At the Pershing: But Not for Me

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At the Pershing: But Not for Me
Live album by Ahmad Jamal

Publication
(s)

1958

admission

January 16, 1958

Label (s) Argo Records

Format (s)

LP

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

8th

running time

29:03

occupation Ahmad Jamal, Israel Crosby and Vernel Fournier

production

Dave Usher

Location (s)

Pershing Hotel, Chicago

chronology
Count 'Em 88

(1956)

At the Pershing: But Not for Me Ahmad Jamal Trio Volume IV

(1958)

At the Pershing: But Not for Me is an album by the African-American jazz pianist , composer and arranger Ahmad Jamal ,released in 1958, which he recorded with Israel Crosby and Vernel Fournier , his Ahmad Jamal Trio.

album

According to the record cover, the recordings were made during a performance by the Ahmad Jamals Trio on January 16, 1958 in the Pershing Lounge of the Pershing Hotel in Chicago . In the Pershing Lounge at that time, the trio played five performances a night and six days a week for over a year. Every track played that evening, 43 tracks in total, was recorded and Jamal selected eight tracks for the album.

At the Pershing: But Not for Me was released as an LP on Argo Records (LP-628) in 1958 . It was Jamal's first release for Argo and his first album recorded live.

The album “turned out to be a turning point in Jamal's career. The trio gained national recognition almost overnight and the record was one of the best-selling albums of the year. The album shows Jamal's famous use of space and time, as well as the trio's extraordinary ... blend of piano and rhythm section, which influenced none other than Miles Davis, who later covered some of the melodies and used ideas similar to Jamal's. "As" one of the " best-selling albums of the decade, " At the Pershing: But Not for Me enabled Jamal to open his own club in Chicago, the Alhambra, where his band played when they weren't on tour."

The album included the seven and a half minute track " Poinciana " which was a "solid jazz hit". On the 2011 NPR Basic Jazz Record Library radio show, Murray Horwitz and AB Spellman found that “Poinciana” was becoming “standard dance music” at parties and was released as an abbreviated single for jukeboxes because “Jamal lets bass and drums create a Latin American groove that is very appealing. It hovers slightly above it in a sparse, densely constructed series of ornamentation, full of what popular music calls 'hooks'. There is a lot of repetition, but no redundancy. "

Track list

  • Ahmad Jamal: At the Pershing: But Not for Me (Argo LP-628)

page 1

  1. But Not For Me ( George Gershwin , Ira Gershwin ) - 3:15
  2. The Surrey with the Fringe on Top ( Richard Rodgers , Oscar Hammerstein II ) - 2:23
  3. Moonlight In Vermont ( Karl Suessdorf , John Blackburn ) - 2:55
  4. (Put Another Nickel In) Music, Music, Music ( Bernie Baum , Stephen Weiss) - 2:43
  5. No Greater Love ( Isham Jones , Marty Symes ) - 3:08

Page 2

  1. Poinciana ( Buddy Bernier , Nat Simon ) - 7:38
  2. Woody N 'You ( Dizzy Gillespie ) - 3:18
  3. What's new? ( Bob Haggart , Johnny Burke ) - 3:43

Contributors

Musicians and instruments

Production staff

  • Malcolm Chisholm - recording technique
  • Sid McCoy - Liner Notes
  • Ahmad Jamal - Liner Notes
  • Don Bronstein - photography, cover design
  • Dave Usher - producer

