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| Horace who? Not Horace Silver, another Blue Note star, no, not him. Don’t fret. I had never heard of Parlan either, not until the founder/publisher of this site sent me this box set to review. I was a little distrubed after hearing this box that I hadn’t heard of him. I don’t blame myself, of course. There must be some reason why is this amazing virtuoso has drifted in the outer darkness despite his proximity to many of the brightest stars of the jazz universe? The short version of the story is just that Parlan stayed true to his playing, and the world moved on. Parlan was strictly a sideman for a while, most notably for Charles Mingus on two of Mingus’s greatest records, Mingus Ah Um and Blues & Roots. Then Parlan got his own gig leading a band and made seven LPs for Blue Note with sidemen of outstanding talent, like the Turrentine brothers (Stanley & Tommy) and Booker Ervin. Mostly after that he worked freelance where and when he could get work. When his career slid, partly because he was not interested in the avant-garde jazz movement of the 60s, and he believed in "simplicity" (which I’ll get to), he headed off in 1973 for an expatriate career in Europe. He did okay over there, recording more solo records, notably on the Steeplechase label, and he’s still around, somewhere. But few people know him. He didn’t rate inclusion in Ken Burns’s documentary, though many of his former associates did. Though you might not have heard of him, you probably have heard him, as I soon realized I had. Blue Note, forever loyal to its musicians, put his swinging composition "Wadin’" on its 1992 set The Best of Blue Note, Vol. 2. That CD and its companion (Vol. 1) were my introduction to jazz, and although I sought out Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, and Lee Morgan, I passed Parlan by. So, if you’ve never heard of Parlan, how to explain his music? Well, if we look at the picture on the cover of the CDs that come in this box set, we see a young man, perhaps short, sitting at a piano and smiling. The light cuts his face off in a pudgy mask above a white jacket and black bow tie. He looks genial. Perhaps the best-known fact about Parlan is that when he was a child, his right hand was partially paralyzed from polio. Sent to a piano instructor by his parents (the same one who classically trained Ahmad Jamal, a professed influence of Parlan’s), he fell so in love with the music that he abandoned a legal career to play professionally, forcing himself to play complicated right handed melodies. He never gave up, but rather overcame his handicap to become a virtuoso. And so, like Parlan the individual, his music is also genial and tenacious. Listening to this box set is like reading the work of a great self-effacing poet. On the surface, all is placid, all is technically excellent, and you have to do some work to get what’s so special. When you do, it is, in fact, great. The box covers five sessions from 1960 and 1961 and one session from 1963. The first two discs include the non-horn sessions with amazing bassist George Tucker and drummer Al Harewood. Disc three is filled with all Parlan’s work with the Turrentine brothers, disc four straddles those sessions with the dates including Texas tenor Booker Ervin, and the last disc is all with Ervin. I have to admit, after the first couple of tracks, I wasn’t incredibly interested, because I put the music on while I was washing the dishes and working from home. But then, one day, I was listening to one of his earlier tracks (I can’t find it now: there are 52 tracks on this monster), and I heard Parlan repeat one phrase over and over again for at least thirty seconds. It was shocking. I was eating dinner with my wife, and she turned to me and said, "What is this?" She wasn’t happy. Parlan interrupted my conversation, and after that I went back and tried to hear what he was doing. His style became apparent, like an optical illusion that one day becomes clear. Although Parlan doesn’t venture into avant-garde territory very often, there is something radical about the aggressive attacks he makes on the melody lines, the bursts of blue, the minimalist repetitions, the blossoming chords. Otherwise, he sticks to simplicity, which, as he’s said, is "the keynote to the whole thing here." He claims to have learned this simplicity from listening to Ahmad Jamal, but I think Mingus had something to do with it as well. Parlan played on a Mingus record that included his most beautiful paeans to down-home gospel and blues, and that’s the line Parlan is playing with, the moodiness that comes from playing something beautiful well, from transferring what’s in one’s heart through one’s fingers and onto a keyboard. And if you keep to the basics, and specialize in what literary critic David Gates calls ?microfelicities,? you have something there. That’s probably why I prefer the simpler earlier stuff. The entire box starts off with two standards, "C Jam Blues" by Duke Ellington (it’s better known as "Duke’s Place") and "On Green Dolphin Street,"which sounds like Miles’ version. You keep waiting for that horn to come in, but it doesn’t. You just get the clean mood music of an understated genius. The first two discs are filled with astonishing versions of standards, including "Come Rain or Come Shine," "The Lady Is A Tramp" and "Summertime," on which Tucker moans out the melody using a bow. As another clue to the puzzle, there’s Jamal’s "Jim Loves Sue," which should be a standard. Moving on, we get to the Turrentines, and although the music is extremely well made, I’ve always felt the Turrentines were too facile, and that it takes a rare talent like Coltrane or Miles to make a horn shine brilliantly in a solo. The piano, a moveable orchestra, is a bit more forgiving; if nudged, it swings. Parlan’s playing keeps the brother’s horns in line, but it still seems like they are a little too in line. There’s nothing messy about this music. It’s too safe, too showoff-y, though extremely competent. Still, "Wadin’," of course, is a superb walking blues, and "Borderline," the Stanley Turrentine composition, is a classic. But exit the Turrentines and enter Booker Ervin, and something happens all over again. There’s an excitement again here. Listen to tracks such as "Home is Africa," with its tribal beat and spreading horns, and the straight blues of "Kucheza Blues," on which something is off just a little bit, just enough to make it interesting. The box ends with "Happy Frame of Mind," a genial but tenacious Parlan composition that sums up his theory of jazz. Deceptively simple, the music of Horace Parlan rewards repeated listening. This excellently packaged Mosaic set presents the cream of his recorded output. --Scott Holden Smith (email)
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