On September 17, 1957, eight musicians assembled at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack to record six tunes for a leader who played nothing at all. A.K. Salim — born Albert Atkinson in Chattanooga in 1922, a DuSable High School classmate of Gene Ammons — had been an alto saxophonist until a jaw injury ended his playing in 1943. He arranged instead, for Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Jimmie Lunceford, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie, then quit music altogether for seven years in real estate, returning only in 1956. Savoy promptly handed him a band most leaders would envy: Kenny Dorham, Buster Cooper, Johnny Griffin, Pepper Adams, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Max Roach, and Chino Pozo on congas. Every title cut that afternoon was Salim's own; his credit on the sleeve reads arranger and director. He wrote the whole of Pretty for the People and played not one note of it.
Wynton Kelly in a Shaw Artists Corporation publicity photograph, around 1957 — the year he took the piano chair on A.K. Salim's Hackensack date. No freely licensed photograph of Salim himself is known to exist. (Photo: Shaw Artists Corporation, New York; Public Domain — published in the United States before 1978 without a copyright notice — via Wikimedia Commons)
Sources: Savoy Records Discography: 1957 — Jazz Discography Project (September 17, 1957 Van Gelder session: full personnel, six titles, Savoy MG-12118) , Pretty for the People — Wikipedia (recording date and studio; personnel; all compositions by Salim; his credit as arranger and director) , A. K. Salim — Wikipedia (born Albert Atkinson; DuSable classmates; jaw injury ends his playing in 1943; arranging credits; real estate, 1949—1956) , The Modern Sounds of A.K. Salim: Complete Savoy Recordings 1957—1958 — Fresh Sound Records ("an ex-reed man who retired from playing in 1943"; credited as leader, arranger and conductor)
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