Jam Master Jay, the DJ for rap and hip-hop pioneers RUN-DMC, was killed Wednesday night in a recording studio in Jamaica, Queens, NYC.

Terrible. RUN-DMC were always plagued by violence following them at concerts and other appearances, but they were generally positive and didn't glamorize a violent lifestyle the way a lot of the current crowd does. Jay was apparently a decent guy who loved making music. Which is what he was doing when someone shot him in the head two nights ago. It's hard to understand.

A lot of people are comparing RUN-DMC to The Beatles and Elvis. Those comparisons are pretty valid to my mind, because RUN-DMC were the first mainstream artists to bring their music to the attention and stereos of white suburban kids (like me), parents hated it, and entire genres of popular music can trace their histories back to them.

I thought about this for a while, and I think it's accurate to say that Jam Master Jay and RUN-DMC taught me most of what I know about the fundamentals of rhythm in music. In junior high, I bought the "Raising Hell" cassette and just about wore it out. I remember using my fledgling junior high band skills to notate little pieces of the drum tracks from that album. I was trying to understand things like what a dotted eighth rest looks and sounds like, and how the various fills related to each other, but mostly, what made the beats I was listening to so cool.

A quote I've seen a lot in the various stories I've read is from Public Enemy's "Bring The Noise", another favorite from my youth: "RUN-DMC first said a DJ could be a band, stand on its own feet, get you out your seat." Now that's a legacy.