Ahmad Jamal Trio - 2010 - The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions 1956-62

Ahmad Jamal Trio

2010 

The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions 1956-62

101. Volga Boatman

102. On Green Dolphin Street

103. How About You

104. I Just Can't See For Lookin'

105. Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year

106. Beat Out One

107. Maryam

108. Easy To Remember

109. Jim Loves Sue

110. Secret Love

111. Taking A Chance On Love

112. Cheek To Cheek

113. It's You Or No One

114. Soft Wind

115. Love

116. Aki And Ukthay

117. Love For Sale

118. That's All

201. But Not For Me

202. Surrey With The Fringe On Top

203. Moonlight In Vermont

204. (Put Another Nickel In) Music! Music!

205. There Is No Greater Love

206. Poinciana

207. Woody 'N' You

208. What's New?

209. Too Late Now

210. All The Things You Are

211. Cherokee

212. It Might As Well Be Spring

213. I'll Remember April

214. My Funny Valentine

215. Gone With The Wind

216. Billy Boy

217. It's You Or No On

218. They Can't Take That Away From Me

219. Poor Butterfly

301. Taboo

302. Should I

303. Stompin' At The Savoy

304. The Girl Next Door

305. I Wish I Knew

306. Cheek To Cheek

307. Autumn In New York

308. Secret Love

309. Squatty Roo

310. That's All

311. This Can't Be Love

312. Autumn Leaves

313. Ahmad's Blues

314. Old Devil Moon

315. Seleritus

316. It Could Happen To You

317. Ivy

318. Tater Pie

401. Let's Fall In Love

402. Aki And Urkthay (Brother And Sister)

403. Don't Know What Love Is

404. I Didn't Know What Time It Was

405. So Beats My Heart For You

406. Gal In Calico

407. Our Delight

408. Too Late Now

409. The Night Has A Thousand Eyes

410. Little Old Lady

411. For All We Know

412. Pavanne

413. Excerpts From The Blues

414. Easy To Love

415. Time On My Hands

416. Raincheck

417. I'll Never Stop Loving You

418. Speak Low

419. Rhumba No. 2

501. Comme Ci, Comme Ça

502. Ivy

503. Never Never Land

504. Tangerine

505. Ahmad's Blues

506. Seleritus

507. I Like To Recognize The Tune

508. I'm Alone WIth You

509. Sophisticated Gentleman

510. Ahmad's Waltz

511. Valentina

512. Yesterdays

513. Tempo For Two

514. Hallelujah

515. It's A Wonderful World

516. Baia

517. You Came A Long Way From St. Louis

518. Lover Man

519. Who Cares?

601. I'm Old Fashioned

602. We Kiss In A Shadow

603. Chi-Town (A.K.A. Gem)

604. We Kiss In A Shadow

605. Sweet And Lovely

606. The Party's Over

607. Love For Sale

608. Snowfall

609. Broadway

610. Willow Weep For Me

611. Autumn Leaves

612. Isn't It Romantic

613. The Breeze And I

701. Time On My Hands

702. Angel Eyes

703. You Go To My Head

704. Star Eyes

705. All Of You

706. You're Blasé

707. What Is This Thing Called Love?

708. Poinciana

709. We Kiss In A Shadow (Alt. Tk.)

710. Stella By Starlight

711. The Lady Is A Tramp

801. I'll Take Romance / My Funny Valentine

802. Like Someone In Love

803. Falling In Love With Love

804. The Best Thing For You

805. April In Paris

806. The Second Time Around

807. We Live In Two Different Worlds

808. NIght Mist Blues

809. Darn That Dream

810. On Green Dolphin Street

901. Like Someone In Love (Alt. Tk.)

902. The Second Time Around (Alt. Tk.)

903. Angel Eyes

904. Alone Together / Love Walked In

905. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

906. I'm Old Fashioned

907. We Kiss In A Shadow

908. The Second Time Around (Alt. Tk.)

909. Like Someone In Love (Alt. Tk.)

Bass – Israel Crosby

Drums – Vernel Fournier (tracks: 1-10 to 9-09)

Drums – Walter Perkins (tracks: 1-01 to 1-09)

