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The trio released the live album, At the Pershing: But Not for Me, which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. 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. Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–55) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup. 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. 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. He made his first records in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings (which would later also be called the Ahmad Jamal Trio, although Jamal himself prefers 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). He says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition." 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 converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950. While touring in Detroit, where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s, he became interested in Islam and Islamic culture. īorn to Baptist parents, Jamal discovered Islam in his early 20s.
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In 1950 he moved to Chicago and performed intermittently with local musicians Von Freeman and Claude McLin, and solo at the Palm Tavern, occasionally joined by drummer Ike Day. He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which disbanded when violinist Joe Kennedy Jr. Jamal began touring with George Hudson's Orchestra after graduating from George Westinghouse High School in 1948. I think about music all the time." Beginnings External mediaĪhmad Jamal On Piano Jazz, August 29, 2008, Piano Jazz Įric in The Evening Ahmad Jamal, interview, January 18, 1989, Open Vault at WGBH Īhmad Jamal - Interview - "American Classical Music", Apunderyourskindvd I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. 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. 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. His Pittsburgh roots have 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 began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. 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 was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1930.