Pioneering cellist and improvisor Abdul Wadud died on 10 August aged 75. A musician who placed the collective before the individual, Wadud made his name strictly from what he played rather than from statements or media portrayals. His cello, an instrument occupying an uncommon range among the tools historically associated with jazz, simply found its way to the listener. Wadud's profile ascended in the 1970s through work in New York with musicians such as Julius Hemphill, Arthur Blythe, James Newton and Anthony Davis, figures prominently associated with the so-called loft era.

Before all this, Wadud had come of age in the 1960s in Cleveland, Ohio. Born Ronald Earsal DeVaughn on 30 April 1947, he was the youngest in a substantial list of Cleveland musicians who left marks on avant garde jazz history: Albert and Don Ayler, Charles Tyler, Frank Wright, Bobby Few, Arthur Jones, Norman Howard, Yusuf Mumin, among others. Wadud rarely spoke to the press, but in a 1980 interview with Coda, he made an arresting statement in light of the prominence of his associations. “I haven’t experienced a total situation like that since then,” Wadud said of his Cleveland work. “The combination of music and philosophy and life all in one. I’ve been coasting on that experience for 15 years, so it was very powerful… it involved more of a total aspect in terms of the situation involving life and the events of the time and so forth, which were added to the music.”

Wadud was speaking more specifically of his work in The Black Unity Trio, a group that included saxophonist Yusuf Mumin and drummer Hasan Shahid. Mumin takes up the story. “My family moved to the projects across from Leo’s jazz club in 1953. Around 1957, a young brother known as Ronald DeVaughn also started living in the projects. Everybody called him Cash. Most of the time he was seen with his cello going over to the Phillis Wheatley Association where he was taking music lessons. In those days, the neighborhood was vibrant with music, not just in the clubs. Most households were listening to the jazz greats and you could even see them hanging around the Majestic Hotel, up on 55th Street.

“Before Cash and I began playing together,” Mumin adds on his relationship with Wadud, “my older brother had been showing me how to get around on vibes and got me listening to classical music. This was around 1961, while brother Cash was still in music school. In 1963, I got married and took up the alto sax. In the mid-1960s, we reunited and did some playing on occasion with Clyde Shy [later known as Mutawaf A Shaheed], Charles Tyler, Norman Howard. Cash and I spent a lot of time discussing different forms of music.” In 1965, Wadud enrolled at Youngstown State University and started to play in local symphony orchestras. In 1967, he switched to Oberlin Conservatory, 50 kilometres or so west of Cleveland. At Oberlin, Wadud developed a close relationship with theory and composition professor Olly Wilson, who was also a bassist. Mumin, Wadud, Wilson, and drummer Chuck Smart played a concert as The Black Unity Quartet on 21 February 1968.

That same year, Wadud converted to Islam. “One of the things I remember the most about brother Abdul Wadud was his infectious smile,” Imam Mutawaf A Shaheed, a former bass player, says. “Every time I’d see him, I was greeted with a happy face. The smile would disappear any time we would talk about music or the religion of Islam. When he decided to convert, I was the one who gave him the Shahada, the oath of conversion. I remember the look on his face as he was taking the oath, I had never seen him so serious. He said that there needed to be more in his life to feel whole. When I told him he was now a Muslim, that smile that I had become accustomed to reappeared on his face.”

The meaning of Abdul Wadud, his chosen Muslim name, was Servant of the All-loving. His middle name, Khabir, meant Well-informed. “When we played together on various occasions,” Shaheed adds, “there were times we would rondo in the midst of playing and would exchange a brief smile. That happens when certain musicians connect on something that is a part of the whole thing. It moves around the group sometimes. All the time I knew Abdul, it was all about the music and his connection with his Creator. That was personal for him. May Allah make it easy for him.”

The unique playing situation Wadud remembered so vividly became complete when drummer Hasan Shahid arrived in Cleveland and The Black Unity Trio was formed. “I first met Abdul in May or June of 1968,” Shahid says. “I had come to Cleveland to play with a vocalist by the name of Countess Felder. Countess, out walking one day, passed by a record shop called Cosmic Music. In the window, she saw the complete ESP-Disk’ catalogue on display. One of the label’s artists was Sun Ra, who was from Birmingham, Alabama, our hometown. She went in and met Yusuf Mumin, the owner. In conversation, Yusuf said that he and a cello player were looking for a drummer. Countess immediately told him that she had just brought to town a friend who played drums, a friend who loved John Coltrane.

“When I arrived at the shop with my drums, we just played for 30 minutes, nonstop, at a blistering pace,” Shahid adds. “When we stopped, Yusuf looked at Abdul and asked him what he thought. Abdul’s answer was ‘hell yeah’. That was the beginning of the greatest musical experience of my life. After playing almost everyday for seven months, on 24 December 1968 we recorded our album Al-Fatihah. As Abdul said in his interview with Coda magazine, I too have been looking for what we had developed. For 54 years, I have not been able to find it. I will never get over the loss of such a true music master. So long my soul mate. I will see you soon.”

Read more about The Black Unity Trio and avant garde jazz in 1960s Cleveland in Wire interviews with Hasan Shahid and Mutawaf A Shaheed. A Wire playlist selected by Yusuf Mumin can also be heard online.