BLP 4134 (NR)

Horace Parlan - Happy Frame of Mind

Released - 1986

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 15, 1963
Johnny Coles, trumpet; Booker Ervin, tenor sax; Horace Parlan, piano; Grant Green, guitar #1-5; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

tk.6 Happy Frame Of Mind
tk.7 A Tune For Richard
tk.10 Home In Africa
tk.15 Dexi
tk.18 Back From The Gig
tk.21 Kucheza Blues

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Home is Africa	Ronnie Boykins	15 February 1963
A Tune For Richard	Booker Ervin	15 February 1963
Back From The Gig	Horace Parlan	15 February 1963
Side Two
Dexi	Johnny Coles	15 February 1963
Kucheza Blues	Randy Weston	15 February 1963
Happy Frame Of Mind	Horace Parlan	15 February 1963

Liner Notes

Although still quite active, Horace Parlan is something of a forgotten figure in modern jazz. That is due in part to the ebbing jazz scene of the late sixties, which left a great many fine artists with little or no work and in part to Parlan's migration to Copenhagen in 1973. In fact, he has only come back to play the United States on one occasion, in the early eighties.

But Parlan is an excellent pianist and composer, and much of his finest work was preserved on Blue Note Records from 1959 to 1963.

Born in Pittsburgh, on January 19, 1931, Horace suffered a polio attack at age five that left his right hand paralyzed. His parents urged him to start studying the piano as physical therapy. Eventually he was able to develop use of his thumb and forefinger. By his early teens, he began to take music seriously, inspired by the many jazz radio broadcasts of the day, he soon decided to make music his life's work.

Horace's parents felt otherwise, so he entered the University of Pittsburgh, taking courses in Pre-Law for three semesters. But he couldn't shake music from his consciousness and subsequently switched his studies to the Pittsburgh Musical and Carnegie Institutes. From 1952 to '57, Parlan worked professionally around Steeltown with visiting jazz musicians, as well as with local talent, such as Tommy and Stanley Turrentine. In 1957, having acquired a number of contacts in new York, as a result of his work with these touring jazz men, Horace decided to make the big move. He did this in the company of Booker Ervin, a young tenor saxophonist from Texas, who had similar plans. During the reed player's stopover in Pittsburgh, on his way to tackle the Big Apple, the two immediately struck up a strong musical and personal friendship, and made the trip together.

By being in the right place at the right time, Parlan found himself in Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop just ten days after hitting town. A year or so later, Horace helped bring Ervin into the same band.

In 1960, Parlan, bassist George Tucker and drummer Al Harewood became the house band at Minton's Playhouse and the latest in a series of fine house rhythm sections for Blue Note. They made several trio albums, under Parlan's name, and quintet albums with the Turrentine brothers, under both Horace's and Stanley's leadership. They also backed up other artists such as Dexter Gordon (Doin' Alright) and Lou Donaldson (Midnight Sun). This trio, plus Booker Ervin, was also a co-operative quartet working at Minton's and elsewhere in New York. Their final recording as a unit was Parlan's Up And Down with Ervin and Grant Green in the front line.

Horace did not record again, as a leader, for another nineteen months, at which time he made Happy Frame of Mind. For this session, the group consisted of Parlan, Grant Green, Booker Ervin, plus trumpeter Johnny Coles, in the front line, and utilized the great Blue Note team of Butch Warren and Billy Higgins to complete the rhythm section.

Horace first heard Grant Green, in his native St. Louis, while the pianist was touring with a Lou Donaldson group. Both Lou and Parlan were impressed by the guitarist and it was Donaldson who prodded Green to come to New York and also convinced Alfred Lion to sign him to Blue Note. Horace got a chance to record with Gereen on Stanley Turrentine's Up At Minton's (BST-84069/4070; two volumes) and invited Grant to be on Up And Down (BST-84082 and subsequently on this present session as well. Grant Green was certainly a guitarist of great depth and versatility. He was a soulful burner in an organ setting and a resourceful, inventive artist in more progressive and complex situations.