Piano – Ahmad Jamal

Tracks 1-01 to 1-03, 1-05 to 1-09 rec. Universal Recording, Chicago, 27/9/1956

Track 1-04 rec. Universal Recording, Chicago, 4/10/1956

Tracks 1-10 to 1-18 rec. Chicago 30/6/1958

Tracks 2-01 to 2-19 rec. Pershing Lounge, Chicago, 16-17/1/1958

Tracks 3-01 to 4-09 rec. Spotlight Club, Washington DC 5-6/9/1958

Tracks 4-10 to 4-19 rec. Ter-Mar Recording Studios, Chicago 20-21/1/1960

Tracks 5-01 to 5-09 rec. Nola's Penthouse, NYC 27-28/2/1959

Tracks 5-10 to 5-10 rec. Ter-Mar Recording Studios 15-16/8/1960

Tracks 6-01 to 6-03 rec. Ter-Mar Recording Studios 5/6/1961

Tracks 6-04 to 7-11 rec. Ahmad Jama's Alhambra, Chicago 6/1961

Tracks 8-01 to 9-09 rec. The Blackhawk, San Francisco 31/1-1/2/1962

Edition number stamped on the outside back cover of the liner notes booklet included inside the box set.

Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1930. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he described as having greatly influenced him. His Pittsburgh roots remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a "coming great" by the pianist Art Tatum. When asked about his practice habits by a critic from The New York Times, Jamal commented that, "I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time."

Jamal began touring with George Hudson's Orchestra after graduating from George Westinghouse High School in 1948. He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which disbanded when violinist Joe Kennedy Jr. left. In 1950 he moved to Chicago, performing intermittently with local musicians Von Freeman and Claude McLin, and solo at the Palm Tavern, occasionally joined by drummer Ike Day.

Born to Baptist parents, Jamal became interested in Islam and Islamic culture in Detroit, where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s.He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950. In an interview with The New York Times a few years later, he said his decision to change his name stemmed from a desire to "re-establish my original name." Shortly after his conversion to Islam, he explained to The New York Times that he "says Muslim prayers five times a day and arises in time to say his first prayers at 5 am. He says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition."

Jamal made his first records in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings[18] (which would later also be called the Ahmad Jamal Trio, although Jamal himself preferred not to use the term "trio"): the other members were guitarist Ray Crawford and a bassist, at different times Eddie Calhoun (1950–52), Richard Davis (1953–54), and Israel Crosby (from 1954). The Three Strings arranged an extended engagement at Chicago's Blue Note, but leapt to fame after performing at the Embers in New York City where John Hammond saw the band play and signed them to Okeh Records. 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.Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–55) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup.

The trio's sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in 1957, and the group worked as the "house trio" at Chicago's Pershing Hotel. The trio released the live album, At the Pershing: But Not for Me, which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. Jamal's recording of the well-known song "Poinciana" was first released on this album.

Perhaps Jamal's most famous recording, At the Pershing, was recorded at the Pershing Hotel in Chicago in 1958; it brought him popularity in the late 1950s and into the 1960s jazz age. 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! and Jamal's arrangement of the jazz standard "Poinciana". 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, ccording to reviewer John Morthland. The New York Times contributor Ben Ratliff said, in a review of the album, "If you're looking for an argument that pleasurable mainstream art can assume radical status at the same time, Jamal is your guide."

fter the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me, Jamal's music grew in popularity throughout the 1950s, and he attracted media coverage for his investment decisions pertaining to his "rising fortune". In 1959, he took a tour of North Africa to explore investment options in Africa. Jamal, who was 29 at the time, said he had a curiosity about the homeland of his ancestors, highly influenced y 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." Upon his return to the U.S. after a tour of North Africa, the financial success of Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me allowed Jamal to open a restaurant and club called The Alhambra in Chicago, which lasted barely one year. In 1962, The Three Strings disbanded and Jamal recorded Macanudo with a full orchestra. He then took a brief hiatus from performing.

In 1964, Jamal resumed performing after moving to New York, and started a residency at the Village Gate nightclub. He recorded a new album, Extensions, with bassist Jamil S. Nasser in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play together from 1964 to 1972.He also joined forces with Fournier (again, 1965–1966) and drummer Frank Gant (1966–77), among others. Until 1970, he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the 1970s, he played electric piano as well; one such recording was an instrumental recording of "Suicide is Painless," the theme song from the 1970 film MASH, which was released on a 1973 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 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year's Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., from 1979 through the 1990s.

