STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK. This is kind of a cool fellowship, a little bit different. Sometimes you get a fellowship when you're a student and relatively young. Sometimes people get fellowships so they can go off and study mid-career. This is a fellowship for jazz musicians who are at least 62 years old, and 20 of them get $100,000 each. NPR's Phil Harrell reports.
PHIL HARRELL, BYLINE: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation came up with the idea of honoring elder jazz musicians. Elizabeth Alexander is Mellon's president.
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Many of the folks who have been making the music forever were in need of support. What would it mean to really say, we recognize your brilliance, and we want at this point in your lives to be able to be as helpful as possible?
JOE PETRUCELLI: The life of a working jazz musician is a precarious one.
HARRELL: That is Joe Petrucelli. He's the executive director of the Jazz Foundation of America, which is administering the fellowships. The group regularly gives support to struggling musicians.
PETRUCELLI: They don't have adequate insurance. They really live gig to gig. And when you encounter a crisis, there's very little to fall back on.
HARRELL: That's why the panel made a point of emphasizing mostly unheralded artists.
PETRUCELLI: Who are the artists who are so deserving of an honor like this but have never received anything like it?
HARRELL: They're as young as 62-year-old drummer Shannon Powell and as old as 94-year-old trumpeter Dizzy Reece.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIZZY REECE'S "I HAD THE CRAZIEST DREAM")
HARRELL: Petrucelli hears that a lot of the recipients want to use the money to continue their work.
PETRUCELLI: Artists who have composed operas that are unfinished that will now have an opportunity to complete them. Musicians who have archives of unreleased recordings that they've never really been able to get around to evaluating and releasing.
HARRELL: Sixty-eight-year-old drummer Herlin Riley says he intends to give away his hundred thousand.
HERLIN RILEY: I try to be a giving and sharing person. So I'm happy that I can help make a difference in some other people's lives.
HARRELL: Riley spent his career keeping the beat for greats like Wynton Marsalis....
(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS' "BUGGY RIDE")
HARRELL: ...Also George Benson, Ahmad Jamal, Marcus Roberts. It's an impressive list. Riley says the fellowship came as a complete surprise, especially at this stage of his career.
RILEY: Oftentimes, it happens where you get your accolades after you pass away. It's so nice to get your flowers while you can still smell them.
HARRELL: The plan is to award 30 more fellowships over the next three years, at least.
Phil Harrell, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS' "BUGGY RIDE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.