Ed Cox gets a proper sendoff

Friday evening, about three dozen people lined up behind a horse-drawn cart and paraded around the 1000 block of Broadway just before a Journey tribute band played.

Many of those there to hear the musical clock turned back to the 1970s and early ’80s had no clue why people were dressed to the nines and marching behind a makeshift Dixieland band that was playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

It is a pretty good bet that Ed Cox will be in that number.

The New Orleans-style second line celebrated the amazing life of Ed, a life that ended at the Alvin C. York VA Medical Center in Murfreesboro, Tenn., on March 31.

It was a journey that took 94 incredible years.

Ed Cox was a World War II-era soldier who served in Trinidad, a self-taught saxophonist, a jazz and blues historian, a piano technician, a teacher, entrepreneur, concert promoter, music ambassador, father, friend and much more.

He spoke five languages and had a photographic memory.

“He was Papa Cox,” said his friend Brad Van Strickland. “He was every damn thing.”

A year ago, Strickland and Buddy Nelms met Ed in Memphis at the opening of the Blues Hall of Fame, where Ed was donating some harmonicas that belonged to his brother-in-law, blues legend Little Junior Parker.

The three of them took a side trip to the Mississippi Delta.

Ed had seen his 93rd birthday and knew he was close to the last call. They went into a Clarksdale, Miss., club called Ground Zero, which is part-owned by Morgan Freeman.

“He stayed in there 13 hours,” Strickland said. “ ... They treated him like a king.”

When it came time to leave, Nelms and Strickland looked around and Cox was gone.

“We went out into the parking lot and he was behind the wheel, beeping the horn at us,” Strickland said.

He was near the end, but he was still in the driver’s seat.

“Brad didn’t tell you we were too tanked to drive, did he?” Nelms said. “Ed just took charge.”

Always in control, he was well-dressed, with his shoes polished, and he flashed a signature smile.

He was also a mentor to many.

“He was the go-to guy when I got down and out and perplexed with the music industry,” Nelms said. “He always had a way to get me back on track.”

In November, Nelms was in a group that took Ed back to Trinidad where he had served in the U.S. Army. To join the service, he faked his age and enlisted at 16.

On the November visit, they got a police escort to the hilltop where Cox stood guard in the 1940s.

“When we got to the top, he said, ‘This is the spot. This is where I was,’” Nelms remembered.

Cox talked about looking for German submarines a lifetime ago.

He lived the lyrics in the Calypso standard “Rum and Coca-Cola”:

“Since the Yankee come to Trinidad; They got the young girls all goin’ mad; Young girls say they treat ’em nice; Make Trinidad like paradise”

“I don’t think he ever recovered from that trip,” Nelms said.

Cox put it another way in a video clip documented by INCOLR, a Columbus production firm.

“My life is now full,” he said.

Ed left Columbus and moved to his native Tennessee about six years ago.

Strickland remembers the last visit with Ed a few weeks before he died.

“I guess you could say he told us the secret of life,” Strickland said. “Be nice. Be real. Be sweet. Do what you say you are going to do. There are too many mean people in the world, don’t be one. Love your brother.”

That alone is worthy of a funeral parade on Broadway.

This story was originally published April 25, 2016 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Ed Cox gets a proper sendoff."