Acoustic Sounds

Ahmad Jamal

Emerald City Nights: Live at The Penthouse, 1965, 1966

Music

Sound

Label: Jazz Detective

Produced By: Zev Feldman

Engineered By: Jim Wilke

Mixed By: Sheldon Zaharko

Mastered By: Sheldon Zaharko (CD)/ Bernie Grundman (LP)

By: Fred Kaplan

December 1st, 2022

Genre:

Jazz

Format:

Vinyl

Ahmad Jamal’s “Emerald” Treasures

Newly discovered live concerts from the ‘60s show the silky pianist was always an adventurer

Ahmad Jamal has long been known for his stately swing. He emerged as an innovative pianist, and a best-selling trio leader, in 1958, with his live album, "At the Pershing: But Not for Me". Even before then, Miles Davis touted him as a major influence on his own ballad style, citing his spacious phrasing and soft touch. Miles told his pianist of the era, Red Garland, to play like Jamal.

I confess I didn’t follow Jamal much between his lyrical late-‘50s breakthroughs (which I heard a couple decades later, when I started getting into jazz) and what I took to be a turn toward a more propulsive style in the late ‘90s (with The Essence, Part 1) and, edgier still, the early ‘00s (with In Search of Momentum). But some newly excavated live recordings from the mid-1960s tells me that I got this transformation wrong; the adventurousness was in him all along.

Zev Feldman, who unearthed many lost treasures for Resonance Records, has released this material on his new label, aptly named Jazz Detective. It amounts to seven sessions recorded at the Penthouse, a jazz club in Seattle , over a span of three years and a few months, selections (presumably highlights) of which are spread out across two 2-LP/2-CD sets, both titled Emerald City Nights: Live at The Penthouse, the first subtitled 1963-1964, the second 1965-1966. (The latter is somewhat better, musically and sonically, so that's what I'm reviewing here.)

Jamal still tickles the ivories with the spry delicacy that Miles emulated on his standards albums for Prestige. But he also pounds them, shifts from harp-like glissandos to percussive arpeggios without breaking a sweat or a seam. His sense of rhythm is almost infinitely elastic: he can shape space and time to whatever effect he desires, punctuating an eighth note or stretching a bar for whole lines, but always resolving the tension inside the melody. None of this is showy technique for its own sake. It’s all in service of where the song is going, and his sense of song are all about soul and wit and joy.

His bandmates are as in synch as any in the annals of jazz trios. The bassist, Jamil Nasser, supplies anchors and hooks of just the right weight and shape. His drummers, which vary from session to session, bolster or alter the beat, exciting or extending the rhythm, and keep the hi-hat cymbal going. In this sense, they’re working from the example set by Jamal’s drummer from the ‘50s sessions, Vernel Fournier, who rejoins the trio on two of the tracks here. (I would have liked to hear more tunes from that set.)

Finally, Jamal experiments with several standards that he’d played for years. He varies, speeds up, and slows down the meter on “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” as if commenting on the title; goes meditative on “Like Someone in Love”; and plays it straight, while the rhythm section does the familiar syncopation, on “Poinciana.”

Feldman told me that the sessions were recorded, originally for radio broadcasts, on ¼” tape Ampex 350 tape at 7.5 ips. Within those limitations, the sound is quite good, especially the bass, which sounds plucky, and the trap set, which is crisp. It’s mono, but there’s a real sense of ambience and depth. The piano sound varies a bit from one session to another, and it’s always a little receded. Still, Jamal’s technique, modulation, and romance come through clean.

It's a delayed instant classic.




Music Specifications

Catalog No: DDJD-02

Pressing Plant: Optimal

SPARS Code: ADA

Speed/RPM: 33 1/3

Weight: 180 grams

Size: 12"

Channels: Mono

Source: Tape to digital transfer

Presentation: Multi LP

Comments

  • 2023-09-29 08:55:22 PM

    Michael Weintraub wrote:

    There really are no bad Ahmad Jamal albums; they range from very good to absolutely essential. I would grade this one more in the "very good" range. This is very much transitional Jamal. The style here is in between the sparse, spacious style of the fifties and early sixties that Miles Davis so admired, and the somewhat more forceful, harder-driving sound that would really emerge in the early seventies. The different drummers on this set help to emphasize this development. Fournier was his outstanding partner from the classic live sets of the late fifties/ early sixties, especially the legendary Pershing sessions (absolutely essential), where his lightly swinging yet propulsive feel perfectly complimented Jamal's style of the time. By contrast, Frank Gant was the perfect choice for Jamal's more expansive sound of the early seventies. To really hear this group at their best, I would recommend Jamal's early seventies Impulse albums. A really great recent find, however, is the Live in Paris- Lost ORTF recordings from 1971. The group had been together for a couple of years at this point, and Jamal's new conception was much for fully formed. I would also give this recording the edge in terms of sonics compared to the Penthouse tracks. Everything I've ever heard from the ORTF engineers has been stellar, and this one is no exception. I think this disc kind of snuck in under the radar, but you can find it here: https://www.discogs.com/release/24940387-Ahmad-Jamal-Live-in-Paris-1971-Lost-ORTF-Recordings. Highly recommend. Enjoy!