Horace Parlan: Up & Down

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "You can find hypnosis at a jazz performance once in a while if you’re lucky, and only if the band you’re hearing really knows what it’s doing. From jazz records this happens far less often: it takes a lot of repetition to create that hypnotic feeling, and when musicians are in the studio, they don’t often give themselves the luxurious space needed to repeat and repeat and repeat a phrase, working small variations therein. But Horace Parlan, the pianist, did this regularly on his records. Grant Green, the guitarist, did it a lot too, and so did Booker Ervin, the tenor saxophonist. They were all together on 'Up & Down,' one of Mr. Parlan’s best records, from 1961, which has just been issued on CD by Blue Note for the first time in the United States. It can claim you: at regular intervals while listening to this elegantly beseeching, blues-haunted music you might find yourself rapt, unable to do other things. Mr. Parlan’s right hand was partly damaged by polio, and so his soloing style doesn’t stream forth in single notes; it’s more like accompanying on a grand scale" ("Expansive Pop, Hypnotic Jazz …," 3/8/09).