BLP 4028

Horace Parlan - Movin' And Groovin'

Released - April 1960

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 29, 1960
Horace Parlan, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

tk.2 Bags' Groove
tk.3 Stella By Starlight
tk.5 There Is No Greater Love
tk.7 On Green Dolphin Street
tk.8 C Jam Blues
tk.10 Up In Cynthia's Room
tk.11 Lady Bird
tk.13 It Could Happen To You

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
C Jam Blues	Barney Bigard, Duke Ellington	29/02/1960
On Green Dolphin Street	Bronislau Kaper, Ned Washington	29/02/1960
Up In Cynthia's Room	Horace Parlan	29/02/1960
Lady Bird	Tadd Dameron	29/02/1960
Side Two
Bags' Groove	Milt Jackson	29/02/1960
Stella by Starlight	Ned Washington, Victor Young	29/02/1960
There Is No Greater Love	Isham Jones, Marty Symes	29/02/1960
It Could Happen to You	Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen	29/02/1960

Liner Notes

THE movin' and groovin' achieved on these sides has an earthy, hard-driving quality that belies the personality of the man who created it. Horace Parlan is a tall, quiet-mannered, essentially gentle person with a virtually irremovable easy smile. Behind the achievement of his solo album debut here lies a story unique in jazz.

Horace Louis Parlan was born Jan. 19, 1931 in Pittsburgh, the city that produced Mary Lou Williams, Erroll Garner and Dodo Marmarosa. "Ahmad Jamal and I were contemporaries," he says. "We're about the same age, and for a while we both studied with the same teacher, James Miller, a very fine concert pianist. Another musician I've known since childhood is Bull Ruther, the bassist. He was a next-door neighbor for many years, until he went into the Army; several years later he was back home and started showing me some things about harmony, and how I could develop this hand to the best advantage."

"This hand" meant Horace's right hand, which was left paralyzed as a result of a polio attack when he was five years old. 'That happened before I had even started to play — in fact, I actually began playing the piano as a sort of therapeutic device. It may not have done much to improve the condition of my hand, but it did teach me to be resourceful."

Although his first meeting with music came about at the insistence of his parents, they had no idea of persuading him to take it up professionally. His father was a minister and it was planned to have Horace enter law school. "At first I wasn't too interested in music myself, but then I started to hear jazz on the radio — this was in the middle '40s, when the first Herman Herd was gaining popularity. From that time on I realized that this was the direction I wanted to go.

"When my parents heard I wanted to make a career out of it, they tried to discourage me. They wanted me to enter what they thought would be a "paying profession.' So when I first came out of high school I gave it up for a couple of years. Went to pre-law school for a year and a half at the University of Pittsburgh, but I couldn't reconcile myself to this kind of existence, so I quit. I persuaded my folks that this was what I had to do, and from then on I went back into music and concentrated seriously. I studied privately; I went to the Pittsburgh Musical Institute for two and a half years, then to Carnegie Institute for one semester."

Soon after these academic excursions Horace was involved in a car accident coming home from a gig one night and was laid up for a while. "I never did get back to school again, but I kept studying on my own, practicing, trying to get back in shape."

Though Horace had started gigging while still in his teens, his real professional experience did not begin until 1952. From then until 1957 he worked with various local groups, sometimes jobbing with the Turrentine brothers (now in New York with Max Roach) . There were also some perfunctory chores with rhythm and blues bands better left unnamed, and a brief stint in Washington with Sonny Stitt.

In the course of jamming around Pittsburgh Horace had come to know Cannonball, Gigi Gryce, Art Farmer and a few others who have since become well known in New York. In 1957 he decided to make the long-contemplated break for Manhattan. "I had been sticking around Pittsburgh to gain experience, to make sure was really ready to put my feet into deep water. With competition as fierce as it is here, I had always been afraid of this town."

Though all he had hoped for at first was to eke out an existence in New York, Horace found a job immediately through sheer coincidence. Just as he was checking into his hotel Charlie Mingus, whom he had met before, walked into the lobby. "He was looking for a pianist, as it happened, so I went to work with him ten days later — in October 1957 — and stayed with him until May 1959."

The experience gained with Mingus was priceless. Everyone in the group, Horace felt, reflected Mingus' own strong personality, and the combo's achievements during that period were considerable. At one point, using Horace as nominal leader but taking the whole Mingus personnel, I used the quintet to provide backgrounds for half of an album in which Langston Hughes recited some of his poems to a jazz background. Horace was also heard with Mingus on a couple of other labels.

