Ahmad Jamal - Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings the Complete Okeh, Parrot & Epic Sessions 1951-1955 (2022)

Ahmad Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1930. He was a child prodigy. Fritz, as he was known, started playing the piano at the age of three, “…and I've been playing ever since,” he recalled. He began formal classical training at the age of seven and soon was immersed in the influence of various great jazz pianists —especially his idol Erroll Garner. “Everyone in Pittsburgh knew that young Fritz was a piano genius in the late 1940s, when he used to play in the wee hours of the morning in the dingy upstairs lounge of Musicians Local 471,” Harold L. Keith wrote in his column in early 1959 for the weekly Pittsburgh Courier, “...but it seemed that Fritz, like somany others, was destined to remain in the shadows...”

After his professional beginnings in Pittsburgh, he moved to Chicago in 1949, where he fell on hard times, waiting for his union card to be transferred from Pittsburgh to Chicago Musicians Union Local 208. When he finally got it, it would be some time before he landed a good job for the trio he wanted to form. Meanwhile, he would play solo and in various groups until May 1951, when he formed the Fritz Jones trio. Soon after, Fritz became Ahmad Jamal. His drum-less group, Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings, was immediately noted for its disciplined precision. Its dynamism and subtle freshness were hallmarks, and both were evident in great amounts. Legendary producer and writer John Hammond brought the pianist national notoriety through a laudatory article in Down Beat in July 1952. High praise was also offered by musicians, especially Miles Davis, who did not hesitate to say that Jamal was one of his biggest influences.

In this 2-CD set, we can listen to Jamal's remarkable first recordings for the Okeh, Parrot and Epic labels, when his team mates were Ray Crawford on guitar, and successively three great bass players: Eddie Calhoun, Richard Davis, and Israel Crosby. Let's enjoy the captivating and original sound of Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings.

—Jordi Pujol