NEW YORK — Hank Jones, a Vicksburg-born jazz pianist and composer whose 70-year career included a stint as Ella Fitzgerald’s pianist and Marilyn Monroe’s accompanist when she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, has died, his manager said Monday. He was 91.

Jones, who won a Grammy lifetime achievement award last year and received the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2008, died Sunday night at a New York hospital after a brief illness, Jean-Pierre Leduc said.

A tireless musician who performed his blend of swing and bebop until the end, Jones came from a family of jazz musicians who included brothers Thad, a trumpeter, composer and arranger, and Elvin, a drummer known for the polyrhythmic beat that propelled John Coltrane’s classic quartet.

Saxophonist Joe Lovano, with whom Jones made several CDs when he was an octogenarian, including the Grammy-nominated “Kids: Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola” (2007), called Jones “one of the master musicians in the history of jazz.”

“He was the consummate accompanist and played with a very free-flowing approach … His sound, his touch, his ideas were all about feeling,” Lovano said.

Throughout his career, Jones was respected by his fellow musicians for his elegant touch, melodic sensitivity and stylistic versatility, making hundreds of recordings, including more than 60 as a leader. He played with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, Nancy Wilson, Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Coltrane.

According to his website, Jones’ one regret was that he didn’t record more often with his late brothers. But he did manage to record “The Great Trio Collaboration” with Elvin before his brother died in 2004. He was a charter member of the big band that brother Thad co-led with drummer Mel Lewis beginning in the mid-’60s at New York’s Village Vanguard jazz club.

Jones “lived and breathed music and was never far from a keyboard, even at the end,” Leduc said.

“His incredible burst of productivity — concerts, recordings, fundraisers, clinics — these last few years was unprecedented and truly remarkable. He had gigs planned through next year” and was to play in New York next week, he added.

At last year’s Jazz Awards, Jones was voted pianist of the year by the Jazz Journalists Association among a crowded field of nominees that included such distinguished veterans as Kenny Barron, Cecil Taylor, Ahmad Jamal and Keith Jarrett and newer faces like Jason Moran and Matthew Shipp. With characteristic modesty, Jones declared it “should be a group award.”

“This to me is an honor and also it’s a great incentive to me to do better,” Jones said in accepting the honor. “It’s not the end of things, it’s the end of the beginning for me.”

Jones was born in Vicksburg and raised in Pontiac, Mich., near Detroit.