MusicMakers
The Return Of a Real Jazz Master
Ahmad Jamal has received accolades from the National Endowment for the Arts and, more recently, France.
(2003 Photo By Cheung Ching-ming)
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Friday, December 28, 2007
If the New Year is approaching, Ahmad Jamal must be at Blues Alley.
Or vice versa: The legendary jazz pianist has been playing in the new year at the Georgetown club since 1980.
"The marvelous thing about it is how many years I did it with Keter," Jamal says, referring to late Washington icon Keter Betts, "one of the great, extraordinary bassists, really. It was always a treat getting together with Keter because he always brought in the new year in great style. He is missed every time I come down there."
Betts, who died in 2005, was Jamal's New Year's Eve helpmate for more than 20 years and will surely be there in spirit with the Keter Betts Memorial Band, sharing the festivities with Jamal's long-lived ensemble, drummer Idris Muhammad and bassist James Cammack, with guest percussionist Manolo Badrena. They've been ensconced at Blues Alley since Wednesday.
"Call it a paid vacation," Jamal says by phone from a concert stop in California. "In Georgetown, I walk to work from the hotel -- a hop, skip and jump at the most -- and the restaurants in the area are always great. What can I tell you? It gets better and better."
Much the same could be said about the internationally renowned Jamal, named an American Jazz Master in 1994 by the National Endowment for the Arts. This June, he was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters by the French culture minister.
Not that anyone was waiting for the NEA's seal of approval or France's approbation: Jamal has long been recognized as a major influence by peers and progeny alike. One of the latter, trumpeter Miles Davis, wrote in his autobiography that Jamal "knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement, and the way he phrased notes and passages." Jamal also altered the concept of what a piano trio can be, liberating the bass and drum from strict rhythm-keeping and making them equal front-line participants. Critic Stanley Crouch calls Jamal as important as Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk in shaping the sound of modern jazz.
Obviously, practice and performance have paid off for Jamal, who started playing piano three years into the 77 that he has lived so far. That's when an uncle played a piano at the family home in Pittsburgh and teasingly challenged the youngster to duplicate what he'd just heard. Jamal, who'd never touched a keyboard, sat down and did just that. His hands may have been small back then, but obviously his ears were already big.
At 7, Jamal began classical studies, and growing up, he was particularly drawn to the power of Hungarian-born composer and pianist Franz Liszt and French composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, who made an art form out of the space between notes -- as Jamal would years later. Even now, Jamal prefers to call jazz "American classical music."
At Pittsburgh's George Westinghouse High School, the piano rolls included Erroll Garner, Mary Lou Williams and Dodo Marmarosa. "That's amazing, isn't it?" asks Jamal, adding that Garner "was my major, major influence and certainly inspired me to do what I'm doing today."
Another key inspiration was Art Tatum, who heard the youngster and hailed him as "a coming great." (Jamal was all of 11 at the time.) Soon after, Jamal was playing in school orchestras by day and with jazz combos and big bands at clubs and dance halls by night. "I was doing my math and algebra homework on the breaks and going to school the next morning," Jamal recalls of the opportunity to interact with older musicians. "And you strived to be better than those teaching you -- that's what we were taught."
Jamal recorded his first album, "Ahmad's Blues," in 1951, though success wouldn't arrive until 1958's "But Not for Me." The live release featured "Poinciana," a surprise crossover hit on the R&B charts and jukeboxes. "But Not for Me" spent more than two years on the Billboard charts (unheard of in jazz) and became the first jazz LP to sell a million copies.
There have been 70 more albums, and through the decades, Jamal's sound has remained adventurous yet accessible, with masterful uses of silence and space. It's a perpetually shifting canvas of rhythmic invention and subtle tonal colors, and you sense that the same things that drove Jamal for a half-century drive him today: curiosity, challenge, adventure and the sound of surprise.
"Every day it's something new, every day it's a learning experience -- every single day," says Jamal, refusing to consider, much less rest on, his laurels.
"My lifestyle -- perpetual motion -- dictates otherwise," he says with a laugh.
Ahmad Jamal Appearing through Sunday at Blues Alley, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Shows start at 8 and 10. Appearing Monday with the Keter Betts Memorial Band at Blues Alley. Shows start at 6:30 and 10. Tickets:$30 plus $10 minimum purchase and $2.50 surcharge per person. Available at the club, http:/
