Artist: Mal Waldron

Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron was an American  jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Waldron led his own bands and played for those led by Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy, among others. During Waldron's period as house pianist for Prestige Records in the late 1950s, he appeared on dozens of albums and composed for many of them, including writing his most famous song, "Soul Eyes", for Coltrane. Waldron was often an accompanist for vocalists and was Billie Holiday's regular accompanist from April 1957 until her death in July 1959. 

In his 50-year career, Waldron recorded more than 100 albums under his own name and more than 70 for other band leaders. He also wrote for modern ballet and composed the scores of several feature films. As a pianist, Waldron's roots lay chiefly in the hard bop and post-bop genres of the New York club scene of the 1950s, but with time he gravitated more towards free jazz. He is known for his dissonant chord voicings and distinctive later playing style, which featured repetition of notes and motifs. 

Bandeaders with whom he worked at Prestige included Gene Ammons, Kenny Burrell, John Coltrane, and Phil Woods. Waldron often used his own arrangements and compositions for the Prestige sessions, of which his most famous, "Soul Eyes", written for Coltrane, became a widely recorded jazz standard following its initial appearance on the 1957 album, Interplay for 2 Trumpets and 2 Tenors.

From the mid-1960s on, Waldron spent a lot of time in Europe: Paris, Rome, Bologna, and Cologne, before moving permanently to Munich in 1967.  Waldron originally moved to France when film director Marcel Carné asked him if he wanted to compose the score for Three Rooms in Manhattan in New York or Paris; Waldron's 1958 experience touring Europe with Holiday made the decision an easy one.