Listening to Prestige 620: Ahmed Abdul-Malik

LISTEN TO TWO: Spellbound
Never on Sunday

Ahmed Abdul-Malik's recording career was brief--a total of six albums as leader between 1958 and 1964, the last four on Prestige. And this was his swan song. He never led a group again, and played on only a small handful of other recordings, although he would reappear on record in 2005, more than a decade after his death and half a century after this momentous recording, when the John Coltrane/Thelonious Monk Town Hall concert of 1957 was finally releas

I don't know why this sudden halt, and I haven't been able to find out much more about it. Abdul-Malik lived into the 1990s, taught in the New York City school system, but doesn't seem to have been interviewed, and doesn't seem to have rated much in the way of obituaries. Curious neglect for such a striking talent.

Certainly this final album leaves one wishing for more, because it's so good, but also because it's so unusual. That he continued to create a fusion between Western jazz and Middle Eastern music is expected, and welcome. But to take as his source material theme music from Hollywood movies? That's not at all the choice that most of us would have made.

And what musicians would you go looking for if you were planning a session of jazz/Middle Eastern fusion? An oud player, certainly, Abdul-Malik, himself a master of the oud, had a keen ear for talent on the instrument, and he picked Hamza Aldeen, an Egyptian composer and oud master from Nubia, the upper Nile region where the oud originated. As Hamza El Din, he performed in the summer of 1964 at the Newport Folk Festival, and recorded an album for Vanguard entitled Music of Nubia, followed by a second Vanguard album in 1965. He has been cited as a major influence by avant garde composers Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and has recorded with the Grateful Dead and the Kronos quartet.

This was his only recording session with a jazz group, but his contribution is outstanding. He plays on two tracks, "Never on Sunday" and "Song of Delilah."

A musician with plenty of jazz credentials, but not one you'd immediately think of if you were planning an album of Middle Eastern music, is Ellington alumnus Ray Nance. Nance had joined the Ellington orchestra in 1940, and remained with them through 1963, leaving just before being tabbed to join Abdul-Malik for this session, As Ellington's first trumpet, he recorded one of the most famous trumpet solos in jazz, the Duke's original 1940 recording of "Take the A Train." He plays cornet here, on "Body and Soul" and "Cinema Blues."

Nance, of course, also became known as the only violin soloist in the Ellington orchestra, and he brings his violin to "Spellbound" and "Song of Delilah." Again, if you were putting together a cutting edge group to play an new kind of world music fusion, you might not immediately think to bring a sort of old school violin guy.

I have to assume that Abdul-Malik was completely given his head in assembling this group, because no one--not Bob Weinstock, not Don Schlitten--was going to say "World music fusion? Right. You'll need a violin, and an old school rhythm and blues guy on tenor sax."

That would be Seldon Powell. No, the choices must have been Abdul-Malik's own. And the choice of movie music? Who else would dream that up?

Anyway, assuming my assumptions are right, thank Providence they let Ahmed do it his way, because this is a wonderful album, and one is only left regretting that he didn't make any more. What would he have thought of next time?

Pianist Paul Neves was one of those local legends, in his case in two locales -- Boston and Puerto Rico. A fine player who didn't make it to New York, didn't tour with a New York or LA-based name band, didn't record -- this is his only recording date with a name group. It's good that we have him here.

I should give "Song of Delilah" as my Listen to One. It has some strong soloing by everyone. And if I didn't choose it, I'd be torn between the wonderful violin work by Ray Nance on "Spellbound," and the electrifying oud playing of Hamza Aldeen on "Never on Sunday." Well, I can't choose, and I can't reconcile. They're two such different cuts, with two such different musicians. So it's Listen to Two.

Another odd thing about this album: it was released on Prestige's lightly used and lightly distributed budget label, Status. I don't know why. Don Schlitten produced.