* From the New York Times…

Bobby Keys, a Texas-born sideman whose urgent, wailing saxophone solos wove a prominent thread through more than 40 years of rock ’n’ roll, notably with the Rolling Stones, died on Tuesday at his home in Franklin, Tenn. He was 70.

His family announced the death, without specifying a cause.

A self-taught musician who never learned to read music, Mr. Keys was a rock ’n’ roller in every sense of the term. Born (almost literally) in the shadow of Buddy Holly, he was a lifelong devotee and practitioner of music with a driving pulse and a hard-living, semi-law-abiding participant in the late-night, sex-booze-and-drug-flavored world of musical celebrity. […]

Mostly playing tenor and sometimes baritone saxophone, he recorded with a Who’s Who of rock including Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, John Lennon, George Harrison, Carly Simon, Country Joe and the Fish, Harry Nilsson, Joe Cocker and Sheryl Crow. He toured with Delaney and Bonnie and was recording with them in 1969 when they shared a Los Angeles studio with the Stones, who were making their album “Let It Bleed.”

* He was our greatest ever rock saxophonist, and here he is at his very best. Turn it up…