Trumpeter Johnny Coles, who is still active in the U.S., is a warm, lyrical improviser with a gorgeous tone. He had, by this time, already made his mark, with James Moody's small band, in the Gil Evans Orchestra (with whom he frequently continues to work), and on his own beautiful quartet album for Epic (The Warm Sound). This present Parlan session was Coles' first appearance on Blue Note, but he soon recorded with Grant Green (Am I Blue/BST-84139) and made his own date, as a leader for the label, Little Johnny C (BST-84144). In the late sixties, Coles was a member of the Herbie Hancock Sextet which made its debut for Blue Note on The Prisoner (BST-84231).

Bassist Butch Warren and drummer Billy Higgins were a marvelous team for two Blue Note house rhythm sections, one with Sonny Clark and another with Herbie Hancock. They enhanced the drive and sparkle of countless albums for the label.

Home Is Africa, by the late bassist Ronnie Boykins, is an interesting and haunting piece. The repeated four-bar bass pattern and African-flavored rhythmic cycle set up the buoyant, floating melody to give the performance a feeling of suspended time. Coles, Ervin and Green take effective solos, but it is Parlan's which takes the most unexpected turns and explores a variety of harmonic textures.

Booker Ervin's A Tune For Richard is a 48-bar composition that has basically on AAB construction. Like many of Ervin's tunes, it has a swirling, roller coaster effect and a strong forward motion. All four soloists sound as if they are having a great deal of fun skating across the chord changes and developing ideas at a fast clip.

Parlan worked with Rahsaan Roland Kirk's quartet from '63 to '66. One of their earliest road gigs was at a small club in Cincinnati. They arrived to find only an organ in the joint, an instrument which Horace has always been loathe to play. Unfortunately, the battered piano that was eventually brought in proved to be on equally unpleasant alternative. On the welcome flight home, Parlan wrote Back From The Gig, a tone poem of relief and serenity. The solo order is piano, guitar, tenor sax and bass. Horace re-recorded this tune ten years later when he first moved to Copenhagen.

Dexi is a Johnny Coles piece with a riff melody and a chord cycle that moves into modality. All of the soloists dig in and stay with the furious tempo, often moving outside of the conventions of modern jazz improvisation.

Randy Weston's Kucheza Blues in 6/8 is one of the movements of his superb Uhuru Africa Suite and yet another of his gorgeous triple meter pieces. Green lays out for this one and Parlan, Ervin, Coles and Warren all solo. Booker steals the show here with his finest solo of the day. Throughout his career, with Weston or with his own groups, Ervin proved to be one of the most impassioned and inspired interpreters of Randy's music.

Parlan's Happy Frame Of Mind is an aptly titled blues whose theme is repeated twice. Grant, Horace and Booker all take relaxed, cheerful, extended solos. Coles and Higgins trade fours for another chorus before the drummer takes two for himself.

This session show great care in its choice of varied material and its blend of six distinct musical identities. The results certainly speak for themselves. Yet, this is one of those 'missing number' Blue Note albums that was listen on the backs of other Blue Note albums and its catalogs. It first saw the light of day in 1976, as part of a Booker Ervin double album (see below for details.) Happily, as the title implies, it has once again been found, and this time, in the form in which it was originally intended.

- MICHAEL CUSCUNA

BLP 4082

Horace Parlan - Up and Down

Released - March 1963

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 18, 1961
Booker Ervin, tenor sax; Horace Parlan, piano; Grant Green, guitar; George Tucker, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

tk.4 Light Blue
tk.8 Up And Down
tk.10 The Book's Beat
tk.15 Fugee
tk.16 Lonely One
tk.18 The Other Part Of Town

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Book's Beat	Booker Ervin	18 June 1961
Up and Down	Horace Parlan	18 June 1961
Fugee	George Tucker	18 June 1961
Side Two
The Other Part of Town	Grant Green	18 June 1961
Lonely One	Babs Gonzales	18 June 1961
Light Blue	Tommy Turrentine	18 June 1961

Liner Notes

NOT much more than two years have passed since the first album released under Horace Parlan's name was reviewed in Down Beat. The LP was Movin' and Groovin' (Blue Note 4028). The critic who dealt with it, Barbara Gardner, observed that "Parlan is a technically competent pianist, which is saying a lot in view of the crop of sloppy, inadequate pianists who flounder under the guise of 'soulful brothers'. " Adding that Parlan possesses the ability to communicate sincereåy and effectively, she concluded: 'The album is well-conceived, the material is varied, and level of performance is consistently high. Parlan should become a prominent figure in jazz."

