On September 7, 1965, Hasaan Ibn Ali went back into Atlantic Studios in New York to finish a quartet session begun two weeks earlier — Odean Pope on tenor, Art Davis on bass, Kalil Madi on drums. It should have been the Philadelphia pianist's second record. Instead he was imprisoned on a drug charge not long after, Atlantic shelved the tapes, and in 1978 the masters burned in the label's warehouse fire at Long Branch, New Jersey. Ibn Ali died in 1980 having released exactly one album in his lifetime. That was the end of it until 2017, when a tape copy of the session's reference acetates surfaced. Seven of the eight titles were intact, and Omnivore issued them in 2021 as Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album — fifty-six years late and one track short, by a man Pope credited with teaching nearly every important musician Philadelphia produced in that era, McCoy Tyner included.
Cover art for Hasaan Ibn Ali's "Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album" (Omnivore Recordings, 2021), the belated release of the 1965 sessions. Used as a stand-in because no free-licensed photograph of Ibn Ali could be found on Wikimedia Commons or elsewhere. Album cover art, copyright Omnivore Recordings, all rights reserved — this is not a Creative Commons or public-domain image.
Sources: Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album — Wikipedia , Hasaan Ibn Ali — Wikipedia , "Long lost, Philly jazz great Hasaan Ibn Ali's album 'Metaphysics' has finally been found" — The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 8, 2021 , Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album — Omnivore Recordings
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