When Memphis-born jazz pianist James Williams passed away in 2004 at age 53, The New York Times and The Independent in London both marked the passing of the leading jazz educator, described as one of the “great pianists who played for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.” In the weeks after his death, Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where Williams taught for several years, organized two nights of concerts featuring a cadre of East Coast jazz talent to pay tribute to Williams.

In Williams’ hometown, there was a special obituary in The Commercial Appeal. But aside from a wake and a musical tribute at King’s Palace Café on Beale Street, his passing, like much of the city’s rich jazz heritage, went largely unnoticed.

Musicians and organizers hope to correct both those oversights Saturday night with a tribute to Williams’ musical legacy starring some of the city’s most accomplished jazz performers.

Mulgrew Miller and Donald Brown, acclaimed pianists, who, with their mentor Williams, helped make up a remarkable flowering of jazz piano talent from Memphis in the 1970s, will lead an all-star ensemble that also includes Memphians Bill Mobley and Gary Topper. Also performing will be Williams’ Jazz Messengers bandmate Billy Pierce, along with Johnny Yancy and the Sanctuary Jazz Orchestra featuring the local rhythm section of Errol Thomas (bass), Renardo Ward (drums), and Michael Jefry Stevens (piano).

The Williams show is being produced by Strictly Jazz Entertainment, a partnership between FedEx technical analyst and aspiring jazz drummer Dennis Adam and Anthony Nichols. Started in 2005, Strictly Jazz is the latest organization to take up the cause of jazz in the Bluff City, producing numerous events around town, including the bi-weekly “Sax On Sundays” at Neil’s Bar & Grille in Midtown and the “Wine & Dine Wednesdays” at Round One in East Memphis.

“There’s not a lot of places around the city where you can find good jazz venues and an organization that’s even doing jazz on a consistent basis,” says Adam. “That’s the thing we’re hoping to address.”

Adam says the inspiration for the Williams concert came from the buzz among area jazz musicians that the influential pianist should be honored.

“Whenever people would bring his name up, people would say, ‘Somebody ought to do something for that guy, so we finally got together in February and started having some meetings on it,” he says. “We’re looking forward to having it again, not just necessarily with James. We want to call it Memphis Jazz Preservation where we can have a stage for musicians to come home and play on every year.”

Williams was born and raised in Memphis and began playing piano at Eastern Star Baptist Church.

A woodwind player, Topper first met Williams the summer before they both entered 10th grade at Central High School. The pair formed half of a quartet that began playing R&B and instrumentals, then stretched out into jazz.

“James was always great,” Topper recalls of his friend. “I remember we were playing ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,’ this old Cannonball Adderley song, and he had learned the whole Joe Zawinul piano solo. That got everybody’s attention. So even from those very early days, he really tried to do the music justice and put in the extra time to be able to play stylistically what was called for.”

Topper and Williams continued to study music together at the former Memphis State University and kept in touch as they both went on to acclaimed careers in New York.

At age 22, Williams began teaching at Berklee and four years later released his first record as leader. The next year he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, then a sort of training ground for young jazz players. Williams’ bandmates during his tenure in the group included Wynton Marsalis, Bobby Watson and Pierce.

In his final years, Williams served as director of Jazz Studies at New Jersey’s William Paterson University while continuing to release a string of highly praised discs that teamed him with jazz icons like Joe Lozano, Ron Carter and Etta Jones.

“I saw him about a week before he passed away,” says Topper of his last meeting with Williams before the pianist succumbed to liver cancer.

Topper, who moved back to Memphis two years ago, thinks that Williams and many of the jazz heavyweights who have come from the area — Mabern, saxophonist George Coleman, Phineas Newborn Jr. — don’t get their due in their hometown.

“There have been so many players who have come out of Memphis that have really made a mark on the jazz scene, and they don’t seem to get too much attention locally, whereas these people are very respected in New York and other places.”

But Adam thinks that may be changing.

“Everybody who knows us has been calling us from Little Rock to Jonesboro to California about this show.” he says. “We have over 2,000 names on the mailing list, and it’s growing every week.”

James Williams Memorial Jazz Concert

8 p.m. Saturday (Oct. 4) at Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center, 3663 Appling Road.

Tickets are $20 at the BPACC box office (385-6440), the Memphis Drum Shop (878 S. Cooper), Lane Music (9309 Poplar in Germantown), and through Strictly Jazz at 292-6347 and 690-6875.