I have quoted from this review not in order to sell anybody on Horace (after all, it is safe to assume that most people who read liner notes have already bought the album and need no Further persuasion), but rather to point up retrospectively that Miss Gardner and other critics who reacted similarly were right. Barely four years after his arrival in New York, and less than two years since his first album was taped, Horace already is a prominent figure in jazz.

Since Movin' and Groovin' came out, there has been abundant evidence of Horace's progress. Heard in a stimulating variety of contexts, he has settled down to membership in a cooperative rhythm section, with George Tucker and Al Harewood. They were with him on Us Three (4037), as well as on Stanley Turrentine's Look Out' (4039) and in Horace's own quintet session, Speakin' My Piece (4043). What has impressed me more and more in following Parlan's progress is his deep, passionate sense of commitment, an emotional dedication to the nature and development of each performance that is never marred by eclecticism or technical display. When Horace speaks his piece you know that it is his alone, and that he speaks from the heart.

The instrumentation on the present set is different from that of any previous Parlan album. Though he has been heard in a tenor-and-rhythm setting before (notably the Turrentine item listed above), the addition of Grant Green lends the group a distinctive sound, important both as a rhythmic component and as an additional melodic voice.

Booker Ervin, like Horace, is a graduate of the challenging Charles Mingus group of the late-1950s; also like Horace, he was 30 years old at the time of this session and is a comparative newcomer on the New York scene, having arrived in May of 1958. Born Booker Telleferro Ervin II in Denison, Texas, he spent five years as a child studying trombone with his father, a professional musician, but had not played for seven years when, in 1950, he entered the Air Force. He then began playing tenor, leading his own combo in Okinawa, and after his discharge in 1953, studied at Schillinger House (now known as the Berklee School). He worked in Denver for a year or two and spent six months in Pittsburgh before finally making it to the Apple.

Grant Green, also 30 years old, is of course a major Blue Note discovery, already heard to advantage in his own albums (Grant's First Stand, 4064; Green Street, 4071 Grantstand, 4086). George Tucker and Al Harewood need no introduction to each other, to Horace, or to the conscientious Blue Note camp-follower.

As Horace points out, "The four of us — Booker, George, Al, and I — had been working as a unit at the Playhouse, so we managed to get a real group feeling going during that time. And Grant Green was my suggestion. I wanted to include him on this date because I heard him in St. Louis and I was tremendously impressed with him. I feel that his musical roots and mine are similar, and I hope the results show it. Actually this was one of the most relaxed and enjoyable sessions I can ever remember taking part in." Of the opening track, "The Book's Beat," he observes: "This is a number we'd been playing for quite a long while with the quartet before we got around to it. Booker, it seems to me, has a very special penchant for writing good basic blues lines; and he plays with such fervor and honesty that each performance becomes a part of him."

After Booker's intense and compelling offering on this moderato blues track, Grant takes over for an extended solo. Though his technical agility enables him to express himself in long, sweeping, and sometimes intricate phrases, he demonstrates again his sense of contrast; note particularly the shattering intensity with which he launches into a whole chorus built on a repeated triplet phrase. Horace, in his solo, shows a similar feeling for light and shade, notably just before his chorded chorus, in a passage that repeats a phrase with intriguingly varied accents. George Tucker's solo reminds us of Horace's assessment of his virtues ("One of the purest bass sounds; and his style is different. "The attractive theme, with tenor-and-guitar figures answered by the rhythm section's Charleston beats, returns to seal off this consistently rewording performance.

