Ahmad Jamal - The Awakening
The only version of Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments” that might actually be better than the original. Several other outstanding renditions of great standards on there as well. A. Jobim’s “Wave” and H. Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance” are two of them. This is one of the first jazz albums I picked up in college, before I started playing jazz. When I took the jazz history class at ASU, I wrote a paper about it. I couldn’t figure out why none of these tunes follow the AABA form. My ears later got good enough to realize that they did, but that Jamal was throwing in these huge jammy vamps in between the sections. Great jazz album…