At the Pershing: But Not for Me

The 1958 Down Beat review was mildly negative, referring to Jamal as playing "cocktail music"; the reviewer acknowledged Jamal's skill and influence on other jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, but wrote, "The trio's chief virtue is an excellent, smooth light but flexible beat", and "Throughout the music is kept emotionally, melodically, and organizationally innocuous."[1] In August 1958, Jet magazine referred to the album as "a nationwide hit".[3] The same month, Down Beat posted the album sales counts at over 47,000, noting that any (jazz) album selling 15,000 to 20,000 is "big."[1] The December 1958 Down Beat poll of music retailers showed that the album was the "number one jazz bestseller", and it stayed on Billboard Magazine album charts for 107 weeks.[1]

When Jamal was named one of the National Endowment for the Arts 1994 Masters of Jazz, the album was listed as having sold "more than a million copies."[4]

The album yielded the seven-and-a-half-minute "Poinciana",[1] which was a "massive jazz hit";[5] one of "the best selling albums of the decade, But Not For Me′s success enabled Jamal to open his own club and restaurant, the Alhambra, where his band held residence when not on tour."[5]

Evident were his unusually minimalist style and his extended vamps, according to reviewer John Morthland in 2010.[6]

On the NPR Basic Jazz Record Library radio show in 2011, Murray Horwitz and A.B. Spellman noted that "Poinciana" became "standard dance music" at parties, and, abridged, appeared on jukeboxes, because "Jamal lets the bass and drums establish a Latin groove that's very appealing. He floats lightly on top of it in a spare, tightly constructed series of embellishments that's full of what the popular music people call 'hooks.' There's a lot of repetition but no redundancy, if you know what I mean."[7]

1. "But Not For Me" (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) – 3:32
2. "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" (Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II) – 2:35
3. "Moonlight In Vermont" (Karl Suessdorf, John Blackburn) – 3:09
4. "Music, Music, Music" (Put Another Nickel In) (Bernie Baum, Stephen Weiss) – 2:56
5. "No Greater Love" (Isham Jones, Marty Symes) – 3:26
6. "Poinciana" (Buddy Bernier, Nat Simon) – 8:07
7. "Woody N' You" (Dizzy Gillespie) – 3:40
8. "What's New?" (Bob Haggart, Johnny Burke) – 4:11

• Ahmad Jamal – piano
• Israel Crosby – bass
• Vernel Fournier – drums
• Malcolm Chisholm – recording engineer
• Dave Usher – producer

• At the Pershing: But Not for Me at Discogs.com
• "Ahmad Jamal's 'Poinciana' turns 50 today". Jazz.com. Ted Gioia.

• Cook, Richard, and Brian Morton. The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings. London: Penguin, 2006.
• Yanow, Scott. Jazz on Record: The First Sixty Years. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2003.