While touring in Detroit, where there was a sizable Muslim community in the s and s, he became interested in Islam and Islamic culture. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in He says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition.
He made his first records in 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 —52 , Richard Davis —54 , and Israel Crosby from 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.
The trio's sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in , and the group worked as the 'House Trio' at Chicago's Pershing Hotel. Jamal's recording of the well known song 'Poinciana' was first released on this album. Perhaps Jamal's most famous recording and undoubtedly the one that brought him vast popularity in the late s and into the s jazz age, At the Pershing was recorded at the Pershing Hotel in Chicago in 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! Jazz musicians and listeners alike found inspiration in the 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, [14] according to reviewer John Morthland. After the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me , Jamal's music grew in popularity throughout the s, and he attracted media coverage for his investment decisions pertaining to his 'rising fortune'.
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. In , Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions , in Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from to He also joined forces with Fournier again, but only for about a year and drummer Frank Gant —76 , among others.
Until , he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the s, he played electric piano as well; one such recording was an instrumental recording of 'Suicide is Painless,' the theme song from the film MASH , which was released on a reissue of the film's soundtrack album, replacing the original vocal version of the song by The Mash. It was rumored that the Rhodes piano was a gift from someone in Switzerland.
He continued to play throughout the s and s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar.
In , Jamal sued critic Leonard Feather for using his former name in a publication. Now in his eighties, Ahmad Jamal has continued to make numerous tours and recordings. Trained in both traditional jazz 'American classical music', as he prefers to call it [6] 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'. 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.
Speaking about Jamal, A. 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. 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, 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. My favourite song off the record is ''Pastures''.
Oh and ''Swahililand'' I remember when Ahmad Jamal turned my reality upside down. I stayed up all night listening to this, The Awakening, and of course the famous Perishing recordings.
Post a Comment. I really like this album. It's piano-driven jazz, but not without its share of bass and drum bits too. And strings! Very nice strings here and there. It's far from being considered a jazz classic or anything like that, although Jamal is well know enough, I just like it.
Doing that created some strong attachment to this album for me, so that's probably why it's here. You might recognize part of the second song," Pastures" from somewhere.
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