Saw an article in The Guardian today making note of the death of Ahmad Jamal.
Embarking on a professional music career from the age of 14, over seven decades Jamal forged a unique sound that leapt over genre boundaries. Minimalism, classical, modernism, pop: Ahmad was sometimes likened to Thelonious Monk in terms of his ability to innovate and influence other musicians: his piano would be sampled by the likes of De La Soul, Jay-Z, Common and Nas. The trumpeter Miles Davis once said: “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal,” writing in his memoir that his friend had “knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, and the way he phrases notes and chords and passages”.
Jamal performed jazz, which he called “American classical music” all his life, in the house band for Chicago’s Pershing Hotel lounge – a Black-owned favourite of the likes of Sammy Davis Jr and Billie Holiday, and where he recorded his 1958 breakthrough album, Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing: But Not For Me. The album sold 1m copies and remained on the Billboard magazine charts for more than 100 weeks, making Jamal a household name when rock’n’roll was on the up and jazz was beginning to wane.
More at the link, of course. I remember being impressed by his music back in the 1960s, to the extent that my senior yearbook biography noted my interest in "Brubeck, Monk, Previn, and Ahmad Jamal." Then an invasive species of Beatles arrived as I went to college, and I left jazz far behind.
I listened to that video. Nice, although at three to four minutes each, the songs seem too short? Longer but fewer would have let them stretch out a bit? Thanks for sharing that!
ReplyDeleteI ended up listening to a couple more Ahmad Jamal Trio - Emerald live, the Ascension album, that June 1971 video from France. At times I catch myself hearing riffs that sound like I have heard them before - in music played after those AJT releases were made!
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