In his 80s, Jamal continued to make numerous tours and recordings, including albums such as Saturday Morning (2013), the CD/DVD release Ahmad Jamal Featuring Yusef Lateef Live at L'Olympia (2014), Marseille (2017), and Ballades (2019), featuring mostly solo piano.Jamal was the main mentor of jazz piano virtuosa Hiromi Uehara, known as Hiromi. In 1986, Jamal sued critic Leonard Feather for using his former name in a publication.

Trained in both traditional jazz ("American classical music", as he preferred to call it) and European classical style, Jamal was praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over the course of 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 between notes in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the fast-paced bebop style.

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". Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius, offered a very different reaction to Jamal's music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Parker.His unique musical style stemmed from many individual characteristics, including his use of orchestral effects and his ability to control the beat of songs. 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", wrote Crouch, "Jamal invented a group sound that had all the surprise and dynamic variation of an imaginatively ordered big band." Jamal explored the texture of riffs, timbres, and phrases rather than the quantity or speed of notes in any given improvisation. Speaking about Jamal, A. B. 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." These (at the time) unconventional techniques that Jamal gleaned from both traditional classical and contemporary jazz musicians helped pave the way for later jazz greats like Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Cedar Walton, Ethan Iverson, and Bill Charlap.

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". Miles used to send his crew to concerts of Jamal, so they could learn to play like Miles wanted it. Jamals contrasts, to craft melodies that included strong and mild tones, fast and slow rhythms was what Miles had impressed. Jamal characterized what he thought Davis admired about his music as: "my discipline as opposed to my space." Jamal and Davis became friends in the 1950s, and Davis continued to support Jamal as a fellow musician, often playing versions of Jamal's own songs ("Ahmad's Blues", "New Rhumba") until he died.

Jamal, speaking about his own work, said, "I like doing ballads. They're hard to play. It takes years of living, really, to read them properly." From an early age, Jamal developed an appreciation for the lyrics of the songs he learned: "I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad. All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, 'Why did you stop, Ben?' He said, 'I forgot the lyrics.' Jamal attributed the variety in his musical taste to the fact that he grew up in several eras: the big band era, the bebop years, and the electronic age.[48] He said his style evolved from drawing on the techniques and music produced in these three eras. In 1985, Jamal agreed to do an interview and recording session with his fellow jazz pianist, Marian McPartland on her NPR show Piano Jazz. Jamal, who said he rarely would play "But Not For Me" due to its popularity after his 1958 recording, played an improvised version of the tune – though only after noting that he moved on to making ninety percent of his repertoire his own compositions. He said that when he grew in popularity from the Live at the Pershing album, he was severely criticized afterwards for not playing any of his own compositions.

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 tenor saxophone (George Coleman) and a violin. A jazz fan interviewed by Down Beat magazine about Jamal in 2010 described his development as "more aggressive and improvisational these days. The word I used to use is avant garde; that might not be right. Whatever you call it, the way he plays is the essence of what jazz is."

Saxophonist Ted Nash described his experience with Jamal's style in an interview with Down Beat magazine: "The way he comped wasn't the generic way that lots of pianists play with chords in the middle of the keyboard, just filling things up. He gave lots of single line responses. He'd come back and throw things out at you, directly from what you played. It was really interesting because it made you stop, and allowed him to respond, and then you felt like playing something else – that's something I don't feel with a lot of piano players. It's really quite engaging. I guess that's another reason people focus in on him. He makes them hone in."

Jamal recorded with the voices of the Howard A. Roberts Chorale on The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful and Cry Young; with vibraphonist Gary Burton on In Concert; with brass, reeds, and strings celebrating his hometown of Pittsburgh; with The Assai Quartet; and with tenor saxophonist George Coleman on the album The Essence Part One.

"When I listen to these records now... when I listen to the Pershing, it's phenomenal, I must say. What they were doing, phenomenal, the lines and the purity. It's so pure ... It was sheer joy working with these two individuals. Master musicians," writes pianist/bandleader Ahmad Jamal in the liner notes to this collection.

