Once, a long time ago, he got percussionist Ralph MacDonald all excited with his idea of recording a jazz album with basketball dribbling as its rhythm track. Never happened, but it sounded like a good idea to me. Another time, more recent, after stepping into the same elevator as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he talked the Hall of Fame center into writing liner notes for Monk Round The World, a CD of rare Thelonious Monk recordings.

Joel kept it simple. Once, nearly 20 years ago, while researching a Down Beat story on a then-new concept of boxed-set from-the vaults reissues, I called up a bunch of producers. After a few schooled me in remastering techniques and ways to "clean up" old tracks, I got to Joel. "We just blow off the dust," he said.

Here's more on Joel.