Kevin Bronson on February 29th, 2012

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Davy Jones was not supposed to go this soon. Not when so many of my female friends still harbored their crushes. Not when he was still doing a solo tour. Not when “Daydream Believer” still sounds so fresh. Davy Jones was supposed to give heart attacks, not suffer them.

Jones died today at age 66. The native of Manchester, England, was a child actor who, with Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork as part of the Monkees, brightened the youth of the baby boomer generation (and a few that followed) with a healthy dose of tuneful kitsch before we quite knew what kitsch was.

He was my first favorite tambourine player. In fact, he was my only favorite tambourine player. Some scratchy vinyl came off the shelves this morning. I wish I could locate my Sting-Ray bicycle and baseball cards, but like Davy Jones they but memories now, cherished ones.

Nesmith authored a brief, touching tribute. “I will miss him, but I won’t abandon him to mortality,” Nesmith wrote on his Facebook page.  “I will think of him as existing within the animating life that insures existence.”

The New York Times’ obituary.