Pianist Ahmad Jamal passed away two years ago April at the age of 92. During his eight decades as a performing musician, he produced some of the most creative music in jazz, although he would prefer that it be called American classical music. Miles Davis said of Jamal in his 1989 autobiography “[He] knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement, and the way he phrases notes and chords and passages." Miles recorded Jamal's composition New Rhumba on his 1957 album ”Miles Ahead.“

Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones on July 2, 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began playing piano at the age of three when his uncle challenged him to imitate what he was playing, and the youngster actually could. He began piano lessons when he was 7 and studied both jazz and classical piano music. When interviewed by Eugene Holley, Jr. in 2018, Jamal said “I studied Art Tatum, Bach, Beethoven, Count Basie, John Kirby, and Nat Cole. I was studying Liszt. I had to know European and American classical music. My mother was rich in spirit, and she led me to another rich person: my teacher, Mary Cardwell Dawson, who started the first African-American opera company in the country."

By the time he was 14 Ahmad Jamal had begun playing professionally and was lauded by Art Tatum as “a coming great.” In the 1950s he was leading a trio with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier. In 1958 they released an album called “At the Pershing: But Not for Me” that spent an amazing 108 weeks on the Billboard Magazine Top 200 Album Chart. In the early 1960s Jamal took time off from recording, but released the album “The Awakening” in 1969 to much critical praise.

Ahmad Jamal continued to play, record and innovate for another five decades after the release of “The Awakening.” As recently as 2017 his record “Marseille” was receiving similar critical acclaim. His music can also be heard in movie soundtracks like that for “M*A*S*H” and “The Bridges of Madison County.” Jamal was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994.

Here is a link to the title track from Jamal’s 1958 recording “At the Pershing: But Not for Me:”

"BUT NOT FOR ME"