Perfection, when it comes to music, is a dubious concept, and one I place little stock in.

Music does many things. It can make you happy or sad, make you dance or doze; it can elevate the soul and send spirits soaring. But, in my experience, little of that has much to do with 'perfection”.

Some of my favourite albums are far from 'perfect”, but they move me in ways other more polished recordings don't.

I'd list amongst those Billie Holiday's final sessions, her voice noticeably reduced from its heyday but exuding a world-weary sadness born of hard experience and failing health.

Similarly I love Mississippi John Hurt's 'Final Sessions”, recorded in 1966 just months before the great bluesman's death, where despite obvious shortness of breath he is so vital, with his ever-present mix of warmth, gentleness and power.

It rips my heart out every time.

And last weekend, at the Bay Of Islands Jazz and Blues Festival, I saw a performance that similarly moved me.

The BOI Fest has become largely a blues festival. Two thirds of the bands are blues bands and a few more are indefinable but neither blues nor jazz. Which leaves little jazz and, particularly, little jazz of the New Orleans variety. It's not helped by the fact that many of New Zealand's great trad players are now either very old or permanently residing in jazz heaven.

The old days

Some years back, every second band there played the music of New Orleans. The Dixie parade to mourn the passing of Neil McKenzie – Dr Jaz – included several dozen musicians.

But no more.

I miss those days. We may only know a lot of these players as elderly, but they were wild, untamed beasts in their days who would put most rebellious rock ‘n' rollers to shame.

That was before American Idols and instant boy-bands, before you could download any song in the world in seconds and link to followers with the push of a button.

They made music for love and from passion, and they still do.

I was reminded of that when I watched Rob Smith and The BBC in Paihia.

Rob has not been well. He looks about half the size he did a year ago and has serious breathing issues.

Yet I saw him deliver a set that will stay in my mind for years to come.

Rob is both a singer and a saxophone player - the two musical things completely reliant on lungs and air.

But that wasn't going to slow him down.

From the opening notes

of 'To Miss New Orleans” this was special stuff - possibly the best I've seen him.

The voice

Rob has always been gifted with an extraordinary voice - a tenor with seemingly endless range and effortless control. But when you have a voice like that, the tendency is to show it off.

That ability has now gone, but with the loss has come something deeper. Rob still hits all the notes, but in Paihia he did nothing fancy to distract from the song. You didn't hear technique, you just let the emotion and beauty wash over you.

And the saxophone playing! This must have been the hardest thing because Rob is a player of the Sam Butera school of big blowing R&B sax.

Yet blowing more quietly as he is forced to, he still managed to conjure that exhilarating hard-rasping tone. It was an object lesson in controlled power.

Later in the set, Rob sat on the stage to deliver Louis Armstrong's 'Wonderful World” and it was one of those perfect moments that I don't think anyone there will forget. Rob's around 80 now. He started playing music in the mid-50s, before I was born, with seminal Tauranga rock ‘n' rollers the Four Fours.

On a saxophone that cost 28 pounds, he opened Tauranga's first real music venue, The Inferno, in 1960. And he's played music ever since.

In Paihia, Rob announced that it would be his last trip to play there. The festival, and all of us, are lucky to have a reminder that such giants once stomped the terra.