Mal Waldron Recordings

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Mal Waldron Recordings

Updated June 2024

Malcolm Earl Waldron was born on August 16, 1925 in New York City. He died of cancer on December 2, 2002 in Brussels. He was 77 years old. Adam Shatz has written a very perceptive appreciation of Mal Waldron and his music, "Free at Last: Mal Waldron's Ecstatic Minimalism."

Listed below are all the Mal Waldron recordings I know of. The list includes only the original release and not the various reissues in different formats. Many of the original LPs have been reissued on CD -- the Prestige and New Jazz records from the 1950s and early 1960s are available from Fantasy beginning with the Original Jazz Classics series, and many have appeared several times in Japan. Waldon's recordings with Charles Mingus on Debut are collected on The Complete Debut Recordings (Fantasy 12DCD 4402). His Prestige recordings with John Coltrane are collected on The Prestige Recordings (Fantasy 16PCD 4405). His Prestige and New Jazz recordings with Eric Dolphy are collected on The Complete Prestige Recordings (Fantasy PRCD 4418). All of these sets have Japanese and European equivalents. Most of Waldron's Enja recordings from the 1970s and 1980s, and his Soul Note recordings from the 1980s and 1990s, have been reissued as well. Many of the records originally made for small independent labels in the USA and elsewhere, however, have not been transferred to CD and are out of print and often hard to find. Among the most interesting of these obscure records are about a dozen on the Music Minus One label from 1960-1961, where Waldron and a bassist and drummer provide the background for accompaniment by a soloist or singer.

The list below was compiled using information from three published sources:

Takao Ogawa a.o., Jazz Hero's Data Bank. [sic] Tokyo: JICC, 1991.
Toyoki Okajima, The Prestige Book: Discography of All Series. Tokyo: Jazz Hihyo. Jazz Critique Special Edition No. 3 (1996).
Michel Ruppli and Bob Porter, The Prestige Label: A Discography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1980.

In addition, many people have told me about other recordings. Thomas Hoenisch, Axel Van Looy, and Fabrizio Sebastiani have been especially helpful.

I'm sure that I have missed some items. Please send me a message if you have details about records not listed here.

Be sure to see the wonderful 1997 documentary by Tom Van Overberghe, A Portrait of Mal Waldron, where Mal is joined by Max Roach, Steve Lacy, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille, and Jeanne Lee. You can watch it on YouTube.

To commemmorate its 50th anniversary in November 2019, ECM Records issued the "extended edition" of its first release, Mal Waldron's Free at Last. The two-LP set includes, in addition to the six titles from the original release, three alternate takes and an unedited version of "Willow Weep for Me" (the issued version was shortened by two minutes). It also includes a 16-page booklet with notes, photos, and music. [details from ECM website]