RIP - Ahmad Jamal

Back in high school, I played saxophone in my high school jazz band. It was a blast, learning so much about the great musicians in the genre. Playing their songs. It also allowed me the opportunity to do a deep dive into my dad’s record collection. There I would discover John Coltrane and Glenn Miller. Wes Montgomery and The Modern Jazz Quartet.

My dad also had an album by Ahmad Jamal. As basic an album cover as there ever was, but the music inside, wasn’t basic. It was innovative, artistic and played off of the legends and innovators that came before him. I would put that record on, lay down on the couch and be transformed to another place. And even though I didn't play piano, it was magical.

Ahmad Jamal died recently at the age of 92.

Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1930 and began playing piano at the age of three. He later immersed himself in the influence of such jazz greats at Erroll Garner, Mary Lou Williams and Billy Strayhorn.

Jamal made his first records in 1951 as a trio (which he stuck with most of his recording career). Later in the 1950s, Jamal and crew performed one of his most famous recordings, At the Pershing: But Not For Me, a live album recorded at Chicago’s Pershing Hotel. It stayed on the charts for 108 weeks.

Jamal was trained in both traditional jazz and European classical style. He followed greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he gradually changed his style to reflect more on spacing between notes instead of the faster paced bebop style - “cool jazz” is what many coined it.

While many critics and fans would see Jamal as simply a lounge pianist, it was people like Stanley Crouch who claimed that like Thelonious Monk, Ahmad Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and was vital to the development of jazz after 1945. Miles Davis was also wildly influenced by Jamal, sometimes sending his band to concerts by Jamal so they would learn to play like Miles wanted.

In his autobiography, Davis wrote that Jamal “knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement and the way he phrased notes and chords and passages.”

In his later years, Jamal embraced the electronic influences affecting the genre of jazz. He also occasionally expanded his usual small ensemble of three to include a saxophone and a violin.

While you should clearly explore his early work, check out the 2003 release, In Search Of, and discover how a 72-year old still brings it on every track, from the delicate to the intense.

His influence reached beyond the bounds of jazz, with his piano riffs sampled by hip-hop artists including Nas and De La Soul. “I’m still evolving whenever I sit down at the piano,” Jamal said in a 2022 interview. “I still come up with some fresh ideas.”

Pianist and curriculum director at the University of Chicago may have put it best when he said this about Jamal: “Innovation in jazz can be subtle. Rather than reaching outward to create an overtly revolutionary sound, Mr. Jamal explored the inner workings of the small ensemble to control, shape and dramatize his music.”