"Up and Down," Horace's title number for the album, is so named because of the melodic vacillation of the theme between G and A-flat. At this demanding up tempo Horace demonstrates brilliantly his ability to feed the soloists with an aggressively swinging style of comping. Booker reminds us, in his solos, that basically he comes out of two major traditions: Bird and Prez. The melodic continuity of his work is as important as his keen rhythmic sense. You always know where he stands in relation to the beat; this is a characteristic some times lacking in new saxophonists who reach so far for complex harmonic effects that the end result fails to swing.

"Fugae" is a blues in 6/4 time. "George Tucker has been dabbling in composition for the past few months," says Horace, "and as you can tell from this one, he has some original ideas. This was one of the highlights of the session for me." Horace's solo here is a craftsman-like example of his capacity For building and extending a mood. Note particularly the passage in which he uses a B-flat pedal point against a colorful series oF chords. Grant and Booker both sustain the hard-swinging blues-waltz feel. The bass-and-piano riffing against Al Harewood's supple inserts leads to an excitingly percussive passage as Horace fades away before the theme returns.

Grant Green's "The Other Part of Town" is, according to Horace, "a showcase for Grant — and he really stole this one!" The medium-paced blues, actually, is a lengthy and absorbing excursion that reflects credit on all five participants. Horace starts out rather simply, with a touch of humor in the repeated phrase during his second chorus, but there is a cumulative tension later in his series of tonic-to-fifth rising phrases. This is very characteristic of Parlan. Booker then cooks persuasively, with Tucker walking firmly underneath before coming up for solo air. Despite all these virtues, it must be admitted Horace has a point when he extols the virtues of Grant Green here. The sudden explosion into a riot of B-flat-E-flat-D-flat patterns is only one stunning factor in a solo rich with new concepts and warmly moving melodic execution.

"Lonely One" was composed by Babs Gonzales, better known as a bop singer and as a writer of mainly up-tempo originals "I'd been promising for quite a while to record something for Babs," says Horace. "I particularly liked this one. He wrote it for Lady Day — yes, it does have lyrics — and think she made a record of it that was never released." The construction is such that the performance here consists of just one long chorus. Booker states the first portion of the minor melody in long notes; Horace articulates gently in the next passage, and Grant takes the bridge, against double-time brushwork from Al; then Booker takes it out. It's Babs's most impressive piece of writing to date and a touchingly nostalgic interpretation.

"Light Blue" is from the pen of Tommy Turrentine_ "Tommy always comes up with something different — never a conventional blues says Horace. Booker swings wildly on this moderato tune in F minor- I hear little if any Coltrane influence (you may recall the statement by Mingus that he heard Booker playing in his present style before Coltrane came to prominence). Horace's solo builds from mainly single note lines to a chorded conclusion. Green and Tucker also have effective workouts.

One concluding thought; it is interesting to note that each of the six tracks here was written by a different composer. The themes and lines furnished by Messrs Parlan, Ervin, Tucker, Gonzales, Green, and Turrentine have been woven into an integrated whole in which the dominant factors are the personalities and solo styles of the men who bring these works to life. Up & Down is a typical Parlan album; by which I mean it reminds us again that Horace is headed no place but up.

— LEONARD FEATHER

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

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT UP & DOWN

While hardly the end of his career, Up & Down marks the end of Horace Parlan's most productive period as a recording artist and presence on the US jazz scene. This rich though brief era began in 1957, when Charles Mingus brought the pianist into his Jazz Workshop for a two-year stay that led to several of Mingus's finest recordings, and received a major boost in 1959, when Parlan began an equally valuable relationship with Lou Donaldson. It was through Donaldson that Parlan entered the Blue Note family (on the saxophonist's October 1959 album The Time Is Right), and it was in Donaldson's band that Parlan, George Tucker, and Al Harewood first joined forces in the rhythm section so memorably dubbed Us Three for one of the pianist's own sessions.