If there ever was a subject worthy of a Mosaic box set, Jamal is it. For six decades, he has been, for several reasons, one of the most enduring and identifiable artists in jazz, or, as he prefers to describe it, "American classic music." First, there is his sound: a breathtaking amalgam of Erroll Garner's pithy touch, Nat "King" Cole's intricate horn-like, pre-bop lines, and Art Tatum's Mephistophelean technique. Second, Jamal conveys his signature sound through his inventive, crystalline re-arrangements of show tunes, consisting of his intelligent, ingenious interludes, orchestral chord voicings and asymmetrical tempo changes (communicated on stage with mysterious hand signals). Those attributes contributed to the reason third for Jamal's immortality: his 1958 version of the obscure Broadway tune "

All of those aforementioned attributes are highlighted in this terrific and long overdue nine-CD box set, culled from 13 albums, brilliantly produced by Michael Cuscuna, with ebullient liner notes from drummer Kenny Washington - Vocals—who played with Jamal—that chronicle Jamal's trademarked trio with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier, mostly on live club dates and some studio records, with unreleased tracks and alternate takes. To set the stage, it's important to know how Jamal arrived in Chicago; the scene of his greatest musical triumphs.

Born in 1930 in Pittsburgh, Jamal was a child prodigy that Art Tatum prophesized would be a "coming great." By the time he was 11 years old, he was already a professional musician, and he received an exceptional musical education that included the classics: European and African-American, from composer Franz Liszt, Tatum and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie to the blues. Discovered by bandleader George Hudson during his senior year at Westinghouse High, he traveled with Hudson to Atlantic City and the Midwest, played with an R&B group The Caldwells and ended up in Chicago. He formed the Four Strings, a drumless quartet consisting of piano, bass, violin and guitar. He later switched from a foursome to a trio sans violin, and recorded for the Parrot and Epic labels before signing with the Argo label in 1955, when he released his last drumless trio recording, Chamber Music of the New Jazz, with guitarist Ray Crawford and Israel Crosby. Another Chicago treasure, Crosby previously played with clarinetist Benny Goodman, and is one of the music's most criminally underrated musicians, whose impeccable intonation and sure-footed, rock-steady basslines were indispensable to the Jamal sound.

Jamal eventually added the trap drums in place of the guitar. The first eight tracks on the first CD are from Jamal's first drum-trio studio Argo album, Count 'Em 88, with Walter Perkins, a capable local drummer. Perkins transferred the conga rhythms that the guitarist in the Four Strings played to the drums, as evidenced by the bouncy take on the Russian folksong "Volga Boatman," and a pedal point-pulsed "Green Dolphin Street," along with two early original compositions , the 4/4 numbers "Beat Out One," "Aki and Ukthay (Brother and Sister)" and "Jim Love Sue," along with the wistful, ivory tickled ballad dedicated to his first wife, "Maryam."

Everything that we have come to associate with Jamal—what Washington writes in the liner notes as "Jamalisms"—is heard here: his near impossible arpeggios, tricky, unexpected bursts of piano prowess, his penchant for dancing, Latin-style, brush- beats, grooving, ostinato basslines, and lush dynamics. But with all of those "Jamalisms" in place, it was addition of the New Orleans Creole Vernel Fournier, who replaced Perkins, that rocketed the Jamal trio into the orbit of stardom. Fournier's unique ability to bridge Crescent City cadences with Afro-Latin rhythms set the standard for all drummers who came after him in the Jamal triad, including his Big Easy homeboys Idris Muhammad and Herlin Riley, which explains the dynamic difference on the music on the next disc.

