Jazz musician Ken Peplowski, beloved for his virtuosity on the saxophone and clarinet and his witty stage persona, was found dead on a cruise ship aged 66.
His passing came after a five-year battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer that begins in the plasma cells in the bone marrow, according to a friend of his who also used to be head of editorial content at the jazz station WBGO.
Peplowski was booked to perform Monday as part of a quartet on this year's Jazz Cruise, an annual music festival held aboard a ship.
However he failed to appear for the scheduled show, prompting a search that led to the discovery of his body in his cabin, a passenger told TMZ.
Guests on the cruise ship were told of his death in an announcement that evening ahead of the main big band concert, to gasps and then silence.
The cruise company's executive director Michael Lazaroff said: 'He was a great musician, but he was also one of the very best entertainers ever.'
The Daily Mail has reached out to the Jazz Cruise for further comment.
Three days before his death, Peplowski posted this Instagram photo of himself with singer Catherine Russell in a rehearsal on the cruise where his body was found.
In his statement on the Jazz Cruise's Instagram, Lazaroff said: 'I do not know any musician who respected the bandstand more than Ken. He was always prepared, love performing with his fellow musicians, and, man, could he play!'
The Jazz Cruise is planning to mount a 'more extensive remembrance' of Peplowski 'soon,' they said in their social media announcement of his death.
Born in Cleveland in 1959, Peplowski began playing the clarinet aged nine, while his elder brother played the trumpet - both at the urging of their policeman father.
'My father, probably fulfilling his own fantasies, had us form a polka band called the Harmony Kings, right out of the Shmenge Brothers,' he told the Jazz Times.
By the age of 12, he was playing Polish weddings and other events, making enough money that he was able to buy himself a new car once he learned to drive.
'The sad thing is that if you look at the real dollars, I was probably doing better then than now!' he joked in an interview two years ago.
After honing his abilities by studying clarinet at Cleveland State, he landed his big break aged 21 with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, a legendary holdover from the Big Band Era that by that stage was longer led by its namesake, who had died in 1956.
The Dorsey Orchestra became a launchpad for a highly-regarded jazz career, in which he was celebrated not just for his dazzling abilities on the instruments he played but also his cheeky rapport with audiences and fellow musicians.
His passing came after a five-year battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer that begins in the plasma cells in the bone marrow;
'Listen, it's okay to make fun of ourselves,' he argued. 'A lot of jazz is boring. A lot of it is self-important. And you could say that about any musical form and it's okay to say that. Everything isn't great just because it all falls under one umbrella.'
During his career he also played for the late Benny Goodman, a titan of jazz who remains one of the most enduring names of the Big Band era, and who hired Peplowski when he came out of retirement with a new orchestra in 1984.
'My personal take on him,' said Peplowski: 'is that he was a guy who was so wrapped up in the music that it sometimes was to the detriment of everything else in his life-personal feelings, relationships, how to deal with people on a day-to-day basis.'
Peplowski recalled that Goodman 'had a generous side. We got nice raises, thank-you letters. He tried to get me a record deal before I signed with anybody, and he offered to produce it. I also saw him fire a bass player mid-rehearsal by just calling another guy and the other guy shows up.'
Nevertheless, as far as the music was concerned Peplowski said he had never played 'with anybody who could get such great results from a band.'
In 2021, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, according to his friend Lee Mergner in a remembrance of him written upon his death.
'He battled the often fatal disease with a unique combination of courage, fortitude and humor,' wrote Mergner. 'After all, humor was just one of Ken's many remarkable gifts. He was without question the quickest and sharpest wit amongst all our artists.'
More than a decade ago, Peplowski remarked that 'music is my life,' in an interview with the Min-On Concert Association in Japan.
'Jazz is like poetry: I don't need to think, but just express myself. In a sense, that is improvisation. We can communicate with each other and unite through music.'