His taut and rhythmically supple approach to jazz piano influenced generations of musicians who embraced his less-is-more dynamics.
By the time he was a freshman, Mr. Jamal was jamming at the musicians’ union hall and working in Pittsburgh nightclubs. “I’d do algebra during intermission, between sets,” he told Down Beat magazine. His ambition to attend the Juilliard School was soon eclipsed by his income.. “When I got up to $60 a week, which was as much as my father was making, I said, well, this is it.
In his transition from Fritz Jones to Ahmad Jamal, he told Time magazine, “I haven’t adopted a name. It’s a part of my ancestral background and heritage. I have re-established my original name. I have gone back to my own vine and fig tree.” He credited his faith with bolstering his musical confidence as he was leading a bass-guitar-piano trio,, and recording for the Okeh label of Columbia Records in the early 1950s. The ensemble, Saturday Review music critic Irving Kolodin wrote at the time, began to make “a quiet noise in jazz circles, attracting attention not by flamboyance and flash but by a low-keyed tonal production.”With the astronomical success of “But Not For Me,” Mr. Jamal was pulling down $3,000 a week.
His first marriage, to Virginia Wilkins , ended in divorce in 1962, and she later sued him for nonpayment of child support for their daughter, Mumeenah. His own lawyers also sought money from him, according to news reports at the time. Mr. Jamal moved to New York for a long residency at the Village Gate nightclub. Amid a hectic performing schedule, Mr. Jamal enjoyed acclaim in 1970 for an
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