Disc two contains the treasure of the entire box set. Recorded in a Black South Side lounge called the Pershing, in 1958, the immortal sides from this historic date came to be known as the album But Not for Me: Ahmad Jamal Live at the Pershing. Simply put, this is arguably the greatest live jazz recording ever made. The superb, digital remastering puts you right next Jamal's percolating keyboard, where you can hear and almost feel him tickling those ivories, and the finger-snapping, vocal African-American clientele adds to the recorded magic. Jamal, Crosby, and Fournier are in superb form; in perfect, swinging sympatico. The mid-tempo title track grooves with the same kind of cool intensity of a Modern Jazz Quartet treatment, with what Washington describes as a "businessman's bounce tempo,"

But of course, its Jamal's complete reimaging of the show tune "Poinciana" that steals the show. Jamal proves on this selection why he deserves to also be listed as one of jazz's greatest arrangers. Buoyed by Fournier's funky and finessed, Afro-Carib/second line pulsations, and Crosby's "hipnotic" lines, he explores, extends and exploits the composition's rhythmic, melodic and harmonic possibilities in cool, compelling and calculated chorus after chorus, much in the same way Duke Ellington did on his equally stupendous, masterpiece live cut, "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," recorded a couple of years earlier. What comes through on this session, and on the second volume recorded at the Pershing in June of that same year,

If Jamal's career had stopped at that recording, his place in jazz would have been assured. But as the rest of the tracks on this box set show, Jamal and company built on the success of But Not for Me with sustained artistry and creativity. Disc three features tracks recorded at Washington, DC's Spotlite Club, another African-American venue. By now, Jamal and his triad are stars, and they do not disappoint. Dig the 4/4, soulful "Ahmad Blues" (contrast this track with the big-band version from a 1959 TV clip from the Robert Herridge Theater, currently running on YouTube), along with "Seleritus," a plaintive, walking ballad dedicated to a young boy Jamal knew that was released as a single; a rousing rendition of the swing-era classic 'Stompin' at the Savoy" (with a Jamalian quote of the "

Disc four's selections range from 1959 to 1961, and it includes more tracks from the Spotlite gig, including the Caribbean-cadenced "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," which later become associated with saxophonist John Coltrane, and the bop-era chestnut "Our Delight," based on Tadd Dameron's 1946 arrangement for Dizzy Gillespie's big band, and Jamal's second studio session, Happy Moods, which featured a number of tracks in the key of C, of ​​all things. Jamal's inventive take at the classical composer Morton Gould's "Pavanne," a movement taken from his larger work, American Symphonette, No. 2, is the album's most interesting track. It's a bouncy, upbeat number, and the fun begins on the bridge, where the riff-like melody sounds very similar to Coltrane's "Impressions,"

Disc five contains Listen to the Ahmad Jamal Quintet, a studio date with former sidemen guitarist Ray Crawford and violinist/arranger and Pittsburgh partner Joe Kennedy. Jamal and company deliver a Chicago-meets-Rio take of Ary Barroso's sambafied, Brazilian standard "Baia," which is still in Jamal's book. Jamal at the Penthouse—a trio-plus-strings project arranged by Kennedy—shows what Jamal's orchestral/trio approach sounds like backed by a real pizzicato-pulsed, string orchestra that featured the legendary jazz/classical violinist Harry Lookofsky, especially on the bouncy take on 'Ivy,' Bennett's harmonically advanced, Billy Strayhorn-like ballad "Sophisticated Gentleman."

Discs six and seven contains tracks from Ahmad Jamal's Alhambra, another live Chicago date, recorded at Jamal's elegant, elaborate and short-lived restaurant/nightclub in 1961. With better recording fidelity, the inventions and dimensions of Jamal's triad dance and trance with greater clarity , especially on the Crescent City-cadenced "Love For Sale," fueled by Fournier's Negroidally-nuanced, Louisiana drumming, the after-hours embered "Willow Weep for Me," an anthemic rendition of "Broadway" and a svelte, spare version of "Poinciana." Three previously unreleased studio selections that Jamal refused to release have finally seen the light of day. The medium-tempo swinger "Chi-Town" (AKA "Gem") was written by bassist Bill Lee (Spike's father),

On the last two discs you can hear where Jamal left his trio heart in San Francisco's famous Blackhawk club, in 1962; his last live date with Fournier and Crosby. And what a way to go out: By this time, the trio's rapport is as good as telepathic, as evidenced by the haunting version of Claude Thornhill's pre-Birth of the Cool classic "Snowfall," and a funkier version of "Poinciana," that ironically would not have seen recorded because the engineer forgot to turn off the tape recorder when Jamal played old material at live gigs (a technique then often used for saving tape). That year, Crosby and Fournier would leave Jamal to play with pianist George Shearing (though Fournier would occasionally play with Jamal in subsequent years). Crosby would die unexpectedly that same year and Jamal would move to New York,

