Mal, Dance and Soul is an album by jazz pianist Mal Waldron recorded in 1987 and first released on the German Tutu label. This was not the first time that Waldron was commissioned to record the first album for a newly founded record label (cf. ENJA and ECM). The day before Mal, Dance and Soul was recorded, Waldron had been engaged as a sideman for the Marty Cook Quartet featuring Jim Pepper for ENJA, the label that produced Red, White, Black & Blue at the famous Trixi Studio in Munich. Waldron's favourite drummer, John Betsch, was part of that line-up. This was clearly a golden opportunity – with a time tested and brilliant rhythm section right on the spot, comprising Betsch and Ed Schuller on bass - to record a trio album with Waldron. Pepper had once jammed along with Waldron in Portland, Oregon. Reason enough to stroll into the studio suddenly in the course of the trio session, his sax under one arm, and to declare that he was very keen to join in. And as jazz history would have it, Waldron and Pepper playing in duo, conjured up the ballad "Soul Mates" like a rabbit out of a hat. At the end, some compositions like "Blue Monk", "Solar" and "Golden Golson" were recorded in quartet line-up, much more than a casual jam session. As all this material wouldn't have fit on a Vinyl LP, it was saved up and released later on a CD of the same name. Reception Chris Parker praises the rhythm section in the English magazine The Wire and outstanding pieces like "...'Dancing on the Flames', which features Waldron skipping, as if firewalking, through a delightful solo full of sudden splashes of colour and growling low-register patterns and the tender ballad 'Soul Mates' in duo with tenor player Jim Pepper. As for all the rest, it's simply the pianist-composer at his best – by turns lyrical and percussive, always imaginative!" David Dupont wrote in the US jazz magazine Cadence: "Betch and Schuller lock into each other's groove like they'd on the road together for years. Betch echoing and completing the melody of 'Dancing on the Flames' ... the trio is at its best on the free multi-metered 'Little Acorn' and appropriately titled 'Blood and Guts'. 'A Bow to the Classics' is just that. Here Waldron's time is intentionally stiff not only on the head but