At the beginning of his career as a music professor at York University in Toronto, Bill Westcott organized a master class for students with the American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer Little Brother Montgomery.

Before a spellbound class, Mr Westcott interviewed Mr Montgomery, who described his amazing approach to tunes such as Vicksburg Blues on the piano. The two met in the Chicago area, where Mr. Westcott lived before moving to Toronto, and where Mr. Montgomery became a teacher and friend.

Rob van der Bliek, now retired music librarian at York University, was one of the fascinated students. He recalls how much he admired Mr Westcott’s dedication to teaching and the emphasis he placed on musicianship rather than purely academic matters.

“He knew it, he could play it, he could sing it,” said Mr Van der Bliek. “He didn’t strive for scholarship. He just wanted to play.”

Mr. Westcott, an accomplished and versatile pianist and composer who was a master of ragtime and stride and taught in York for more than three decades, died of a combination of illnesses on July 20 in a palliative care unit in Toronto. He was 76.

Mr. Westcott was born on June 17, 1948, in Altona, Illinois. He grew up nearby in Edwardsville, where his father worked for Shell Oil.

Born with cataracts and retinal damage, he was blind and could only read by holding text or music close to his face. He graduated with a music degree from the University of Illinois, earned a master’s degree in piano performance from the University of Southern Illinois, and returned to the University of Illinois to work on a doctoral dissertation on the role of piano players in the creation of blues, jazz, and ragtime. He came to York University in 1979 and gave up full-time teaching in 2010, but retained his office and relationships with students and faculty thereafter.

Little Brother Montgomery, originally from Louisiana, was one of the piano players who influenced Mr. Westcott’s doctoral work.

David Lidov, a former faculty colleague of Mr Westcott at York, said the formative relationship was not purely scientific.

“It was more like an apprenticeship,” Mr Lidov said. “He (Mr Westcott) wanted to play the music.”

At the time Mr. Westcott contacted Mr. Montgomery, many musicologists and musicians fascinated by the blues and American roots music were focusing on the guitar. Players such as Robert Johnson, Skip James and Charley Patton were achieving almost mythical status among guitar enthusiasts and scholars.

Mr. Lidov, a composer and author, said he believed Mr. Westcott’s deliberate focus on the piano had left a lasting impression as both a musicologist and a player. In his doctoral dissertation, which is still in progress, Mr. Westcott wrote that there was evidence that blues music was played on the piano from 1912 through the early 1920s, as musicians quickly “developed a tradition of playing and singing the blues on the piano that rivaled that of the blues singer-guitarists.”

Rob Bowman, a Grammy-winning professor of ethnomusicology at York University, was one of Westcott’s first students. He said Westcott helped him understand that the early jazz of people like King Oliver was not purely improvisational but had “a system and a grammar” that could be deciphered.

“He played an important role in my life,” said Mr. Bowman. “He went out of his way for the students. He spent hours with me.”

Mary Henderson, another early student of Mr. Westcott, said she was fascinated by her idiosyncratic professor, who, despite his visual impairment, tilted his head to the side to read music up close while playing a grand piano for his students.

“As an 18-year-old from Newfoundland, I was fascinated by him,” said Ms. Henderson, who now works as a real estate agent.

She joined a student choir led by Mr Westcott and said she was challenged and impressed by the range of music Mr Westcott chose.

“We played Mozart, Gregorian chants and gospel music,” she said. “It was incredible.”

Mrs. Henderson’s husband, bassist and York University music lecturer Al Henderson, was also a student of Mr. Westcott’s. He recalled social events at York’s Bethune College that brought together music students and faculty.

“For some reason, despite his terrible eyesight, he could play table tennis. I asked him, ‘Bill, you’re practically blind, how can you see the ball?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. I just can.'”

Mike Cadó, who teaches in York University’s music department and met his older colleague toward the end of Mr. Westcott’s full-time teaching career, still uses some of the teaching materials Mr. Westcott left behind in spiral notebooks.

Mr. Cadó said he was inspired by Mr. Westcott’s engaging pedagogy and his unique method of demonstrating on the piano during lessons, as well as his methodology of bringing together musical traditions.

Mr. Cadó was also completely overwhelmed by Mr. Westcott’s piano playing.

“It was exciting to watch him play. He really drew you into the performance,” he said. “It was like listening to a world-class classical European pianist. There was the same intensity.” As a friendship developed between them, they played ukulele duets on standards such as Sunny side of the street And After you leave and have long conversations about the American Civil War, a particular interest of Mr. Westcott.

In retirement, before his health failed, Mr. Westcott and his wife, Linda Perkins, often visited the Westcott family farm in south-central Pennsylvania. Mr. Westcott’s ancestors purchased the farm during the Civil War.

Ms Perkins met her future husband when she was a senior student at York in the early 1980s and was on leave from her job as a school librarian to study cello. “He was a very lively piano player,” she said. “I loved the way he played ragtime, boogie-woogie and blues.”

They married in 1983. In the 1990s they formed a trio with a violinist and Ms. Perkins on cello to play European classical music for friends.

Mr. Westcott’s abilities as a crossover artist and composer were highlighted when classical pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico performed select pieces of his music for her 2008 release, “Ings.”

Mr. Westcott’s love of the ukulele was also the “fertilizing factor” for another musical partnership later in his life. Brenna MacCrimmon, a specialist in Turkish and Balkan music, remembers meeting “a nice, retired professor type” at the Corktown Ukulele Jam in Toronto.

When they met, Mrs. MacCrimmon told her new musical acquaintance that she had long dreamed of singing Bessie Smith songs. Mr. Westcott invited her to his home and they began working together and developing a friendship. She enjoyed listening to him play the piano.

“Although he was a trained musician who could read music, he did so not from the page but with his body and soul. It was a great joy to be in the same room with him.”

The artistic result of their partnership was Ragtime Orioles, a 2019 album by Mr. Westcott featuring several vocal performances by Ms. MacCrimmon. The band, which also included clarinet, bass and banjo, debuted the album at a performance at the Monarch Tavern in Toronto. Many of Mr. Westcott’s former faculty colleagues and students were in attendance.

Ms. MacCrimmon said some former students have told her, “He gave me a lousy grade, but he was my favorite professor,” which she said fits with her understanding of her friend and mentor. “If he saw potential and ability in someone, he didn’t coddle them,” Ms. MacCrimmon said.

One of her fondest memories is a visit to the home of Mr. Westcott and Ms. Perkins, where they enjoyed a shrimp dish that Mr. Westcott had learned from his little brother Montgomery.

Bill Wescott leaves behind his wife Linda Perkins and his cousin Jane Graham.

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