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NORTHAMPTON - For the next few days and nights Marion Brown's music will be heard on low-wattage radio stations from New York City to Okinawa, but there was a time, in the late 1980s and early '90s, when the so-called avant-garde alto sax genius lived among us, roaming Northampton streets by day, blowing his horn in Sheehan's basement by night.

Brown, who played with the likes of John Coltrane, Sun Ra and Archie Shepp early in his career, went on to record several seminal albums as bandleader and later became a renowned painter, died Monday in Florida at age 79, or maybe 75. His exact age was never very clear.

But his music was timeless, though it made him barely enough to live on.

Brown had been in poor health, after a stroke and a disastrous toenail infection that led to the amputation of a foot and a successful lawsuit for malpractice.

He was born in Atlanta, started playing the saxophone as a teenager, earned degrees from Howard University and Wesleyan and fell in with the avant-garde free jazz movement of the early 1960s.

For years, up until the restaurant's recent sale, a large ink silkscreen portrait of the saxophonist in mid-blow hung in Jake's. Rendered by artist Steve Hannock, it captured Brown's essence as if the notes themselves were bubbling up from the canvas. "He had one of the most distinctive faces I've ever seen," said WFCR's Tom Reney, "a natural draw for artists and photographers. It was dark-skinned and angular with a broad forehead and nose and a sharply narrow chin. His eyes were especially intense."

His modest lifestyle was sustained by a few area gigs, but like most jazz players, his main following was in Europe and Japan. He taught here and there, got some royalties. One year, he grabbed artist-in-residence status at UMass that came with housing.

"I specifically recall his telling me how glad he was for those annual or semi-annual checks from BMI," said Reney. "The arrival of one may have precipitated his treating me to dinner somewhere in town."

"I did not know him very well, but saw him at Sheehan's many times," said longtime WMUA DJ Glenn Siegel. "The gigs were very low-key and informal. He played every week for years. You might have 10 people down there in that subterranean space, some nights maybe 20 or 30."

"I'd pinch myself when I'd see him around town - hey, that's Marion Brown," said Siegel. "He carried himself with the utmost dignity, like royalty. So unassuming; not a shred of ego."

"He was identified as avant-garde, but his music was steeped in the blues," said Siegel, who'll dedicate his Friday morning show to Brown. "He was a major figure in music, spoken in the same breath as Archie Shepp and John Coltrane."

Shepp himself was stunned by the news.

"I loved him very much, as a man and a musician," said Shepp, 73, of Amherst, who first met Brown in New York City in the 1960s. "We bonded, in a way. We were both from small towns in the South. Most of my close friends, in general, were African Americans born in the North. It was quite fortuitous meeting Marion. He reminded me of people I grew up with. He always held onto his southern drawl, but had an enormous intellect and spirit."

It was Shepp who got Brown his first recording gig, playing alto sax for Coltrane. "Marion was a very special man; one of the reasons he was on that date was due to the original sound he could produce," said Shepp. "He played with my 39-piece orchestra in Europe. You could never put him in any bag; he was aesthetically beautiful and interesting."

Shepp attributes a story to Steve Toplitz, owner of the Amherst Music House and Guitar Workshop, where Brown bought his reeds. "Rico made special reeds, called Royals, that were more expensive, came in a red box," said Shepp. "Marion always asked for regular Ricos. 'I've got some Royals right here,' said Steve. 'Give me the regulars,' said Marion, 'I'll do that royal stuff myself.'"

"I heard he died in a Florida rest home," said Shepp. "It must have been so hard for him, having led such a rich life of traveling and excitement."

Dave Hart, who managed Dynamite Records for 17 years, became close friends with Brown during one of his Sheehan's gigs. After he left Northampton for New York in the early '90s, Brown still took the train back every Wednesday for the Sheehan's engagements. Hart, whose father was very ill back in NYC, often gave Brown a lift back.

"He had a Zen-type quality, an acceptance of things," said Hart. "We'd be stuck in traffic, but he didn't mind waiting. I'd be yelling out the window, but he had such a calm center."

One time, prior to one of these New York runs, Brown had Hart stop at a record collector on Williams Street, where he bought some of his own recordings to sell to record stores in New York.

The two were roommates for a spell on Michelman Avenue, stereo always cranking, unless a baseball game was on. "He'd walk into the apartment and right away he'd know Billy Higgins was drumming," said Hart.

"He never had a whole lot of money, sometimes enough for a can of Spaghettios and a quart of beer, but he never got angry," said Hart. "People like Archie Shepp would get tenured positions at UMass, but Marion always seemed to be scuffling. No drinking or doping, but he never pushed himself on people."

"Other guys would come out of nowhere and be the darling of Columbia Records," said Hart. "Marion didn't seem to get anywhere. ... I wish he had the opportunity to be heard by more people and not have people assume what he sounded like."

"When you read about the avant garde of the '60s and '50s, it's all about these angry young wild men," said Hart. "But Marion was a lyrical player, very melodic."

"During his tours of Japan, all he'd hear from fans was what a great thing to have played on Coltrane's 'Ascension.' But all Marion remembered about that session was how ripped Elvin Jones was at Coltrane's bringing in Rashied Ali to share drumming duties."

According to Hart, Brown began to paint when his teeth hurt so bad he couldn't play. "He had a dentist in Germany who took care of him, but it took him a few summers to finish the work. His artistic expression turned to cranking out artwork. It was years before he could play without pain again."

Hart describes Brown's painting of pitching great Satchel Paige: "It was this eight-piece sequence of Paige in full windup. It was incredible. Marion used to compare Dwight Gooden to Paige, and man, could he talk boxing, always telling me about some of the greats he saw like Kid Chocolate and Sugar Ray Robinson.

Hart just came back from New York where WKCR, the Columbia University station, was playing 48 hours straight of Brown's music.

Brown's favorite among his own recordings was 1970's "Afternoon of a Georgia Faun."

"I gotta go down to the basement and dig that out," said Hart, who calls his lasting memory of Brown "Sitting down, taking it easy, one leg over another, nodding his head."

"He was a beautiful soul, a beautiful person, who never got down on himself and never hurt a fly," said Hart.

Bob Flaherty can be reached at bflaherty@gazettenet.com.