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Ahmad Jamal
21 quotes
“When my people were brought over here from Asia and Africa, they were given various names, such as Jones and Smith. 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.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Explaining his Muslim name, from "Syncopated Silence" Time (August 10, 1959)
“[In response to a comment ("I sometime-get the feeling that Jamal would rather crawl into the piano than off the bench at the conclusion of a performance, so deeply involved is he in his music") by critic Philip Elwood] Maybe so. But I regret that I still don't have enough time to spend with my instrument. I think I could become more at one with it if I did.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with the San Francisco Examiner (February 1, 1982), p. 31
“It was 25 cents here, $6 there. At $6, one gets to thinking it's a lot of money. So then economics started dictating the direction of my career, and that's when I started devoting more time to jazz. When I got up to $60 a week, which was as much as my father was making, I said, well, this is it. And I was doing that before I left high school.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Miles, Thad Jones, Clark Terry, Gil Evans, myself—the reason we always stay young is because we've been part of three eras. We heard Lunceford, Hines, Basie at their peak--I was a sponge, I absorbed that era. Then it was the Gillespie-Parker era—we were still young, and again we sponged it up. Now we are living in the electronic age . . . and we're still listening.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A guy that knows all these electronic things may be great [...] but a guy who knows acoustic and electronic is better. Just like a guy who knows Mozart only may be great, but a guy who knows Mozart and Duke Ellington is better. And a guy who knows Mozart and Brahms and Ellington is even better . . . It's musical depth perception.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Jazz of Jamal" The Washington Post (December 29, 1983).
“If you're applying for credit and write that you’re an insurance salesman, or a member of the Chicago Symphony, you won't have trouble. But just write "jazz musician" and you can't even buy a sofa on credit.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[On querying the permanent use of the word "jazz"] So was the word Negro ! Yet you hardly hear it anymore—it's now Afro-American or black. All sorts of linguistic changes are going on: Instead of chairman we now say chairperson in order to upgrade the position of women in our society. Jazz is an important-enough area of our culture to demand constant refinement.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Years ago, when I was growing up and bands like Basie and Ellington came to the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, where I was born, they were called entertainers. You can hardly use that word today, when men like Max Roach and Jackie McLean have tenure as professors at major American colleges.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cited by Leonard Feather in "Ahmad Jamal—a Master of American Classical Music" Los Angeles Times (December 6, 1987)
“When 1 was 7, my mother arranged for me to take piano lessons. They cost one dollar a lesson. She was a domestic. She walked to work to save that dollar.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Performing is like being the matador in a bullring. You have to be constantly concerned about what you're doing or you get gored.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I pass a piano anywhere, I have to touch it or play it.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ahmad Jamal: Life in the Key of Intense" The Boston Globe (January 25, 1989), p. 43
“I do things differently," he asserts. "I put it down to my parents, and to being raised in Pittsburgh, which is unique. I was delivering papers to Billy Strayhorn's family when I was seven years old. It was Mary Lou Williams's town, Kenny Clarke's, Art Blakey's, Earl Hines's, Roy Eldridge's, George Benson's, Stanley Turrentine's, Earle Wilde [sic], the exponent of Liszt, Maxine Sullivan, Loren Mazel [sic] the conductor. My father was an open-hearth worker in the steel mills, but they got me playing the piano when I was three years old.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was playing Liszt's Eroica etudes when I was 11 . . . though I can't play it now." (Jamal reflects on this with a laugh.) "It all made me eventually settle on calling this great music 'American classical music' instead of jazz. It's the only art form that developed in the United States except for American Indian art. It managed to survive because it's so strong and so natural and so pure.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interviewed by John Fordham in "Transatlantic fusion" The Guardian (October 18, 1996), p. 42
“[Jazz and the European classical repertoire] In Pittsburgh we didn't separate the two schools [...] We studied Bach and Ellington, Mozart and Art Tatum. When you start at 3, what you hear you play. I heard all these things.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[When asked how he practiced] With the door open, hoping that someone would drive down my street in a big luxurious car and hear me! [...] I was never the practitioner in the sense of 12 hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad [...] All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, "Why did you stop, Ben?" He said, "I forgot the lyrics." That's what Nat (King) Cole was talking about, "You have learn to live with a song.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Always Making Jazz Seem New" The New York Times (November 11, 2001)
“[Jazz] interpreted the works of composers such as the Gershwins or Irving Berlin beyond their wildest dreams. Take the pianist Art Tatum; most of the body of work he did wasn't his own music, and yet it was totally his. That's a process that has allowed what is called jazz to add so much to the world's culture. Look at the Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory, institutions that wouldn't have thought of teaching Louis Armstrong – now Louis Armstrong is teaching them, they all have jazz departments, and they teach kids from all over the world.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I listened to music from Tatum and Erroll Garner to Mozart. I've composed since I was 10 years old – I used to do 20% my own pieces and 80% other people's; now it's turned the other way. After a certain time you discover the Mozart in you, the Duke Ellington or Billy Strayhorn in you. It takes time to discover yourself. You also have to find and keep players who are in tune with what you're doing; you have that empathy, the quality of breathing together.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[On maintaining high levels of energy into old age] It's a divine gift, that's all I can tell you [...] We don't create, we discover – and the process of discovery gives you energy”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interviewed by John Fordham in "Ahmad Jamal: 'After a time you discover the Mozart in you'" The Guardian (February 1, 2013)
“I'm still evolving, whenever I sit down at the piano [...] I still come up with some fresh ideas.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I always tried to divest myself of the music business. I wasn’t too thrilled with the music business at any time [...] So I have always sought to do other things.”
Ahmad Jamal (1930–2023) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Pair of Ahmad Jamal Live Albums Capture an Innovator in His Prime" The New York Times (September 8, 2022)