This article highlights more the American pianist, composer and brandleader, Ahamd Jamal and his religion.
Ahmad Jamal, born Frederick Russell Jones, on July 2, 1930, was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. 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 began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he described as having greatly influenced him.
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. Jamal began touring with George Hudson’s Orchestra after graduating from George Westinghouse High School in 1948.
He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which disbanded when violinist Joe Kennedy Jr. left. 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 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).
In 1964, Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions, in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from 1964 to 1972. In 1970, he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the 1970s, he played electric piano as well; titled “Suicide is Painless,” the theme song from the 1970 film MASH, which was released on a 1973 reissue of the film’s soundtrack album, replacing the original vocal version of the song by The Mash.
It was rumored that the Rhodes piano was a gift from someone in Switzerland. He continued to play throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year’s Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., from 1979 through the 1990s.
Ahmad Jamal religion
Born to Baptist parents, Jamal discovered Islam in his teens. While touring in Detroit, where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s, he became interested in Islam and Islamic culture. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950.
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 says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition.
Ahmad Jamal died yesterday, April 16th, 2023 at age 92 after battling with prostrate cancer.
Source: www.ghbase.com
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