Ed Bradley

NEW YORK — Ed Bradley's lifelong love of jazz helps explain what set him apart.

With his signature beard and earring, he more resembled the image of a musician than an award-winning journalist and 26-year veteran of "60 Minutes." But Bradley, who died Thursday of leukemia at 65, straddled many worlds during his career at CBS News.

He covered Vietnam and the White House. He profiled singer Lena Horne and scored the only TV interview with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. He collected the latest of his 19 Emmys for a segment on the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till.

He defied expectations and stereotypes, and, as a black man who penetrated an overwhelmingly white profession, broke racial barriers along the way.

Bradley "was tough in an interview, he was insistent on getting an interview," said former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, "and at the same time when the interview was over, when the subject had taken a pretty heavy lashing by him — they left as friends. He was that kind of guy."

"He could do it all," said Mike Wallace, Bradley's longtime "60 Minutes" colleague. "When he was doing the story of the Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s, I'll never forget the picture of Ed picking up a man who was about to drown, and helping him avoid drowning by bringing him back to safety."

Wallace said Bradley was "private" about his illness. "The first time I really understood that he was ill, on the air, was a couple of weeks ago. He was narrating a story, and his rich voice wasn't there anymore. It was just thinner."

Bradley's years on "60 Minutes" took him a long way from his start in broadcasting as a jazz DJ.

But he was always mindful of where he had come from, said journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a longtime friend.

"He was a star that never forgot his roots," she said. "He could do stories of every kind."