How many dozens of times did I hear Doc Cheatham play his trumpet over the years? I couldn’t tell you when the first time was, but I will never forget the last. In May 1997 he played the old Iridium, across from Lincoln Center, as a special guest in the band of fellow trumpeter Nicholas Payton. I went with my father, who had known Doc for a long time. Mr. Payton played 40 minutes with his regular modern jazz group, then another 40 minutes of standards with Doc.

Cheatham and Mr. Payton were playing so amazingly well that we stayed for two sets, until long after midnight. I was glad we did, and not only because it was one of the most amazing evenings of trumpet-playing I have ever heard. As it turned out, both Doc and my father were gone a few weeks later.

Doc, who played incredible jazz trumpet well into his 90s, was jazz’s greatest long-distance runner – so far. One or two musicians lived longer but none was so good so long. Doc set the bar so high that Buck Clayton, who was six years younger, told me he didn’t play any more because he didn’t care to compete with Doc. Trumpeter Randy Sandke, part of the JVC Jazz Festival’s all-star concert tonight at the Rose Theater, said recently the most important thing he learned from Doc Cheatham was that “It’s never too late to be great!”

I remember, when Doc was alive, thinking that a substantial part of his charm was the visual contrast between this slender, superannuated figure, with his Alfalfa-haircut, and his extroverted, confident horn solos. When he sang his distinct diction and almost too-precise articulation came from another era: His rolled Rs and clipped phrasing belonged to a bygone day. Yet his rather quaint singing – charming as it may have been – sharply contrasted with his trumpet solos, which were hot and swinging, filled with jazz-age energy.

By the time he hit 90, Doc routinely got standing ovations just for showing up. Jazz fans in the 1980s and 1990s treated Cheatham the way those of the 1940s treated Bunk Johnson – in Gary Giddins’s phrase, “like a piece of the True Cross.” “Old Man Bunk” represented the way jazz sounded at the very beginning, before Louis Armstrong completely changed it. Cheatham, on the other hand, exemplified that exact point when Armstrong turned everything around. In fact, he was there when it happened.

Adolphus Anthony Cheatham grew up in Nashville, a scion of the early black bourgeoisie; many in his family were in the medical profession and he was expected to follow. But he became a doctor in nickname only. Drawn to music, he studied both trumpet and saxophone. On his first recording session, in 1926, he played soprano, backing blues great Ma Rainey in 1926. But, as Doc once told my father, “Nothing much was happening on the sax in the 1920s. Louis Armstrong and Joe Smith and those fellows all caused me to give up the sax because they were playing so much on the trumpet.”

When Cheatham came to Chicago, then the music’s central city, in the mid-20s, he heard all the great New Orleans trumpeters in person and became friendly with them. He received a mute from King Oliver and a substantial career boost from Louis Armstrong. The artist-not-yet-known-as-Satchmo occasionally tapped Cheatham as his substitute when he had two gigs at the same time, most frequently with Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra. Doc later told me that, whenever he would stand up to take a solo, the crowds always seemed disappointed the man in the trumpet section wasn’t Armstrong.

Such solos were rare, however. Cheatham spent the majority of his career as a section player in the leading jazz big bands in Harlem. He was one of the first jazzmen to tour Europe (with Sam Wooding’s band), and he worked for Chick Webb, Benny Carter, and most famously Cab Calloway. In the 1940s, he was a member of pianist Eddie Heywood’s popular sextet, which accompanied Billie Holiday. In the 1950s he worked primarily with Latin big bands. (He also played in the trumpet section – along with Roy Eldridge, Joe Newman, and Joe Wilder – in the all-star band directed by Count Basie in the landmark 1957 broadcast, “The Sound of Jazz.”)

Doc began to inch his way towards the limelight at the age of 60. In the late 1960s he served as the regular trumpeter in Benny Goodman’s sextets. In 1973 he made his first of several dozen albums as a leader, “Adolphus ‘Doc’ Cheatham.” In 1975, on an LP taped in Paris and titled “Hey Doc!,” his old friend, the pianist Sammy Price, coerced him into singing in public for the first time. For the rest of his life, Cheatham was something of a star. He played and recorded all over the world; in New York, he held down a long-lasting Sunday brunch gig at Sweet Basil and appeared regularly at JVC and Highlights in Jazz.

Doc recorded far and wide. He is great in bands with multiple horns, which allow for New Orleans polyphony, as on “Swinging Down in New Orleans” (Jazzology JCD 233). But I like him best in settings of quartets or smaller, where he is the only horn, most notably on a long series of encounters with Sammy Price, including “Doc and Sammy,” “Black Beauty: A Tribute To Black American Songwriters,” and two beautiful volumes of “Duos and Solos.” By the 1980s, Doc had run out of peers (Sammy Price was one of the few left), and by necessity had to play with younger men, be they revivalists, like the fine British clarinetist Sammy Rimmington on “Echoes Of New Orleans” (Big Easy 005), or modernists, like the bop pianist Kenny Drew on “Dear Doc” (Orange Blue OB005).

Doc’s last big album was “Doc Cheatham and Nicholas Payton” (Verve 314 357 062 2), which teamed him with the brilliant New Orleans trumpet star, 68 years his junior, who was just emerging. Mr. Payton was young enough to be Doc’s great-grandson, but both were descendants of Louis Armstrong. Over the years Doc inherited most of his repertoire from Armstrong – songs like “Pennies From Heaven,” “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” “Guess I’ll Get the Papers and Go Home,” “That’s My Home.”

His and Mr. Payton’s reading of “Jeepers Creepers” is one of the finest trumpet duets – not duel or competition – I’ve ever heard. Following Doc’s charming vocal, the two shoot back short, pithy phrases at each other, trying to complement rather than cut each other. Mr. Payton had more power, but Doc was bolder and more carefree, taking risks and leading us into unexpected places.

In a sense, Cheatham was not a representative of the past, but a harbinger of the future. His colleague, Benny Carter, followed his example and continued to make amazing music until his death at 95. Clark Terry and Frank Wess (who will be playing in Doc’s honor tonight) are still playing exceptionally well in their mid-80s. Doc’s most famous album, “The 87 Years of Doc Cheatham” (Columbia CK 53215), was recorded by Phil Schaap and led by pianist Chuck Folds; Mr. Schaap will host the tribute tonight, which Mr. Folds produced.

Over the years, Doc crossed paths with several surprising people. On his first session as a leader, in Paris in 1950, vocalist Eartha Kitt made her recording debut. His wife’s nephew was none other than Ornette Coleman, who as a budding 15-year-old saxophonist, was given a grand tour of the New York jazz world by his illustrious uncle. Wouldn’t it be cool if Ms. Kitt or Mr. Coleman made a surprise appearance at the Cheatham tribute tonight?

“100 Years and a Day: Doc Cheatham Centennial Jazz Party” at the Rose Theater tonight at 8 p.m. (Broadway, at 60th Street, 212-258-9595).