Mal Waldron Recordings

Footprints

Sessions

Disco

Label

Tunes

Covers

Main

[light] [dark]

Mal Waldron Recordings

Updated April 2026

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." To mark Mal Waldron's 100th birthday, Ethan Iverson published a nice essay, TT 542: Mal Waldron Centennial.

Listed below are all of the commercial recordings I know of on which Mal Waldron appears. The list includes only original releases and not later reissues in various formats. Many of the recordings originally issued on LP are available on CD: Waldron's many Prestige and New Jazz records from the 1950s and early 1960s (as a leader and as a sideman) are available from Fantasy beginning with the Original Jazz Classics series, and many have appeared several times in Japan. Waldron'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. In addition, most of Waldron's recordings on Enja from the 1970s and 1980s, and on Black Saint and Soul Note from the 1980s and 1990s, have been reissued on CD. on the other hand, many of the recordings originally made for small independent labels in the USA and elsewhere have not been transferred to CD and are out of print and often hard to find.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 three-year gap in Waldron's recorded output from 1963 until early 1966 is due to a heroin overdose and subsequent breakdown; he spent more than two years working to recover his ability to play the piano. When French director Marcel Carné invited him to compose music for his film Three Rooms in Manhattan, Waldron eagerly moved to Paris. The film came out in 1965 to much acclaim. Other film scores followed, e.g. Sweet Love, Bitter (1967), as well as music for plays and television. Waldron eventually settled in Munich and resumed an active life as a performer and recording artist.

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.

I have also consulted the Mal Waldron discography provided by the Jazz Discography Project.

Finally, several friends have told me about other recordings. Thomas Hoenisch, Axel Van Looy, and Fabrizio Sebastiani have been especially helpful. Thank you!

I'm sure there are items I have overlooked. Please send me a message if you have details about commercial recordings not listed here.

Be sure to watch 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 (ECM 1001 ST). This beautifully produced two-LP set includes, in addition to the six titles from the original album, three alternate takes and an unedited version of "Willow Weep for Me" (the version on the original album was shortened by two minutes). It also includes a 16-page booklet with notes, photos from the recording session, and Waldron's lead sheets. [details from ECM website]