Hank Jones & Abbey Lincoln

After a tour of Japan the 88 year old pianist Hank Jones returned to New York in February and visited his doctor because he felt indigestion, as Julian Kesner reports ( New York Daily News ). It turned out he had had a massive heart attack and needed a bypass operation. In the intensive care unit at St. Luke's hospital he met the singer Abbey Lincoln who had been taken to the hospital with breathing problems and suffering heart failure and who had undergone a bypass and a aortic valve replacement operation as well. Jones will stay another few weeks, with Lincoln it can take a bit longer, the doctors say.

Their meeting, though has had a relaxing effect on both, writes Kesner. Jones whose only complaint about the hospital was that there was no piano in his room, said: "Old friends should never get separated. We should record together!" To which Lincoln replied, visibly weak, but smiling: "He always makes me feel special. It's wonderful to see him."