On June l, 1959 Horace joined the Lou Donaldson Quartet, of which he has remained a member, spending much of the summer on the road as well as playing New York locations in the Theresa Hotel, the Play House (better known as Minton's) and the Five Spot, and more recently at Count Basie's Bar.

Of the rhythm section on this record, Horace observes: "I worked with Sam for a week or so with Dizzy Gillespie. And of course Al Harewood is Lou's drummer now; he's been with us since December of '59. We felt very comfortable working as a section and I'm very happy with the support they gave me."

Though Horace's work stands up quite independently, regardless of his unusual technique, the manner in which he achieves his results is successful enough to deserve mention. The fourth and fifth fingers of the right hand are not used at all. The second and middle fingers, and sometimes the thumb, are used to complete voicing of chords that are basically supplied by the left hand. Occasionally, too, the left hand is used exclusively in single note lines. Incredible as it may seem, along with all this the left hand does a normal complement of comping in its regular register. As anyone who has ever watched Horace can testify, his flexibility with this technique is a dazzling and fascinating thing to watch.

Horace often achieves a great and intensity by playing counter-rhythms against the drums and bass, using a series of chords in which the top note may remain unchanged while the other parts move restlessly. This style is put to fascinating use in the compelling and hard.swinging treatment of the Duke Ellington C Jam Blues. "The idea for doing this," says Horace, "came from a job I played last January with George Tucker at the Play House. This was used as one of my featured numbers. Besides, I like the blues — always have."

On Green Dolphin Street is a song Horace remembers from the movie, and from a performance four years ago by Jamal. "Every chance I got to play this on jobs, I always did. Simplicity is probably the to the whole thing here. I'm not equipped to speak musically in the manner of Tatum or Peterson or any of a number of other pianists I admire — so I had to find a groove of my own. I think simplicity is the thing. I learned that from listening to Ahmad, who is equipped to do a lot more than he does, but doesn't choose to." As listeners will immediately note, there the resemblance ends; I'm not even sure that I agree with Horace about his own self-assessment. You would have to stretch the word simplicity to the breaking point to apply it to some of the most interesting tracks on these sides.

Up In Cynthia's Room is named for Horace's five-year-old step-daughter. "Her room is always a swinging place — sometimes it's in a state of confusion, but it's always a happy place, and that's how I conceived the tune. As you can hear, it's based on the Rhythm pattern except that the bridge is in descending changes, in half steps and in fourths."

Of Tadd Dameron's Lady Bird: "I've liked this tune ever since I heard it back in the 1940s; in fact, it's one of the very first jazz originals that I learned to play. Al is about the only drummer I would let play sticks in this kind of a setting, because he newer gets in the way, never overshadows anyone else — and he gets a feeling that reminds me of Klook in a way."

Bags' Groove kicks off the second side in much the same mood as the opener of the first, that is, with a gutty blues theme, this time including an exceptionally facile and resourceful bass solo for 24 burs. One of Horace's voicing ideas on this track, namely the two-note-chord treatment of the theme, came from early exposure to Bud Powell. "This intrigued me so much that it stuck with me and I've been playing it that way ever since I first heard Bud do it."

Of Stella By Starlight Horace says: "I'd play the tune a few times in Pittsburgh, but in some of the smaller cities the musicians don't seem ambitious to fool around with tunes where the changes are too much of a challenge to them. But I've played it a lot lately and it's a regular part of our repertoire with Lou." Notice particularly the continuity in the second and third choruses, which are typical of Horace's ingeniously evolved personal style — economical but not '*spare" in the critics' sense of that badly-abused word, and with a touch and sense of time that ensure continuous swinging.

"My first recollection of No Greater Love." says Horace, "was a ballad version by Garner in '55. I never thought of playing it in bounce tempo until I heard Ahmad. Aside from that, there are just some tunes that I am very comfortable with. and this happens to be one of them." The comfort is shared by Sam Jones, who helps himself to a full chorus along very horn-like lines. Horace's chord work at some points here is especially personal. He says: like Bill Evans' chordal approach on ballads; Red Garland I've listened to and liked, but I don't think my block-chord approach is patterned on his."

It Could Happen to You was included the suggestion of Horace's wife, who was present at the session. "It's one of her favorite tunes. I had always played it as a ballad, but I decided to take it up this time, to more or less keep the mood of the album."

And the moo&of the album, I might add, seems to be happy and healthy enough, movin' and gröovin' enough, to augur a fine future for Horace — through the same Blue Note facilities furnished a decade ago, to another distinguished pianist with the same first name.

-LEONARD FEATHER

Cover Design by REID MILES
Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER