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“Carnegie Hall, [Nov. 14] 1952, Duke Ellington’s
25th anniversary. I was on with Charlie Parker
and strings, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan
Getz and the Ellington band. I’m the only one
living today. I was 22—pretty good for just 22.
I’m a walking historian to some of those things
that happened in our musical world, and I look
back with fond memories.”
He performed with his trio that night, and
the trio has remained his preferred setting ever
since, though he has taken on such occasional
co-stars as Stanley Turrentine, Gary Burton
and George Coleman. But they’re the exception.
Unlike Oscar Peterson, who played with everybody,
Jamal has no regrets over any missed brief
encounters.
“I was leading at a very young age,” he
recalls. “I’ve been in my own zone as a leader
for so many years, so I haven’t longed to do anything
different. I look forward to expanding repertoire,
and I’m getting ready for another record
session in October. So I’m preparing for that. I
always look forward and try not to look back and
think of what should have been or could have
been. That’s not worth two dead flies.”
As for repertoire, he introduced himself in
the ’50s playing mostly familiar standards but
has moved steadily toward his own music since.
It’s a privilege he’s earned. “I’ve grown accustomed
to my compositions,” he says. Then, like
a player startled to find his fingers have accidentally
stumbled into a famous phrase in the middle
of a solo, he laughs. Then he goes with it.
“They almost make the day begin … I’ve grown
accustomed to the tunes I whisper night and
noon … .” Jamal pauses to consider how aptly
the Lerner and Loewe song applies. “Probably
about 80 percent of my repertoire today comes
from my own things,” he continues, “and 20 percent
are the works or others, which is about the
reverse of what I did years ago. But Billie, Louis,
Tatum and others did standards. They interpreted
the works of others beyond their wildest
dreams, just as I did with ‘Poinciana’ or Coltrane
did with ‘My Favorite Things.’ That’s the beauty
of the art form.”
Last year Mosaic Records compiled a monument
to his formative Argo work. “He had been
unhappy in the past about how Universal handled
his Argo material in the CD era,” says producer
Michael Cuscuna, who invited him to
consult. “We wanted him happy with as much
previously issued material as possible. He was
very caring and enthusiastic about this set.”
At 81 Jamal still enjoys playing, “but my
favorite venue is home,” he says. “I live in
Massachusetts because I don’t have the energy
for New York any more. Performance is easy—
it’s traveling that’s difficult now. So I pick and
choose where I play. Number one, I don’t do
nightclubs any more, just concerts. Two, I prefer
indoor, not outdoor, stages. But I’ve done
Saratoga Springs and especially Millennium
Park in Chicago—one of the exceptions. But for
the most part, outdoors is not for music.
“I enjoy performing; otherwise, I wouldn’t
do it. But you don’t just go out to hear the
applause and please others. I have to be pleased,
and then perhaps somebody else will be. I enjoy
the rapport and interaction between my ensemble
and myself. And the audience usually senses
those sparks and responds.” He reads off
a busy schedule for the balance of 2011: the
Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix; then
Rockport, Mass.; then with Diane Reeves in St.
Louis; and so on.
After such a storied career, one which critic
Stanley Crouch has called, with the exception
of Charlie Parker’s, the single most important
“to the development of fresh form in jazz” since
1945, Jamal seems uninterested in turning to
autobiography.
“But I’ve been having a film crew follow me
around for the last couple of years,” he says, “in
preparation of my OK-ing a documentary film.
But I don’t know whether I’m going to do it or
not. I have to look and see what the footage looks
like.”
Ahmad Jamal joins the DownBeat Hall of
Fame in the best possible way—alive and kicking,
playing at the top of his form, enjoying it all,
and best of all, in control. DB