reception

The review of the album in 1958 on Down Beat was slightly negative, calling Jamal's game "cocktail music". The reviewer recognized Jamal's skill and influence on other jazz musicians like Miles Davis, but wrote, "The main virtue of the trio is an excellent, smooth, light, but flexible beat" and "the music is consistently emotional, melodic and ... harmless." In August 1958, Jet magazine described the album as "a national hit". That same month, Down Beat estimated the album's sales at over 47,000, noting that any album that sold between 15,000 and 20,000 albums was "big". The December 1958 Down Beat poll of music retailers showed the album was the "Number One Jazz Best Seller" and stayed on Billboard Magazine's album charts for one hundred and seven weeks . When Ahmad Jamal was named one of the Masters of Jazz at the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994, his album had already sold "more than a million copies". According to the 2010 review by John Morthland, its unusually minimalist style and extended vamps were definitive. In his review for Allmusic, Michael Erlewine gave it five stars out of five and said: “Jamal's third album ... was the turning point in his career. His generous use of silence influenced many jazz musicians, including Miles Davis. "For Csosoundsandstories.org, the album remains" a landmark of that era. Jamal's minimalist… style of playing standards from George and Ira Gershwin (“But Not For Me”), Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (“The Surrey With the Fringe on Top”) provided a new vocabulary for jazz. ”And Brian Commenting on the album by Morton and Richard Cook, "Jamal's frugal, expansive style was a reaction to the excesses of bebop and won an audience for it."

literature

  • Richard Cook, Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings. Penguin, London 2006.
  • Brian Morton, Richard Cook: The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1000 Best Albums. Penguin Books Ltd., Kindle version, 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-195900-9 .
  • Scott Yanow: Jazz on Record: The First Sixty Years, Backbeat Books. San Francisco 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Live at the Pershing: But Not for Me. At discogs.com, accessed June 25, 2017 .
  2. ↑ At the Pershing: But Not for Me at csosoundsandstories.org. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 11, 2017 ; Retrieved June 26, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / csosoundsandstories.org
  3. ↑ a b c d e Nadine Cohodas: Spinning Blues Into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records . St. Martin's Griffin, 2001, ISBN 978-0-312-28494-7 , pp. 153 f .
  4. ↑ At the Pershing: But Not for Me. At jazzcenter.org, accessed on June 26, 2017 : “proved to be a turning point in Jamal's career. Almost overnight the trio was in national demand, and the record was one of the year's top selling albums. The album displays Jamal's noted use of space and time as well as the trio's extraordinary percussive meld of piano and rhythm section - all of which influenced no less than Miles Davis, who later covered several of the tunes here using ideas similar to Jamal's. "
  5. ^ A b Jason E. Housley: Jamal, Ahmad (Frederick Russell Jones) . In: Edward E. Curtis IV (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History. 1st edition. Facts on File, Inc., 2010, ISBN 978-0-8160-7575-1 , pp. 308 .
  6. ^ AB Spellman, Murray Horwitz: Ahmad Jamal: 'Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing: But Not for Me'. In: NPR Basic Jazz Record Library. NPR, February 2, 2011, retrieved June 25, 2017 : “Jamal lets the bass and drums establish a Latin groove that's very appealing. He floats lightly on top of it in a spare, tightly constructed series of embellishments that's full of what the popular music people call 'hooks'. There's a lot of repetition but no redundancy. "
  7. ↑ Jet. XIV (14): August 65, 1958. Retrieved June 27, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Jet. 85 (11): January 54, 17, 1994. Retrieved June 27, 2017 .
  9. ^ John Morthland: One of the landmark albums of the '50s. Emusic.com, November 16, 2010, accessed January 4, 2013 (review).
  10. ↑ At the Pershing: But Not for Me at www.allmusic.com. Retrieved June 25, 2017 : “Jamal's third album… was the turning point in his career. His liberal use of silence influenced many jazz musicians, including Miles Davis. "
  11. ↑ At the Pershing: But Not for Me at csosoundsandstories.org. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 11, 2017 ; accessed on June 26, 2017 : “remains a landmark album of that era. Jamals minimalist performance style on standards by George and Ira Gershwin ("But Not For Me"), Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II ("The Surrey With the Fringe on Top"), among others, provided a new vocabulary for jazz. " Info : The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / csosoundsandstories.org
  12. ^ Brian Morton, Richard Cook: The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1000 Best Albums . Penguin Books Ltd., 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-195900-9 : "Jamal's spare, spacious style was a reaction to the excesses of bebop, and it won him an audience."