Ahmad Jamal Trio - Ahmad Jamal At The Pershing (1975 Japanese Cadet Vinyl LP Mono)

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Ahmad Jamal Trio - Ahmad Jamal At The Pershing | Vinyl LP Mono - 1975 Japanese Cadet Reissue (MJ-1006M, Victor Musical Industries)

When Down Beat reviewed this album in 1958 they dismissively called it "cocktail music." Within months it was the number one jazz bestseller in America. The gap between the critical response and the public reaction tells you something about what Jamal was doing. He was not playing bebop. He was not filling every bar with notes. He was leaving space, sometimes long stretches of it, where Crosby's bass and Fournier's drums carried the rhythm alone before Jamal re-entered with a phrase placed so precisely it changed the weight of everything around it. Miles Davis heard it immediately. He wrote later that Jamal "knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement, and the way he phrases notes and chords and passages." Davis had Red Garland adopt Jamal-influenced voicings. The influence runs through Wynton Kelly, Herbie Hancock and Bill Evans and forward to Jason Moran and Robert Glasper. Stanley Crouch called Jamal second in importance only to Charlie Parker in the development of jazz after 1945. None of the eight tracks here are Jamal originals. They're all standards and show tunes: Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody'n You." What matters is what the trio does with them.

Jamal approached Leonard Chess at his office on South Michigan Avenue and told him he wanted to record on location at the Pershing. He had been the trio's artist in residence at the lounge for weeks and had developed arrangements that he didn't want to lose. "I'm not going to play it anymore, perform it anymore until we record it, because I'm afraid someone's going to take the idea and run with it," Jamal later said of "Poinciana" specifically. Fournier, a New Orleans drummer whose brush work and rhythmic instincts were as important to the album's sound as Jamal's piano, locks into a Latin groove on the piece that gives it a physical pull the other tracks don't attempt. Israel Crosby's bass anchors the session with a dark, firm tone that complements Jamal's lightness. 

This is the 1975 Japanese mono reissue on Cadet MJ-1006M, number 6 in the Cadet Jazz 20 series, manufactured by Victor Musical Industries.