A week ago yesterday, the jazz world—the music world—the world—lost one of its great artists. Pianist Ahmad Jamal broke onto the American jazz scene in the 1950s and arrested listeners’ attention with his innovative style. In a time when soloists were putting in as many notes as they could, Jamal played sparsely. He left room for space.
Critic Ted Gioia said that “nobody had used space and silence so effectively before.” Jamal “could bring the proceedings down to a whisper without losing any sense of swing or forward propulsion.” “The rules of improvised music were different after he appeared on the scene.”
Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones on July 2, 1930 in Pittsburgh, where his dad worked in the steel mills and his mom was a domestic worker. Once he began taking piano lessons at age 7, his favorite pieces were by French modernists like Ravel and Debussy, composers often referred to as impressionists. By the time he was in high school, he was playing in Pittsburgh night clubs. He joined the musician’s union when he was only 14. He moved to Chicago in 1950, converted to Islam, and changed his name. His conversion, he later said, brought him peace of mind as far as race was concerned and that peace then worked its way into how he played his music.
He recorded his breakthrough album At the Pershing in the lounge at Chicago’s black-owned Pershing Hotel in January, 1958. It became a smash hit staying on the Billboard charts for over more than two years. It’s widely acknowledged to be among the core elements of any jazz collection. (Just as an aside—an admission—I didn’t have the album until last Sunday. There’s always something new to discover)
Miles Davis, who recorded his revolutionary album Kind of Blue—an album noted for its free styles and wide-open arrangements—a year later, once said, “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.” One reviewer years later described his playing as being a blend of “turbulent flourishes, great rumblings and sudden pools of serenity”
“I’m still evolving, whenever I sit down at the piano,” he said last fall. “I still come up with some fresh ideas.” Over the course of his career, he released more than 60 albums. Some of his greatest awards included a 1994 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2017, and induction into France’s Order of Arts and Letters.
“The reward of being a musician is not money,” Jamal once said. “It’s the wonderful, indescribable feeling of knowing you’re performing at your highest level. It’s a spiritual feeling. You can always make money. But you can’t always latch onto your own spirit.” Ahmad Jamal was 92.