The substantial Blue Note discography of this unit in support of Donaldson, Stanley Turrentine, and Dexter Gordon, as well as on several Parlan albums, has earned it a place in history as a notable gang of three. After leaving Donaldson's employ in November 1960, the trio gained an important fourth partner in tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin. Parlan and Ervin had initially crossed paths in the pianist's hometown of Pittsburgh, and it was Parlan who brought Ervin into the Mingus band in 1958. Reunited in what became the cooperative Playhouse Four (named for Minton's Playhouse, where bassist Tucker frequently served as house bandleader), the Mingus alums managed to fuse the emotional tensions of the bassist's music with the funkier inclinations of Parlan's blues-centered style. Yet the Playhouse Four's importance in Parlan's career has tended to be by the rhythm section's more frequent appearances on Blue Note in support of another great tenor, Stanley Turrentine, and by Parlan's use of the pseudonym Felix Krull on the Four's only recording as a quartet, Ervin's Candid album That's It!

Adding Grant Green to the mix here was an excellent idea with a precedent. Four months earlier, with Stanley Turrentine in Ervin's chair and serving as leader, the guitarist had participated in the gig that produced two exceptional volumes titled Up at Minton's. Like Ervin, Green provided a different kind of edge to the present tracks, one that reinforces the more traditional blues bent of the rhythm section and lends a conversational, after-hours aura to the music. What results is a memorable session suffused with eloquence and empathy.

Still, Up & Down suggests why Parlan never caught on with the public, and why he suffered a subsequent decline in recording opportunities. As a pianist who could function equally well at the head of a trio or in support of horns, he lacked the fleetness and romantic bent of someone like Red Garland, though given Parlan's physical limitations (childhood polio had paralyzed the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand), the versatility in his playing is quite amazing. And he clearly lacked the compositional chops of another, more celebrated Blue Note artist named Horace, to the point where both this and his previous quintet date, On the Spur of the Moment, had been designed to feature the writing of others. While most of the material on Spur was from outside the recording unit, including two titles by Ervin, the material here is drawn primarily from among the participants plus two longstanding associates. Trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, Stanley's older brother, was another one of Parlan's first employers, and has been credited by the pianist frequently as a source of instruction and inspiration. The album Tommy Turrentine (Time) had been the occasion of the pianist's first recorded composition, "Blues for J.P." Babs Gonzales was another acquaintance who employed Parlan on his self-produced recordings both before and after this date, including a 1968 album on which "Lonely One" was reprised. (A stunning tenor/bass/drums version of the tune can also be heard on Johnny Griffin's 1959 Riverside album The Little Giant.) On the subject of comparative listening, note how Parlan quickly moves into the hypnotic gospel zone that informed his most famous work with Mingus on the master take of "Fugee, " but turns in a solo with fewer licks on the alternate, where Green's solo is less potent; but these are matters of degree, as no one on this album ever had a problem playing the blues.

Parlan would visit Rudy Van Gelder's studio as a Blue Note leader one more time, in February 1963, with Ervin back aboard. That session was announced as up BLP 4134, Happy Frame of Mind, but went unreleased until it emerged 13 years later as part of the two-record set under Ervin's name titled Back from the Gig. It was not until 1974 and his expatriation to Denmark that Parlan's career as a leader would begin again.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2008

 

BLP 4074

Horace Parlan - On the Spur of the Moment

Released - October 1961

Recording and Session Information

Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 18, 1961
Tommy Turrentine, trumpet; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Horace Parlan, piano; George Tucker, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

tk.1 Ray C.
tk.3 On The Spur Of The Moment
tk.7 And That I Am So In Love
tk.17 Skoo Chee
tk.18 Al's Tune
tk.28 Pyramid

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
On the Spur of the Moment	Horace Parlan	18 March 1961
Skoo Chee	Booker Ervin	18 March 1961
And That I Am So in Love	Harold Ousley	18 March 1961
Side Two
Al's Tune	Booker Ervin	18 March 1961
Ray C.	Leon Mitchell	18 March 1961
Pyramid	Roger Williams	18 March 1961

Liner Notes

"THE group that stays together plays together." This thought has been advanced, if not exactly in these words, by many writers on jazz, including yours truly. It is only natural for a group operating as a permanent unit to present their music in the cohesive, unified manner that often escapes musicians who get together on a casual basis. The familiarity among long-time associates breeds a relaxation that leads to an unstrained flow of music.

