Ahmad Jamal and Harry Belafonte had a huge impact on me in the 1950s when I was a teenager and they were first making their mark on the world. I saw myself as a jazz musician, and Jamal became the biggest influence on my piano style. But also my politics. His name alone was a political statement in those Jim Crow times and made him distinct in ways I was inspired by.
I sang along to Belafonte's records like almost everybody did then but was much more impressed with his choices as a movie actor and public persona, and the ways he used his beauty and natural charm to disarm a lot of the white world into accepting his activism against racism.
I never met Jamal, though I saw him play back then many times but was too awed to speak to him. I did meet Belafonte in the 2000s at a small gathering in a NYC apartment of activists in the Screen Actors Guild and was awed then as well but still said hello and maybe mentioned I knew one of his daughters.
I didn't consciously understand as a teen in the 1950s what I understood well decades later, that I didn't just admire and try to emulate these two, but in fact I had big crushes on both of them. Still do. Rest In Peace icons.
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