Today is the heavenly birthday of the great Ahmad Jamal. I once had a friend of mine say he didn't get Ahmad because he couldn't tell when the melody started. But the thing is there are very distinctly different periods of Ahmad Jamal. His first and most famous period of course was with Israel Crosby and Vernel Fournier. If you can't tell when the melody starts in that band you must be having a brain malfunction because not only does he clearly state it but he sticks very close to it when he improvises. But Ahmad was never happy with the melody - solo -melody format most commonly heard in jazz.
He was the first to start doing the extended tag endings where the last turnaround repeats over and over that Miles Davis later picked up on. He took that idea a step further and started adding different sections that were altogether different for improvising over and alternating that with melody sections. In that way he wouldn't "play the changes" of the tune when he improvised but rather went back to playing the melody whenever the original chords were being played. So you might hear the melody many times during the tune and then completely different chords for improvising. He eventually developed hand signals that would indicate which section he was heading into which he would flash to the rhythm section so he could not only improvise on the piano but improvise with the entire trio playing different parts in different places every night. In this way he was the first musician I can think of that opened this music up and broke out of the constraints of the conventional forms that everyone played over.
He took his concept even further with his second trio with Jamil Nasser and Frank Gant. This is where you might not hear a melody so to speak or the melody might be in the bass lines he starts which set different grooves and create different settings for him to display his incredible harmonic and melodic gifts. But the main things that set him apart to me were his ability to orchestrate at the piano, which he got from people like Earl Hines and Erroll Garner, and his ability to follow his own vision and avoid the influence of the be bop kings like Bud Powell and Charlie Parker. At least I never heard him play a be bop solo and I am what you'd call an Ahmad Jamal freak. To me he was the Art Tatum of my time in that he stands alone in his own category as one of the truly unique stylists of all time who kept evolving right up until his passing. A true genius.
