There are surveys of jazz piano in this world that don't mention Mal Waldron, and that is a criminal omission. Anyone who converses about jazz piano in the last forty years should not think his task is complete when he mentions Monk, Bill Evans, Herbie, McCoy Tyner, Cecil Taylor, et al. Mal Waldron should be ranked with them, and above several of them in terms of architectonic ability and melodic inventiveness.

Mal Waldron will be 75 on August 16, 2000. He was born a year before John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and made his first recording fifty years ago. In the Fifties he played with Della Reese, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Pepper Adams, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, and many others.

At the beginning of the Sixties he made a record with Eric Dolphy called The Quest. It was a Prestige date superficially like many others he fronted in the late Fifties, but there was undeniably something different about it. Waldron was pushing the boundaries that were hardening the arteries of hard bop - boundaries he had begun to test even earlier, on 1958's Mal/3 Sounds. He later appeared with Dolphy and trumpeter Booker Little at an extended engagement at the Five Spot. A few legendary live albums were born. His piano style was evolving into an individualistic, hard-edged but often tender, exquisitely dramatic thing of beauty.

Then silence. Maybe if he had been in sight during the early Sixties, he wouldn't be an Unsung Hero today, because every bar pianist from here to Kokomo would have incorporated (and tamed) his stylistic victories. But instead, from '63 to '65 he disappeared. In fact, he almost died from an overdose and it took him a while to cope with the aftereffects of that event. But he recorded several albums in the US, Europe, and Japan between 1966 and 1970, for Impulse, ECM, Victor and a number of small labels. He was truly better than ever. Later he recorded a set of outstanding duos with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, as well as music with Monk's old tenorman Charlie Rouse and trumpeter Woody Shaw. He recorded a solo album, Update, that ranks with any piano solo album.

He's still going strong. Rava-Lacy-Rudd-Waldron-Workman-Cyrille are touring Europe starting at the end of February 2000. With Lacy he will be at Lincoln Center in New York next May, at the Iridium Club in New York in June, and at a handful of festivals in the US. His latest recording is Soul Eyes (RCA Victor) with Joe Henderson and Abbey Lincoln. It was not released in the US.

Long may he wave. If you listen to jazz piano and do not know Mal Waldron, you're missing out on a great deal. Find his music today.

"Mal Waldron's music reverberates with such evocative intensity that you can keep coming back to a Waldron performance and hear more each time." -- Nat Hentoff