Horace Parlan dies at 86

Horace Parlan, a jazz pianist who overcame limited use of his right hand to develop a distinctive punchy style that made him a stalwart of the hard-bop movement of the 1950s and 1960s and a notable collaborator with such stars as Charles Mingus and Dexter Gordon, died Feb. 23 at a nursing home in Naestved, Denmark. He was 86.

The death was confirmed by Danish jazz scholar Frank Buchmann-Moller. Mr. Parlan, who had lost his eyesight in recent years, had a variety illnesses, including diabetes.

Stricken with polio at age 5 and partially paralyzed on his right side, Mr. Parlan was encouraged by his parents to take up piano as a form of therapy. He eventually recovered partial use of three fingers on his right hand and learned to compensate by using his left hand to play textured chords and rolling arpeggios.

His simplified, rhythmic style was well suited to the blues-based hard-bop jazz emerging in the 1950s. Critic Harvey Pekar, writing in Jazz Times magazine in 2001, noted that Mr. Parlan had a “strong blues feeling” in his work and added that “you’d have to go a long way to find a jazz pianist who uses gospel elements so effectively.”

Mr. Parlan gained early renown for his spirited playing in his native Pittsburgh and while working alongside saxophonist Sonny Stitt in the mid-1950s in Washington.

From 1957 to 1959, Mr. Parlan was part of a band led by Mingus, the mercurial bassist and composer then at the height of his creativity. He appeared on two of Mingus’s landmark albums, “Blues and Roots” and “Mingus Ah Um,” both from 1959. On the latter recording, Mr. Parlan’s driving piano helped some of Mingus’s best-known tunes, including “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” “Fables of Faubus,” “Boogie Stop Shuffle” and “Better Git It in Your Soul.”

During the early 1960s, Mr. Parlan was in demand as a top sideman and became a to-notch leader his own right. He recorded seven albums for the Blue Note label between 1960 and 1963, including “Up & Down” and “Speakin’ My Piece,” with such bandmates as guitarist Grant Green and saxophonists Stanley Turrentine and Booker Ervin. Mosaic Records released a complete set of the Blue Note albums in 2000. 

from www.washingtonpost.com