NEW YORK — Free-thinking author and columnist Nat Hentoff has died.

His son, Tom Hentoff, said his father died on Saturday from natural causes at his Manhattan apartment. He was 91.

Hentoff was a Village Voice contributor and columnist for 50 years and also wrote for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Down Beat and the Wall Street Journal. His more than 25 books included jazz and First Amendment works, novels and memoirs.

A bearded, scholarly figure, Hentoff was as likely to write a column about fiddler Bob Wills as a dissection of the Patriot Act, and to have his name appear in the liberal Voice as the conservative Washington Times.