SAN DIEGO — In a career that stretched across seven decades, Mike Wofford provided exactly the right touch on piano in any and every musical setting. His death Friday morning just after midnight, silences an exemplary artist who performed weekly until earlier this summer. He was 87.

A San Diego resident since he was a child, the Texas-born keyboard master collaborated with such jazz giants as Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Pass, Charlie Haden and Oliver Nelson. He earned international acclaim traveling the world as the pianist and musical director for vocal legends Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

A musician for all seasons, Wofford was equally adept performing with such Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees as John Lennon, James Brown, B.B. King, Roger McGuinn, Joan Baez, The Four Tops, Cher, Donna Summer and Dion. He also collaborated with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and was featured on an array of film and TV soundtracks, from “The Godfather Part II” and “Sweet Charity” to “Hawaii Five-0” and “The Bill Cosby Show.”

“Mike was one of the greatest pianists on the planet, without a doubt,” said bass great Bob Magnusson, who — like Wofford — is a San Diego Music Hall of Fame honoree. “He was such a versatile artist and a brilliant person with a very dry sense of humor. And Mike always did everything with such kindness.”

Wofford was held in similarly high regard by veteran San Diego jazz drummer and vibraphonist Jim Plank and by La Jolla Athenaeum jazz programming coordinator Daniel Atkinson.

“Mike was the most special musician I’ve ever played with,” said Plank, a retired Diego Symphony percussionist, who started playing gigs with Wofford here as a teenager in 1958. “One of the most remarkable things about Mike was that his expressive range was so broad. I never ceased to be amazed by the depth of his musical knowledge and abilities.”

“Mike had an encyclopedic command of the full spectrum of jazz,” Atkinson agreed. “He knew an incredible amount about the whole history of the music. And he was revered quite widely — and deservedly — as a musician’s musician, which in many ways is the highest status of all. That said, although he was so talented and versatile, what really stuck out about Mike was his modesty.”

Indeed, although he was a noted composer who made more than 20 solo albums and played on many more by other artists, Wofford was self-effacing to a fault.

Or, as he put it in a 2023 San Diego Union-Tribune interview before his induction into the San Diego Music Hall of Fame: “What I try to bring to every gig I do, no matter the style of music, is honesty, and making the music as good as it can be, whether it’s jazz piano or anything else. I was never a really highly technical player and I never thought of (playing music) in terms of flash. I try to concentrate on keeping things really clear and interesting for a listener, rather than playing flashy. As a young pianist, I learned fairly quickly that less is more.”

Wofford died in the Balboa Park-area home he shared with his wife and longtime musical partner, flutist Holly Hofmann. He had been receiving hospice care there for the past two weeks. The cause of death, Hofmann said, was complications from hyponatremia, a condition that occurs when the level of sodium in the blood is too low.

Mike Wofford was born in San Antonio on Feb. 28, 1935. He moved to San Diego with his mother, a gifted singer, when he was 5 and began taking classical piano lessons when he was 7. His favorite composers in his youth included Bartok, Stravinsky, Hindemith and John Cage. He was also a big fan of Art Tatum, the blind piano giant who set a new standard for keyboard mastery and improvisational ingenuity.

A precocious piano wiz, Wofford embraced jazz as a sophomore at Point Loma High School. He played in area bands with such fellow teen jazz standouts as drummer John Guerin, trumpeter Don Sleet and saxophonist Gary Lefebvre. When Wofford was 19, the San Diego Symphony performed two of his compositions, which he had written when he was 14 and 18, respectively.

His tenure as a music major lasted just one semester at San Diego State College (as SDSU was then known).

“I was not a very devoted student,” Wofford said in a 2009 Union-Tribune interview. “San Diego was a great jazz town in the 1950s. There were so many clubs and so much work.”

In 1959, Wofford accepted an invitation to join veteran bassist Howard Rumsey’s Redondo Beach-based band, the Lighthouse All Stars. He moved to Los Angeles a few years later and, in 1962, was featured as the pianist on vocal star Mel Torme’s classic 1962 album, “Comin’ Home Baby!” Its title track was later cited by English rock legend Steve Winwood as the key inspiration for Winwood’s hit song, “I’m a Man.”

Wofford’s first solo album, “Strawberry Wine,” was released in 1966 and received critical praise. After countless recording sessions in L.A. and a healthy amount of touring with various top-tier artists, he moved back to San Diego in the second half of the 1970s. He continued to record prolifically on his own and with other artists. In the late 1980s, he became Ella Fitzgerald’s pianist and musical director.

“Mike is a very fine pianist,” Fitzgerald told the Union-Tribune backstage at the 1990 Grammy Awards.

Wofford married flutist Hofmann in 2000 and they toured together and recorded a 2006 duo album together at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla.

“Mike was, without doubt, the most featured artist in the 36 years of the series,” said Athenaeum jazz concert honcho Atkinson. “He played the second concert in our series in 1989 and most recently played for us in 2022. He was always the guy you wanted to have on your stage, and he and Holly were our audience favorites.”

In a Friday morning text to this writer, Hofmann summed up Wofford’s artistry in seven words. “Mike’s humanity was exuded in his music,” she wrote.

In addition to Hofmann, Wofford is survived by his daughter, Melissa Wofford; sons Christopher and Michael Wofford Jr., seven grandchildren and one great grandchild. No memorial service will be held (“Mike wanted a party with his friends,” Hofmann said). Donations can be made in his name to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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