Guitarist Alvin “Al” Schackman is a legend in the jazz world, but his musical explorations have given him the unique ability to enjoy playing in diverse genres. The roster of musicians he has played with is a veritable Who’s Who of American music. He has traveled the cities and countries of the world for seventy plus years and has been part of the music scene in New York, LA, and Paris.

Al is most widely known as Nina Simone’s guitarist and musical director. He met the late, great Ms. Simone in 1957, thus beginning over four decades of touring the world and playing every major global stage with her through 2000. In the sixties, when Al wasn’t playing with Nina, he toured throughout the U.S. and Europe with Harry Belafonte. During that time, he played in fundraising concerts for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and performed with Nina and Harry in Montgomery Alabama following the Selma civil rights march.

One of his early groups, with Ron Carter on bass and Ben Riley on drums, became the first trio to accompany Nina Simone. In the fifties and sixties he was also house session guitarist for Atlantic and Columbia records, and during his broad career he has performed on stage or in the studio with the Isley Brothers, the Drifters, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn, Wynton Kelly, Lionel Hampton, Baba Olatunji, Ben E. King, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Lightning Hopkins, Odetta, Miriam Makeba, Joan Baez, even country star Faron Young, and the list goes on. His guitar can also be heard on the iconic children’s ABC-TV series, School House Rock, with music composed by his dear friend and sometime musical partner, Bob Dorough.

As a composer Al was an Emmy nominee for scoring the Alex Haley CBS television series, Palmerstown. He also composed the score for the feature film, Book of Numbers, starring Phillip Michael Thomas, Raymond St. Jacques, and Freda Payne. Recently, Al contributed to, and can be seen in, the Netflix Oscar nominated documentary, “What Happened Miss Simone.”

Since Nina’s passing in 2003, Al has been heading up the Nina Simone Band with the original members, touring worldwide with the show “Sing the Truth,” featuring Dianne Reeves, Patti Austin, Angelique Kidjo, and Lizz Wright performing Nina’s classic songs. The tour is planning to continue in the future.

Al lives in the mountains of New Mexico on a cattle ranch with his rancher wife, Ginny, their dog, Patsy Montana, two horses, two barn cats, and around a hundred head of Corriente cattle. They recently added a music room to the ranch house where Al has installed a fully equipped recording studio. He is currently working on a solo vocal album, singing and playing all the instruments: guitar, piano, bass, vibraphone, congas, and percussion. The working title is “Me, Myself, and I.”

At the urging of many friends and acquaintances, Al is in the process of writing a book about his life’s adventures and misadventures. It tells tales of early 1950 jazz clubs in Brooklyn, racial strife and the civil rights era, interludes with well known figures, and most particularly personal and revealing stories of life with his friend, the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone.