The pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali worked in an ensemble under the direction of Max Roach and was named “The Legendary Hasaan” on one of the drummer’s groundbreaking releases in the mid-1960s. But the pianist didn’t release an album as a band leader during his lifetime – and actually only appeared on that one studio album – which made him more of a footnote in the jazz world than a household name.
Now his legacy could be reassessed. Ibn Ali led an ensemble in the studio in 1965, and the resulting album, long believed to have been destroyed in a fire, will be released on Friday as Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album.
Saxophonist Odean Pope, who played on the record, said Ibn Ali’s talents had long been overlooked.
“He can play the most complex piece like a ‘Cherokee’ or the most beautiful composition like ‘Embraceable You’ and play these melodies extremely well,” said Pope of his mentor, who died in 1981 would play a ballad and tears would run down my cheeks . “
Ibn Ali, who was born William Henry Lankford Jr. in 1931, developed from a tradition-conscious performer in the late 1940s after recording the bop progress of pianist Elmo Hope, who, along with Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, assisted in the Redesign is attributed to the keyboard. And through living room sessions in his north Philadelphia home and sporadic club appearances, Ibn Ali helped the performers navigate early, exploratory phases of their careers, like saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Reggie Workman.
Ibn Ali was a regular on Philadelphia’s rich jazz scene and known for his adventurous game as well as his sometimes difficult demeanor. While Pope described the pianist as a sensitive and thoughtful teacher, Ibn Ali is said to have booted fewer players from the bandstand during the performance. He was also known for a peculiar fashion quirk: if he had to wear a tie for some appearances, it only hung about the middle of his torso.
Ibn Ali edited Metaphysics the same year Roach released The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan, which contained seven compositions by the pianist. Atlantic, who released the Roach album, was impressed enough to sponsor a quartet session for Ibn Ali.
For the sessions, the pianist hired Pope, the bassist Art Davis and the drummer Kalil Madi as well as the ensemble, which had been hiding in a New York hotel, in order to record the band leader’s new compositions. Sessions for the album started on August 23rd and ended on September 7th. According to Alan Sukoenig’s liner notes for “Metaphysics,” Atlantic executives postponed the album after Ibn Ali was arrested on drug charges, believing they could not rely on the pianist to further his work.
Master tapes from the sessions were found destroyed in a fire in an Atlantic warehouse in New Jersey in 1978. But a previously made recording from the reference acetates ssurvived, and was in the Warner Tape Library in late 2017 through connections from archive publication’s associate producer, jazz pianist and retired educator Lewis Porter.
Up until this point, Ibn Ali was viewed as an idiomatic performer and composer, although he may not be a consistent or definitive figure in the genre. But artists as diverse as pianist Brian Marsella and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz have reported on his compositions, and avant-garde pianist Matthew Shipp counted him among a cohort of individualistic performers in a recently published essay titled Black Mystery School Pianists.
“It’s an attitude, a code, an attitude, a way of asserting oneself against the jazz tradition,” said Shipp in an interview, explaining the characteristics that characterized such players.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Ibn Ali aspired to something new, Shipp said, adding that he was a forerunner of ideas and sounds that would be associated with the avant-garde today.
The publication of “Metaphysics” serves to fill an unknown piece of history. In addition, the total number of available pieces of music recorded by Ibn Ali will be increased from seven to 14. Three cuts on the upcoming CD were recorded in alternative shots and pinned to the end of the album.
The ballad “Richard May Love Give Powell” pays homage to the bop pianist Bud Powell, in which Pope plays quite conventionally. But with tracks like “Atlantic Ones”, “Viceroy” (Ibn Ali’s cigarette of choice) and “Epitome” the band pushes into more experimental territory, playing with melodic, harmonic and rhythmic ideas that coincided with the rise of the experimental wing of the genre .
“After I had a chance to actually record it, I said, ‘OK, I hear it. I hear him search and find his voice, ”said J. Michael Harrison, educator and presenter of“ The Bridge ”, a longstanding jazz program on Philadelphia’s WRTI, about the 26-year-old Pope’s play on“ Metaphysics ”. “He had a lot of territory to travel to. But what I know today as Odean, I heard it leaked. “
After his experience with the “Metaphysics” sessions, Ibn Ali stayed in Philadelphia and largely avoided public appearances. After a fire in 1972 destroyed his parents’ home in Philadelphia, where he spent his adult life, the pianist spent his final years in a convalescent home. Pope, who helped organize his funeral, said poetry had replaced the piano as Ibn Ali’s main expression there.
Even if the myth of the pianist is based on only a handful of published songs and memories of other performances and spontaneous sessions from the early 1960s, his whispered artistic greatness continues to permeate the Philadelphian jazz scene.
“Hasaan was like the university in the whole city. He had explored and done so many things, “said Pope. “There should be a badge, like with [Coltrane’s] House. I think he should be remembered as one of the great precursors of our time. “
