David Bianculli

I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.

Reference books give the birth date of the great jazz organist Jimmy Smith as December 8, 1925, 100 years ago.

More recent sources cite 1928 as Smith's birth year.

Our jazz historian Kevin Whitehead says at this point the latter date looks more plausible.

That'd make Monday Jimmy Smith's 97th birthday, not his 100th.

But just to be on the safe side, Kevin Whitehead offers this tribute.

Kevin Whitehead is the author of New Dutch Swing, Why Jazz and Play the Way You Feel.

Coming up, we remember the celebrated playwright Tom Stoppard.

This is Fresh Air.

One of Britain's most celebrated playwrights, Tom Stoppard, died last week at the age of 88.

Condolences and tributes came from King Charles III, Mick Jagger, and the National Theatre in Britain, where many of his plays were first staged.

The theatre released a statement saying that Stoppard's plays, "...with their blend of intellectual curiosity, wit, and narrative experimentation, have made a lasting impact on the National Theatre and on British theatre."

His bold storytelling encouraged audiences to reflect on history, philosophy, and the human experience, unquote.

Stoppard's best-known plays include The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

He wrote screenplays for the movies Shakespeare in Love, The Human Factor, The Russia House, Billy Bathgate, and Empire of the Sun.

He was knighted in 2007.

Terry Gross spoke with Tom Stoppard in 1991 when the movie adaptation was released of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

They're Hamlet's old friends who unknowingly become part of a plot to have Hamlet killed, but Hamlet has them executed instead.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern never understand the larger story they are part of.