In perfect complement to the music, kudos must also be given for the extremely rare photos, mostly from Jamal's private collection, that show him as a precocious little lad who seemed to know that he would take the world by storm. Kenny Washington's extensive interview with Jamal offers the most comprehensive and detailed biographical information on the pianist ever assembled for a record release. Jamal talks in detail to Washington about how the industrial inner city of Pittsburgh—which gave birth musical to a whole host of stars—from Billy Strayhorn, drummers Art Blakey and Kenny Clarke and saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, to guitarist George Benson and pianist Mary Lou Williams —and about the incredible music education he received from teachers like Mary Cardwell Dawson, who created the first African-American company,

This project—years in the making, as producer Michael Cuscuna reckons in the liner notes—was a labor love that lays out in linear detail the early ascent of the magnificent arc of the eternal artistry of Ahmad Jamal, now into his astonishing eighth decade. And this set should—once and for all—reveal what many musicians have known for years: that Vernel Fournier and Israel Crosby are two of the finest drummers and bassists of all time.

There’s nothing in jazz quite as beautiful or enchanting as the crystalline sound of Ahmad Jamal’s piano. Characterised by delicate, glistening filigrees of melody underpinned by subtly nuanced chords, Jamal brought a new sensibility and approach to jazz piano playing when he started recording in the 1950s. Back then, Jamal – who was originally born Fritz Jones but changed his name when he adopted the Islamic faith in 1952 – cast a spell on many musicians, including Miles Davis, who claimed that the Pittsburgh-born pianist exerted a powerful influence on his own musical style, especially in regard to his use of space. Indeed, Miles frequently borrowed tunes and ideas from Jamal’s’ repertoire and even famously covered the pianist’s ‘New Rhumba’ on his classic 1957 Gil Evans-arranged LP, ‘Miles Ahead.’ Jamal’s original version appeared on the Argo LP, ‘Chamber Music Of The Jazz’ in 1955, when the pianist led a drum-less trio that included Ray Crawford on guitar. In 1956, though, Jamal, brought in a drummer (Walter Perkins, who was replaced after one LP by the distinctive Vernel Fournier), dropped the guitar and helped establish the piano/bass/drums line up as the standard configuration for the jazz trio.

Truly fabulous box set that focuses on the Jamal trio’s oeuvre for Argo, the jazz imprint of Chicago’s legendary Chess label. Comprising 129 tracks distributed over 9 CDs, it’s a colossal package (it’s also been five years in the making) and as well as including all twelve of Jamal’s Argo albums recorded during the period 1956-1962, it includes a raft of previously unreleased tracks (23 in all). The set reaffirms what an extraordinarily gifted pianist Jamal is (he’s still alive – he was 70 earlier this year). His touch here is sublime and he manages to marry delicacy and elegance with precision and still communicate a sense of emotional depth. There are countless highlights here, among them ‘Volga Boatman’ – Jamal’s imaginative arrangement of a Russian folk song -‘Poinciana’ (a live version of the tune taken from the best selling album ‘But For Me’ recorded at Chicago’s Pershing Lounge), and ‘Surrey With The Fringe On Top.’ Even though there are a few original tunes scattered throughout the album (like the classic ‘Ahmad’s Blues’) what’s most striking is Jamal’s facility to take a piece written by someone else and transform it completely by filtering it though his own musical personality.

In terms of newly-discovered material, many are live cuts but there are also a clutch of rare studio cuts – including Cole Porter’s ‘Love For Sale’ and a nicely grooving rendition of Irving Berlin’s ‘Cheek To Cheek,’ the latter illustrating Jamal’s penchant for extreme dynamics, with the music switching from fortissimo to pianissimo at the drop of a hat. As with all Mosaic box sets, the Jamal set is a strictly limited edition item (only 5,000 will be manufactured) and is packaged in an LP-sized box complete with a large booklet packed with the kind of esoteric discographical minutiae that will please jazz anoraks. The best thing about the booklet, though, is Kenny Washington’s lengthy interview with Ahmad Jamal, who got involved in the project by providing some rare photos and giving his approval to the unreleased material.