Ahmad Jamal, Pioneering Jazz Pianist, Dies At 92.

For most jazz performers, a song is part of a performance. For Ahmad Jamal, each song was a performance. Over the course of a remarkable eight-decade career, Ahmad Jamal, who passed away Sunday at the age of 92, created stellar recordings both as an ambitious youth and a sagely veteran.
Ahmad Jamal’s death was confirmed by his daughter, Sumayah Jamal. He died Sunday afternoon in Ashley Falls, Mass., after a battle with prostate cancer.

His influence and admirers spread far and wide in jazz and beyond.

Ahmad Jamal’s 1970 piano trio opus ‘The Awakening‘ is a sought-after digger’s classic and among the most heavily sampled jazz records of all time. Familiar samples from the LP form the backbone of countless 90s Hip Hop anthems, most famous among them Nas‘s Pete Rock produced 1994 single ‘The World Is Yours‘. Others to have borrowed passages from the LP include the likes of Common, O.C, Jeru the Damaja, DJ Krush and many more. This mixtape produced in collaboration with Wax Poetics and Be With Records, and mixed by Chris Read explores the connection between the album and the many Hip Hop classics it inspired.