Down Beat : 05/30/1956
Nat Hentoff : 2.5 stars

On his first 12″ LP, pianist Jamal is assisted strongly by guitarist Ray Crawford and veteran bassist Israel Crosby. Potentially this could be a uniquely rewarding trio, but in actuality, it’s a frequently frustrating one. There is a surfeit of rhetorical effects – relentless pizzicato guitar, for example, is a frequent and irritating background device that cuts harmfully into what whatever line is being built. When he’s released from this constructing role, Crawford indicates he can be an effective soloist.

Jamal himself is a pianist of warmth and personal, somewhat oblique, charm at his best. He takes a Garner-like pleasure in playing with the meter in a way that creates a lot of “waits,” but always pulsates. He has a tasty feeling for changes, and when he’s not fussily shooting for a corner pocket, he has interesting conception. But at other times, he breaks his line into unnecessarily repetitious rhetorical figures that verge close to cocktail pianist cuteness. Crosby is firmly full throughout.

To Jamal’s program-making credit is his choice of Duke Ellington‘s lovely Black Beauty, but here, too, the performance is marred by Jamal’s excessive attention to overshaping details at the expense of creating an organic whole. On every track his approach is much too stop-and-go rather than flowing. It might surprise Jamal himself and would also likely increase his musical stature if he’d just let the trio blow on a record date and forget the cooky cutter. Recorded sound is shrill. Rating for this would have been higher under Packaged Goods because this is a better than average pop trio, but so far it relies on too much filigree work to rate serious attention as a jazz unit.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

This refreshing sample of contemporary music is illustrative of the kind of music fortunate visitors and residents can hear these days in Chicago, light, easy and swinging. Ahmad Jamal‘s piano leads the group through ten varied selections, most of them solid contributions to the standard catalog, and makes its personality felt without obscuring the quality of the music.

Jamal’s subtle keyboard structures were first heard with George Hudson’s Orchestra insofar as public performance is concerned. A few years later he broke away to form his own group, known as Ahmad Jamal’s Three Strings, and with this trio he played throughout the midwest and in New York, attracting considerable attention with his deft articulations. The Three Strings made a number of single records for Epic Records, collection as a best-selling Extended Play disc, and then returned to Chicago. The present group, heard in the first Jamal Long Playing Record, consists of Israel Crosby on bass and Ray Crawford on guitar, in addition to the leader.

No one selection here could be singled out as being particularly characteristic of the group; with notable flexibility they shift colorings and voicings to fit the music. Even when a ballad, such as Something to Remember You By, is played in a faster tempo than usual, its basic quality is retained, flavored by the imaginative spicings of Ahmad Jamal. Moreover, although each of the members can quality as virtuosi on their instruments, they are happily not interested in setting speed records or proving manual dexterity; music is their primary concern, and music is what they produce.