In memoriam: Jazz pianist Jimmy Amadie

What would Jimmy Amadie have asked for if he had been granted one wish during the last few years of his life? The obvious answers would be a respite from the severe tendonitis in both hands that derailed his career as a jazz pianist, or the chance to reprise his triumphant 2011 comeback performance at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But he may have chosen another oft-repeated desire: that the lung cancer that finally took his life on Dec. 10 at the age of 76 would take on human form and face him man to man. If he could only get his hands on the disease that he branded a coward, Amadie would finally, as his mantra went, “kill the motherfucker.”

A North Philly scrapper whose early athletic endeavors were cut short by injury, Amadie threw himself into jazz piano with a boxer’s obsessive rigor and fierce competitiveness, eventually harming his hands in the process. Early promise recognized by the likes of Mel Torme and Woody Herman gave way to decades of silence and a focus on education before surgery and determination allowed Amadie to record a series of gracefully swinging albums. Through the keys, Amadie found a sweet but elusive release for the emotions that always roiled just below his skin — a heady blend of anger and tenderness, generosity and bravado, gratitude and regret that would burst forth within moments of meeting him. Jimmy lost his fight, but death never had a more tenacious opponent.