Jean-Baptiste "Toots" Thielemans, the Belgian-American musician who cut a singular path as a jazz harmonica player, was born on April 29, 1922 in Brussels. Thielemans' first instrument was actually the accordion. He was a child entertainer in the Brussels sidewalk cafe run by his parents. As a teenager, he took up harmonica and guitar. He began his professional career as a guitar player (and added the ability to whistle a line above it), but inspired by the mid-20th-century innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he returned to the chromatic harmonica and developed a bebop-influenced technique on it. He performed and recorded widely with his bebop heroes and many other stars of postwar jazz, and his tune "Bluesette" quickly became a jazz standard. His work also graces many film and television scores.

Toots Thielemans heard jazz, and it became his passion, playing along to radio broadcasts of swing bands and, later, bebop. However, the harmonica was and is still best-known as a blues or folk instrument — or a toy — and he faced an uphill battle for acceptance. In 1948, he visited the U.S. for the first time and sat in on a few jam sessions. He caught the ear of an agent for star clarinetist Benny Goodman, who invited Thielemans to join Goodman on a European tour. From there, Thielemans was off and running. He moved to the U.S. and joined pianist George Shearing's popular quintet for five years, and he freelanced with many jazz greats.

Thielemans became a first-call studio musician for top arrangers like Quincy Jones. His harmonica graced the theme song for “Sesame Street” and the score for the movie “Midnight Cowboy.” And that's his whistling in the commercial jingle for Old Spice toiletries.

Jazz remained his first love and even toward the end of his career, he would begin every morning with practice on the complex changes to John Coltrane's Giant Steps. He suffered a stroke in his 60s, which limited his facility for playing the guitar, but he continued touring. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in the U.S., and a baron by the king of Belgium. And he only retired from performing at the age of 92. Thielmans passed away on August 22, 2016 at the age of 94.

[This piece was excerpted from an article by Tom Cole on npr.org]

Here is a link to Toots Thielmans playing his most famous composition in the Netherlands in 2009:

"BLUESETTE"