In his long career, Ahmad Jamal liked to stretch out and play long versions of pieces, both familiar jazz standards or drawn from slightly outside the tradition (such as Henry Mancini’s ‘Mr. Lucky’, which is featured here). Whenever I heard him live, you never knew quite how these lengthy excursions were going to develop, and in the first set here, there’s a bundle of surprises in the middle of a quite conventional reading of Erroll Garner’s ‘Misty’. Suddenly an alternated pair of chords, repeated over and over again, form the backdrop to a drum solo, before a repetitive right hand phrase gradually leads the trio back to the theme (though the chordal figure reappears again before the end).

As was clear from the two preceding volumes of this Emerald City set, Jamal found a strong rapport with the audience in Seattle, and they became, as he often told me in interviews, the ‘fourth member of the trio’, and as you listen you can feel the rapport.

So this is a welcome addition to producer Zev Feldman’s excellent series, continuing exactly where Volume 2 left off, with further music from September 1966. The Mancini tune mentioned is an uptempo swinger, with some of Jamal’s most rapid filigree right hand playing, and his characteristic wide dynamic range. Sometimes it takes a while for a melody to emerge, and there’s an intriguing guessing game at the start of ‘Autumn Leaves’ where it takes a full three minutes for the familiar theme to appear. But it is this kind of artistry, pulling the audience into the puzzle, that makes Jamal’s playing from this mid-1960s period so compelling. And unlike so many jazz musicians of the time, Jamal had his finger on the pulse of popular culture, so there’s a beautiful version of Lionel Bart’s ‘Where Is Love?’ from Oliver, the theme from the TV series Naked City, and an extended workout on the Bacharach / David song from the movie Alfie. Yet each piece in Jamal’s hands sounds as if it was written for his trio, and the three of them turn every one into jazz gold.