Ahmad Jamal (born July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. According to American music critic Stanley Crouch, Jamal is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Charlie Parker. For five decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.
Early life
Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended George Westinghouse High School. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity ('Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does,' he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a 'coming great' by the pianist Art Tatum. When asked about his practice habits by a New York Times critic, Jamal commented that, 'I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time.'
Career
Jamal began touring with George Hudson's Orchestra after graduating from high school in 1948. He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which soon disbanded when the violinist, Joe Kennedy Jr., left. He moved to Chicago in 1950 (where he legally changed his name to Ahmad Jamal), and played on and off with local musicians such as saxophonists Von Freeman and Claude McLin, as well as playing solo at the Palm Tavern, where he was occasionally joined by drummer Ike Day.
He made his first sides in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings (which would later also be called the Ahmad Jamal Trio, although Jamal himself prefers not to use the term 'trio'): the other members were guitarist Ray Crawford and a bassist (at different times, Eddie Calhoun (1950–52), Richard Davis (1953–54), and Israel Crosby (from 1954)). The Three Strings arranged an extended engagement at Chicago’s Blue Note, but leapt to fame after performing at the Embers in New York City where John Hammond saw the band play and signed them to Okeh Records. Hammond, a record producer who discovered the talents and enhanced the fame of musicians like Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Count Basie, also helped Jamal’s trio attract critical acclaim. Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–55) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup. The trio's sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in 1957, and the group worked as the 'House Trio' at Chicago's Pershing Hotel. The trio released the live album But Not for Me which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. Jamal's well known song 'Poinciana' was first released on this album.
Upon returning to the U.S. after a tour of North Africa, the financial success of Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me allowed Jamal to open a restaurant and club called The Alhambra in Chicago. The club lasted for a little less than a year, from 1959 to 1961. In 1962, The Three Strings disbanded and Jamal moved to New York City where, at the age of 32, he took a three-year hiatus from his musical career.
In 1964, Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions, in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from 1964 to 1972. He also joined forces with Fournier (again, but only for about a year) and drummer Frank Gant (1966–76), among others. He continued to play throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year’s Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. from 1979 through the 1990s.
In 1985, Jamal agreed to do an interview and recording session with his fellow jazz pianist, Marian McPartland on her NPR show “Piano Jazz.” Jamal, who said he rarely plays 'But Not For Me' due to its unrivaled popularity since his 1958 recording, played an improvised version of the tune – though only after noting that he has moved on to making ninety percent of his repertoire his own compositions. He said that when he grew in popularity from the Live at the Pershing album, he was severely criticized afterwards for not playing any of his own compositions.
Now in his eighties, Ahmad Jamal has continued to make numerous tours and recordings. His most recently released album is Saturday Morning, 2013.
Conversion to Islam
Born to Baptist parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jamal did not discover the Islam religion until his early 20s. While touring in Detroit (where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s), Jamal became interested in the Islam religion and Islamic culture. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950. In an interview with the New York Times a few years later, Jamal said his decision to change his name stemmed from a desire to “re-establish my original name.”
After the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me, Jamal’s music grew in popularity throughout the 1950s, and he attracted media coverage for his investment decisions pertaining to his 'rising fortune'. In 1959, he took a tour of North Africa to explore investment options in Africa. Jamal, who was twenty-nine at the time, said he had a curiosity about the homeland of his ancestors, highly influenced by his conversion to the Muslim faith. He also said his religion had brought him peace of mind about his race, which accounted for his 'growth in the field of music that has proved very lucrative for me.'
Shortly after his conversion to Islam, Jamal explained to the New York Times that he “says Muslim prayers five times a day and arises in time to say his first prayers at 5 am. He says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition.”
Music
Style and influence
'Ahmad Jamal is one of the great Zen masters of jazz piano. He plays just what is needed and nothing more... every phrase is perfect.'
—Tom Moon, NPR musical correspondent
Trained in both traditional jazz ('American classical music', as he prefers to call it) and European classical style, Ahmad Jamal has been praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over his exceptionally long career. Following bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Jamal entered the world of jazz at a time when speed and virtuosic improvisation were central to the success of jazz musicians as artists. Jamal, however, took steps in the direction of a new movement, later coined 'cool jazz' – an effort to move jazz in the direction of popular music. He emphasized space and time in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the blinding speed of bebop.
Because of this style, Jamal was 'often dismissed by jazz writers as no more than a cocktail pianist, a player so given to fluff that his work shouldn't be considered seriously in any artistic sense'. Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius offers a very different reaction to Jamal's music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition. His unique musical style stemmed from many individual characteristics, including his use of orchestral effects and his ability to control the beat of songs. These stylistic choices resulted in a unique and new sound for the piano trio: 'Through the use of space and changes of rhythm and tempo', writes Crouch, 'Jamal invented a group sound that had all the surprise and dynamic variation of an imaginatively ordered big band.' Jamal explored the texture of riffs, timbres, and phrases rather than the quantity or speed of notes in any given improvisation. Speaking about Jamal, A. B. Spellman of the National Endowment of the Arts said: 'Nobody except Thelonious Monk used space better, and nobody ever applied the artistic device of tension and release better.' These (at the time) unconventional techniques that Jamal gleaned from both traditional classical and contemporary jazz musicians helped pave the way for later jazz greats like Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner.
