"'I was in my basement practicing, and he came past and knocked on the window,' said the saxophonist Odean Pope recently, remembering the first time he met his friend Hasaan Ibn Ali. 'I was about 16 at the time. I came to the door. He asked me whether I’d like to practice with him. So I told him yes. We struck up a very good relationship, practicing almost every day together. He was so advanced on harmonic concepts, melodic concepts, rhythmic concepts, that he was having difficulty working with anyone and making jobs with anyone. But I was really interested in what he was doing, because he was doing something different.' That would have been around 1954. ... In any case, Ali’s ideas ran ahead of the marketplace. Stylistically, he was in tune with pianists who sat adjacent to bebop — he specifically admired Elmo Hope and Thelonious Monk — and beboppers were interested in fractious phrasing and unresolved dissonance, but even in their context Ali represented an extreme. Starting around 1948 — around the time he changed his name — he became a difficult fit at dance jobs and jam sessions. Whatever the norm was for the job — houserocking R&B, standards, bebop — he would unsettle known tunes with jagged fantasias or cause confusion with his own unconventional music. ..."
Vinyl Me, Please (Audio/Video)
W - Hasaan Ibn Ali
W - The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan
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