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Ahmad Jamal
At three years of age, my wonderful Uncle Lawrence stopped me while I was walking past the piano in my parents' living room. He was playing the piano and challenged me to duplicate what he was doing. Although I had never touched this or any piano, I sat down and played note for note what I had heard. "The rest is history."
What a thrilling ride it has been and continues to be. I was born in one of the most remarkable places in the world for musicians and people in the arts - Pittsburgh, PA. At seven years, I was selling newspapers to Billy Strayhorn's family. Billy had already left home; I didn't get to meet him until years later.
At seven years of age I began my studies with a wonderful woman, Mary Cardwell Dawson. In addition to her great influence on me, she was very influential in the careers of many musical personalities on a local, as well as worldwide basis. One of her students is my life long friend, violinist, Joe Kennedy, Jr. Later, while still in my teens, I began studying with James Miller, as a result of Mrs. Dawson's relocation to Washington, D.C.
After touring with George Hudson's Orchestra, I traveled to Chicago with The Four Strings, a group headed by violinist, Joe Kennedy, Jr. Unfortunately, the group disbanded because of a lack of employment and in 1951, I formed The Three Strings.
The year 1951 was the beginning of my recording career. "Ahmad's Blues," which I wrote in 1948 during my stint with a song and dance team out of East St. Louis, was one of my first recordings; "Ahmad's Blues" has been heard in the stage play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," and recorded by Marlena Shaw, Natalie Cole, Red Garland and others. The first session also included my arrangement of the folk tune, "Billy Boy," which arrangement was copied by many of my peers. I wrote "New Rhumba" around 1951 and it has also been recorded and performed by many others, most notably Miles Davis. My most famous recording was done in Chicago in 1958 at the Pershing Hotel with two of the most talented musicians of the century, Israel Crosby and Vernell Fournier.
Five decades covering my career are most interesting to me and contain some of the historical data that you can find by clicking the indicated categories of my web page menu. What you can't find won't be available until my proposed autobiography goes to print.
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