RIP, Bobby Short

As I age, I come to agreement on another point with my father, good music is in short supply. Bobby Short, who died today, understood that.

"I go back to what I heard Marian Anderson say once: 'First a song has to be beautiful,' " Short told The New York Times in 2002. "However, 'beautiful' covers a wide range of things. I have to admire a song's structure and what it's about. But I also have to determine how I can transfer my affection for a song to an audience; I have to decide whether I can put it across."