Trent, that sounds like it's one of those musical memories that will always stick out in your mind, and it brings into sharp relief why we do what we do in music.
Speaking of being among greats, my family has a friend in the person of Ted Alexander, Jazz Pianist. He is a teacher to some of the greats and learned his craft in Hollywood in the 40s.
How did we, a mostly non-musical family in rural Nebraska, get to be friends with one of the Jazz Piano giants? Ted and his son Bill have a thing for pheasant hunting, and when they started to come out to our area on their yearly trip to hunt the wild chickens, they would hunt either on our ground (until we sold the farm in 1972) or they would hunt on ground that my father, the local law, helped them to hook up. Also, my father was a firearms enthusiast, so Ted and Dad had that in common.
Anyway, when I was in High School and got more and more into music and they would come over for dinner, after dinner, with a twinkle in his black eyes, Ted would joke about having to "play for his supper", and get behind the piano and play these astouding renditions of jazz classics. And he would narrate a little bit here and there saying things like "I'd like to play this tune that was written by a friend of mine..." and then the tune would be something like "Stardust".
Here's an article that talks about Ted, his career, and some of his teaching philosophies, but it was written in 1999 when he was 81 - at this point, my father has been gone since 1997, and I don't even know if Ted is still alive or able to play.
http://www.westword.com/Issues/1999-...s/columns.html