sounded so magical that I stayed for show after show, night after night.

Jimmy Cotton befriended me that week. He invited me down to the hotel where the band was staying on the Southside and he came to my little apartment near Adams and Vermont where we drank some wine and he dutifully listened to my latest efforts at song writing and harp playing. He was kind and encouraging. He counseled me that the 2-hole suck was being overused and urged me to learn when to use the 3-hole blow, the same note, but with a more even temperament.

Cotton liked his wine in those days. One night at the club, he enlisted me to be standing in the men's bathroom with a bottle of red during their set. He used a 15-20 foot cord on his bullet mike, so he could wander. The cord had so much range, he could actually walk into the bathroom during a vamp and I'd be there with the bottle. He'd take a swing or two and be back on stage for his solo. He'd often release the harp from his mouth and just bring it back on the inhale. His work was impeccable; it had to be. He was following legendary Little Walter Jacobs as Muddy's harp man.

Cotton was very patient with my post-pubescent over-playing but, one night in the alley behind The Troubadour, he and fellow harp man Shakey Jake Harris schooled me about how to be part of the fabric of the song. "Don't get in the way..." It's a lesson harp players need to learn. This is why guitarists often cringe when some harp player wants to sit in. This is why Walter Jacobs, Sonny Boy Williamson, Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, James Harmen, Mickey Raphael and even pop guys like Huey Lewis, are so appreciated by other musicians. They know how to make a tune work and not just be a showcase for their chops.

One night, in the lobby of The Troubadour, Cotton confided that he had made some demos and planned to go off on his own. He'd had the harp seat with Muddy for a dozen years and he'd be making a change. I wasn't so sure that would be a go but he damn sure was. Nearly 50 years later, he left us. And what a legacy! His great work with Muddy and dozens of albums with him as leader, fronting crack bands featuring, variously, the likes of Mat Murphy, Ritchie Hayward, Mike Bloomfield, Todd Rundgren, Johnnie Winter, Pinetop Perkins, Luther Tucker, Sam Lay, David Sanborn...

We lost a powerhouse, an elder statesman and a gentle soul, SOUL all in caps. He leaves a legacy that shines, shines bright like that one gold tooth.

(Rick Smith has played and/or recorded with Big Joe Williams, Barbara Dane, The Hangan Brothers, The Mescal Sheiks, Music Formula and can be heard on the Oscar nominated soundtrack of Days of Heaven. He is a widely published poet and a clinical psychologist.)