Miles Davis was a great admirer and defender of the pianist Ahmad Jamal, who in the 1950s was not taken seriously by some jazz critics. But the sublime ear of Miles instead recognized a light, exquisite touch, one of varied complexity despite Jamal’s commercial success.
“I loved his lyricism on piano, the way he played, and the spacing he used in the ensemble voicings of his groups,” Miles wrote in 1989. “ I have always thought Ahmad Jamal was a great piano player who never got the recognition he deserved.”
That recognition would eventually come, and Jamal’s stature has only grown over the decades. The Awakening, recently reissued on vinyl by Be With Records, is a fine example of Jamal’s stately—and understated—elegance punctuated with doodles of whimsy. The album, recorded in early February 1970, is made up of two Jamal originals, a standard, and pieces by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Oliver Nelson, and Herbie Hancock, a pianist of similar disposition who Miles famously hired in his “Second Great Quintet.”
In Michael Jarrett’s new book, Pressed For All Time, Ed Michel, who produced the original album for Impulse!, remembers that “Jamal absolutely knew what he wanted to record….We were recording during Ramadan. He was fasting during the day, until sunset. The only real condition was, he said, ‘At six fifteen, we’ve got to take a break. You’ve got to tell us precisely. We’re all hungry.’”
The “we” Jamal is likely referring to is his working trio at the time, the drummer Frank Gant and bassist Jamil Nasser, who sounds especially inspired on this outing. Hip-hop was still years away, but by the 1980s, MCs would begin sampling Jamal extensively—The Awakening in particular. The compelling Jamal-penned title track, for instance, turned up in Gang Starr’s 1989 “DJ Premier In Deep Concentration” and in Shadez Of Brooklyn’s “Change.” The following track, “I Love Music” (written by Hale Smith and Emil Boyd), is almost a total solo performance for Jamal. It ended up on a classic recording of a different kind, nearly a quarter-century later, Illmatic, where Nas, intimately connected with the jazz idiom, and producer Pete Rock used Jamal’s lush interpretation on “The World Is Yours.” When the esteemed jazz critic Leonard Feather—of whom Miles also approved—wrote in The Awakening’s original liner notes that “Ahmad Jamal is one of the most pianistic of pianists,” it’s especially resonant here.
Taking on pieces like Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance” and Nelson’s “Stolen Moments,” as memorable a composition as anything from the 1960s, is trickier considering the drama that the horns—and what horns!—provided in the originals: George Coleman on the former; Nelson on the latter, with Eric Dolphy on flute; and Freddie Hubbard on both. Jamal’s versions are truncated and stripped down—his “Dolphin Dance” is quickened, too—but they still manage to stir. “You’re My Everything,” the only standard on the set, popularized by Billy Eckstine, Nat Cole, and Sarah Vaughan, is almost unrecognizable in Jamal’s hands, but has, like much on this album, a wonderful playfulness, especially at either end of the keyboard, with deep, perfectly-placed thumps with his left hand answered by fanciful phrases in the highest register.
Feather’s last line in the notes, written forty-seven years ago, still may say it best: “…for youngsters and newcomers, let this album serve as a delightful if belated awakening.”