The Horace Parlan Quintet is not a permanent group but within it there are two echelons which are solid units. The rhythm section has been together for over a year. Part of that time they were a segment of Lou Donaldson's quintet (June 1959-November 1960) and presently they are members of a co-operative quartet with saxophonist Booker Ervin. Their efforts as a trio have been recorded on Blue Note 4037 and 4062.

The complete musical integration amounts to three, well-oiled gears working in perfect balance to produce a buoyant swing. (And speaking of perfect balance, listen to the way Rudy Van Gelder has captured the unity of their sound while still clearly defining each man's individual contribution.) Parlan says he feels "relaxed and confident" playing with Tucker and Harewood.

The other unit within the body of the group to have a strong rapport is, naturally, the Turrentine brothers. Tommy, the older, was active in the forties with several bands including Billy Eckstine's ahead-of-its-time aggregation. Stanley, who began professionally in Tommy's band at the age of 16 in their native Pittsburgh, later worked with his brother in Earl Bostic's combo (1953-55) and Max Roach's quintet (1958-60). Besides blood ties, the Turrentines have much practical playing experience to strengthen their musical alliance.

There are several connectives between the hornmen and the rhythm section. Like the Turrentines, Parlan is from Pittsburgh. "Even before I began my active career, Tommy was talked about quite a bit in town," says Horace. Tommy's fluid lines and live trumpet sound are as in strong evidence here as they were in Speakin' My Piece (Blue Note 4043), the first recording by the Parlan quintet. His strongest influence, Kenny Dorham, although not overpowering before, has now been almost completely assimilated.

Stanley and Horace have known each other since high school days and played together briefly in the mid-fifties before Horace left for New York. Stan, in his Blue Note recordings of the past year (Look Out - 4039, Blue Hour — 4057, Comin' Your Way — 4065, Up At Minton's — 4069/4070) has established himself as one of the brighter, young tenormen. His style is hard to categorize and therein lies one of the reasons for its strength.

Tommy and Horace got together in Lou Donaldson's quintet in June of 1960 when the trumpeter replaced Bill Hardman. The various associations between and among the various players in the Parlan quintet explains why they are able to function in the manner of a long-established group. And yet, because playing together is not an everyday occurrence, there is an excitement present that is sometimes lacking in groups together too long. In their own way, Parlan and his cohorts have the best of two worlds.

Since his first New York engagement with Charlie Mingus, Horace has shown continuous improvement and become an increasingly more personal pianist. His constant striving for economy of expression has paid off in a lean-meat style. He feels that the year-plus with Donaldson was very helpful to him in general. "The steady playing helped because I hadn't been able to practice — there was no piano available on a regular basis...and Lou plays tunes that no one else would think of playing," Horace explains.

Parlan is a more flowing pianist than ever before. "When you have to think about playing music, it's not like when you just play naturally," he says, referring to the act of creating at the piano. The natural ease and confidence is obvious throughout his solos.

Certainly, there was careful thought in the planning of this album. The title tune is the only one which was an afterthought and even it was conceived on the day of the first rehearsal, not on the day of the actual date.

"I originally intended to use only other composers' work but I woke up with this line running through my head," relates Horace. "On The Spur Of The Moment" is a rhythmic blues line aptly punctuated by the leader's piano. With Harewood's steady pulse and Tucker's solid, inventive bass lines, the soloists all move straight ahead in logical development of their ideas.

Booker Ervin's "Skoo Chee" is a number that Horace had played at Minton's with its composer. The intriguing melody is built on the upper structures of the chords rather than the roots, which explains its different feeling. Ervin has also allowed for freedom in the bridge section. Stanley Turrentine has a soaring solo here. By the end of the piece a good feeling had really been generated among all the players as Stan's spontaneous, uninhibited cries show.