Though Jamal is often overlooked by jazz critics and historians, he is frequently credited with having a great influence on Miles Davis. Davis is quoted as saying that he was impressed by Jamal's rhythmic sense and his 'concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement...' Jamal characterizes what he thought Davis admired about his music as: 'my discipline as opposed to my space.'
Jamal and Davis became friends in the 1950s, and Davis continued to support Jamal as a fellow musician, often playing versions of Jamal's own songs ('Ahmad's Blues,' 'New Rhumba') until he died in 1991.
Jamal, speaking about his own work says, 'I like doing ballads. They're hard to play. It takes years of living, really, to read them properly.' From an early age, Jamal developed an appreciation for the lyrics of the songs he learned: 'I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad. All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, 'Why did you stop, Ben?' He said, 'I forgot the lyrics.' Jamal attributes the variety in his musical taste to the fact that he grew up in several eras: the big band era, the bebop years, and the electronic age. He says his style evolved from drawing on the techniques and music produced in these three eras.
In more recent years, Jamal has embraced the electronic influences affecting the genre of jazz. He has also occasionally expanded his usual small ensemble of three to include a tenor saxophone (George Coleman) and a violin (Ray Kennedy). A jazz fan interviewed by Downbeat magazine about Jamal in 2010 described his development as 'more aggressive and improvisational these days. The word I used to use is avant garde; that might not be right. Whatever you call it, the way he plays is the essence of what jazz is.'
Ted Nash, a longtime member of the Lincoln Center Orchestra, had the opportunity to play with Jamal in 2008 for Jazz at Lincoln Center. Nash described his experience with Jamal's style in an interview with Downbeat magazine: 'The way he comped wasn't the generic way that lots of pianists play with chords in the middle of the keyboard, just filling things up. He gave lots of single line responses. He'd come back and throw things out at you, directly from what you played. It was really interesting because it made you stop, and allowed him to respond, and then you felt like playing something else – that's something I don't feel with a lot of piano players. It's really quite engaging. I guess that's another reason people focus in on him. He makes them hone in.'
Live At the Pershing: But Not For Me
Perhaps Jamal’s most famous recording and undoubtedly the one that brought him vast popularity in the late 1950s and into the 1960s jazz age, Live at the Pershing was recorded at the Pershing Hotel in Chicago in 1958. Jamal played the set with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier. The set list expressed a diverse collection of tunes, including “The Surrey With the Fringe On Top” from the musical Oklahoma! and Jamal’s famous arrangement of the jazz standard “Poinciana.” Jazz musicians and listeners alike found inspiration in the Live at the Pershing recording, and Jamal’s trio was recognized as an integral new building block in the history of jazz. Evident were his unusually minimalist style and his extended vamps, according to reviewer John Morthland. “If you’re looking for an argument that pleasurable mainstream art can assume radical status at the same time, Jamal is your guide,” said New York Times contributor Ben Ratliff in a review of the album.
Bands and personnel
Jamal typically plays with a bassist and drummer: his current trio is with bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Herlin Riley. He has also performed with percussionist Manolo Badrena. Jamal has recorded with saxophonist George Coleman on the album The Essence; with vibraphonist Gary Burton on In Concert; with the voices of the Howard A. Roberts Chorale on The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful and Cry Young; with brass, reeds, and strings celebrating his hometown of Pittsburgh; and with The Assai Quartet.
Ahmad Jamal has played with various jazz musicians throughout his extensive career, including: George Hudson, Ray Crawford, Eddie Calhoun, Richard Davis, Israel Crosby, Vernel Fournier, Jamil Nasser, Frank Gant, James Cammack, Dave Bowler, John Heard, Yoron Israel, Belden Bullock, Manolo Badrena, Gary Burton, and Idris Muhammad, among others.
Legacy
Clint Eastwood featured two recordings from Jamal's But Not For Me album — 'Music, Music, Music' and 'Poinciana' — in the 1995 movie The Bridges of Madison County.
Nas' 1994 hit song 'The World Is Yours,' produced by Pete Rock, features a very recognizable sample of Jamal's song 'I Love Music' from the album The Awakening.
Common's song 'Resurrection,' produced by No I.D., features a sample from Ahmad's solo on the song 'Dolphin Dance', also from the album The Awakening.
Awards and honors
The French government has inducted Ahmad Jamal into the prestigious Order of the Arts and Letters by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, naming him Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on June 2007.
In 1994, Jamal received the National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Masters award and was also named a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University.
Some of Ahmad Jamal’s more prestigious awards include the following, in chronological order:
1959: Entertainment Award from Pittsburgh Junior Chamber of Commerce
1980: Distinguished Service Award from City of Washington D.C., Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, Smithsonian Institute
1981: Nomination for the Best R&B Instrumental Performance (“You’re Welcome,” “Stop on By”) from NARAS
1986: Mellon Jazz Festival Salutes Ahmad Jamal in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1987: Honorary Membership Philippines Jazz Foundation
2001: Arts & Culture Recognition Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc.
2001: Induction into The Kelly-Strayhorn Gallery of Stars for Achievements as Pianist and Composer from East Liberty Quarter Chamber of Commerce
2003: American Jazz Hall of Fame from New Jersey Jazz Society
2003: Gold Medallion from Steinway & Songs 150 Years Celebration (1853–2003)
2007: Named Living Jazz Legend by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
2011: Induction into Downbeat Magazine’s 76th Readers' Poll Hall of Fame
Discography
Ahmad Jamal at Keystone Korner, San Francisco California, 1980 (Photo: Brian McMillen)
As leader
1955: Ahmad Jamal Plays (Parrot) – also released as Chamber Music of the New Jazz (Argo)
1955: The Ahmad Jamal Trio (Epic)
1956: Count 'Em 88 (Arco)
1958: At the Pershing: But Not for Me (Argo)
1958: Ahmad Jamal Trio Volume IV (Argo)
1958: Portfolio of Ahmad Jamal (Argo)
1959: The Piano Scene of Ahmad Jamal (Epic)
1959: Jamal at the Penthouse (Argo)
1960: Happy Moods (Argo)
1960: Listen to the Ahmad Jamal Quintet (Argo)
1961: All of You (Argo)
1961: Ahmad Jamal's Alhambra (Argo)
1962: Ahmad Jamal at the Blackhawk (Argo)
1962: Macanudo (Argo)
1963: Poinciana (Argo)
1964: Naked City Theme (Argo)
1965: The Roar of the Greasepaint (Argo)
1965: Extensions (Argo)
1966: Rhapsody (Cadet)
1966: Heat Wave (Cadet)
1967: Cry Young (Cadet)
1968: The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful (Cadet)
1968: Tranquility (ABC)
1968: Ahmad Jamal at the Top: Poinciana Revisited (Impulse!)
1970: The Awakening (Impulse!)
1971: Freeflight (Impulse!)
1972: Outertimeinnerspace (Impulse!)
1973: Ahmad Jamal '73 (20th Century)
1974: Jamalca (20th Century)
1974: Jamal Plays Jamal (20th Century)
1975: Genetic Walk (20th Century)
1976: Steppin' Out with a Dream (20th Century)
1976: Recorded Live at Oil Can Harry's (Catalyst)
1978: One (20th Century)
1979: Intervals (20th Century)
1980: Live at Bubba's (Digital Master)
1980: Night Song (Motown)
1981: Ahmad Jamal & Gary Burton In Concert
1982: Goodbye Mr. Evans (Shubra)
1985: Digital Works (Atlantic)
1985: Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival 1985 (Atlantic)
1986: Rossiter Road (Atlantic)
1987: Crystal (Atlantic)
1989: Pittsburgh (Atlantic)
1992: Live in Paris 1992 (Birdology)
1993: Chicago Revisited (Telarc)
1994: I Remember Duke, Hoagy & Strayhorn (Telarc)
1994: Ahmad Jamal with The Assai Quartet (Roesch)
1994: Ahmad Jamal at Home (Roesch)
1995: The Essence Part One (Birdology)
1995: Big Byrd: The Essence Part 2 (Birdology)
1996: Ahmad Jamal a Paris (Birdology)
1997: Nature: The Essence Part Three (Birdology)
2000: Picture Perfect
2001: Ahmad Jamal à l'Olympia
2003: In Search of Momentum
2005: After Fajr
2008: It's Magic
2008: Poinciana – One Night Only
2009: A Quiet Time
2012: Blue Moon (Jazzbook Records )
2013: Saturday Morning
As sideman
With Ray Brown
Some of My Best Friends Are...The Piano Players (Telarc, 1994)
With Shirley Horn
May the Music Never End (Verve, 2003)
Compilations
1967: Standard Eyes (Cadet)
1972: Inspiration (Cadet)
1974: Re-evaluations: The Impulse! Years (Impulse!)
1980: The Best of Ahmad Jamal
1998: Ahmad Jamal 1956–66 Recordings
1998: Cross Country Tour 1958–1961
2005: The Legendary Okeh & Epic Recordings (1951–1955) (Columbia Legacy)
2007: Complete Live at the Pershing Lounge 1958 (Gambit)
2007: Complete Live at the Spotlight Club 1958 (Gambit)

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