New York tenorman Harold Ousley (a migrant from Chicago) submitted several tunes at Parlan's request. "And That I Am So In Love" "has a pop flavor but it's good for blowing," says Horace. It is a ballad that is swung here but its pretty changes would lend themselves well to a more usual ballad tempo, too. Tommy leaves the carrying of the melody to Stanley but doesn't pass up his chance to improvise a clear, singing solo.

"Al's Tune," a minor blues, is another Ervin tune that Horace grew to like after playing it with Booker. In addition to well-shaped solos by the brothers T. and leader Parlan, there is a highly articulate pizzicato solo by Tucker, leading directly back into the theme.

Leon Mitchell, a writer from Philadelphia who was represented on the last Parlan quintet album by "Oh So Blue," is the composer of "Ray C." It is a minor, 32-bar construction in which Parlan makes good use of his light, chordal approach in a portion of his solo. I don't know if "Ray C." refers to Mr. R. Charles.

I do know that Roger Williams who wrote "Pyramid" is not the same Roger Williams who raked in all the "Autumn Leaves." This Roger Williams is a jazz pianist from Pittsburgh who "was on the scene when I was coming up," says Horace. He's now living in New York and wrote this particular piece three or four years ago. "Pyramid" has rhythmic variety and melodic content. Again Parlan's solo shows thoughtful construction in the manner of Horace's natural way of thinking.

Several times in the course of these notes I have referred to "flow" and used words like "relaxed." This is the tenor of the music. There is an ease in the listening as sure as there is in the playing. And these musicians are not afraid to express happiness. In addition, there is no loss of conviction. This is the best of two worlds.

—IRA GITLER

Photos by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REIF MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

 

BLP 4062

Horace Parlan - Headin' South

Released - May 1962

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 6, 1960
Horace Parlan, piano; George Tucker, bass; Al Harewood, drums; Ray Barretto, congas #1-3,6,7.

tk.2 Jim Loves Sue
tk.7 Headin' South
tk.8 Congalegre
tk.9 Prelude To A Kiss
tk.10 Summertime
tk.12 The Song Is Ended
tk.16 My Mother's Eyes
tk.17 Low Down

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Headin' South	Horace Parlan	06 December 1960
The Song Is Ended	Irving Berlin	06 December 1960
Summertime	George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward	06 December 1960
Low Down	Horace Parlan	06 December 1960
Side Two
Congalegre	Ray Barretto	06 December 1960
Prelude to a Kiss	Duke Ellington, Irving Gordon, Irving Mills	06 December 1960
Jim Loves Sue	Ahmad Jamal	06 December 1960
My Mother's Eyes	Abel Baer, L. Wolfe Gilbert	06 December 1960

Liner Notes

ONE of the favorite indoor sports of jazz writers and fans is the tracing down of the origins of a musician's style, a practice that is sometimes carried on with the same grim determination another kind of specialist gives to proving he was descended from the early English kings. Since style-tracing has become such a hobby, the word "influence" has become dreadfully misused, until now it is employed mostly as a euphemism for "imitation." When Horace Parlan speaks of influence, though, he does without prompting or self-consciousness, he restores the to its original meaning. He finds, in other musicians, concepts he can use, not strings of notes.

The pianist he inevitably speaks of first is Ahmad Jamal, and the best proof of what om saying is that Jamal's Jim Loves Sue appears on this album, and the pianist sounds like no-one other than Horace Parlan. "I suspect," Horace says, "that Jamal is capable of ten times what he's doing. But he has refined his style so that he can say a great deal with a very few notes. And I'm not as technically equipped as he is, so I have to make everything I play mean something."

Parlan refers here to a childhood attack of polio which left the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand inoperable. It would not the first time that technical limitations have determined style. There is, of course, the somewhat parallel case of the great Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, but one need look no farther than another musician from whom Parlan derives musical nourishment, Miles Davis. Davis, in our time, has worked within the limitations of his technical equipment to produce the most strikingly original music of recent years.

From Jamal and Davis, Parlan has taken an idea of space. "Space," the pianist Cecil Taylor once remarked, "is the rate of at which the harmony changes." Both Jamal and Davis have been working on using as few chords as possible, so as to make their melodic improvisations freer. This idea appears on Jim Loves Sue (which could have been written by no one but Jamal) and on Summertime. The latter is somewhat in the nature of a tribute to Davis, for Parlan makes use of elements of the Miles Davis-Gil Evans arrangement of the piece. (One of the erectly pleasurable things on Summertime, by the way, is George Tucker's bowed bass work. Parlan says of it, "George is one of the few bassists who can use a bow and not sound like bees or wasps.")

Still another pianist whose economy appeals to Horace is John Lewis, who remarked on a television show recently that "if you play too many notes you may obscure What you mean." Parlan says of him, "I don't go along with all his ideas of arranging and composing, and I don't think jazz and classical music will mix, but I love the economy with which he plays, and he set a new standard for comping."

But this idea of space and economy is far from the whole musical story of Horace Parlan. Unfortunately, one of the other important facets of his style has recently become a commercial gimmick, and has been taken over by certain musicians to whom banknotes seem much more important than musical ones. I refer, of course, to Horace's urgent feeling for the blues.

Horace is as aware as anyone else of the great commercial property that has been made of gospel-funk-groove-soul-roots, and feels that, in time, the proper adjustments will be made, and the men will be separated from the bandwagon boys. "In any movement, they get sorted out," he says. "From the beginnings of bop, Bird and Dizzy and a few others are left, and from the cool school..." He stopped, in annoyance at himself... "I hate that word, school. I don't think classifications are very important except to the people who do the classifying."

"I always played this way," he says. We have all, by now, heard that statement repeated, in one way or another, by musicians fresh from the conservatory who suddenly found it expedient to announce that oh yes, they went to sanctified church every Sunday as a child, but in the case of Horace Parlan, we know it to be true. One of the greatest contributions to the authentic use of church music has been made by Charles Mingus, who has as one of his other talents the ability to spot phoniness or pretense at a distance of several miles, and it is to Horace Parlan's great credit that he was a valuable part of some of the most telling records Mingus made in that style.

And if it can be said to be true, as I think it can, that what a musician does not play is as important as what he does, then it speaks very well of Horace that When he chooses to play a ballad, as he does here with Ellington's lovely Prelude to a Kiss, then he plays that ballad with taste and respect, and does not try to sanctify it simply because that is the "hip" thing to do. Of his use of the bugle call at the beginning of that piece, Horace says, "I think jazz can use a little humor. It's gotten much too solemn."

But when he does decide to get down into the blues or gospel traditions, as he does on the title tune, Headin' South or the aptly named Low Down, he does so with force and power.

The Horace Parlan trio, as presented here, have worked together for a long time, and have recorded together a unit, notably Us Three (Blue Note 4037). With the addition of tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin, they are now the Playhouse Four, a name they appropriated from Minton's. But on this set, it was decided to join them with conga drummer Ray Barretto, for a change of pace and to see what the result would be. Although Horace has not changed his style to accommodate the extra rhythm instrument — another proof of his convictions — the result has been added excitement, particularly on Barretto's showcase, his own composition Congalegre.

The two remaining pieces are both, in their own way, very special. The Song Is Ended is one of several early Irving Berlin compositions which modern jazzmen have recently begun to rediscover, perhaps because of the great interest in them evidenced by Thelonious Monk, a pianist who is a past master of economy.

The final track, My Mother's Eyes, is almost never done by jazzmen. It will remind you of either George Jessel or Nellie Lutcher, depending on where your roots are. Horace says he Was thinking of Miss Lutcher, but it comes out Parlan.

To restate Horace's own premise, someday the few people making a contribution to the current style will be sorted out and recognized. If sincerity, conviction and lack of pretense count for anything, Horace Parlan will certainly be one of them.

—JOE GOLDBERG

Cover Photo by RONNIE BRATHWAITE
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER