On this recording made in 1960 during his tenure with
Lou Donaldson, pianist
Horace Parlan is situated nicely alongside bassist
George Tucker and drummer
Al Harewood. The trio had its own gig on Sundays at Minton's in Harlem, and had established a repertoire and reputation for being able to lay down both hard bop and soul-jazz stylings with equal verve. (And yeah, that jazz/hip-hop group from the 1990s was named after this disc.) The proceedings here are straight-ahead with some cool soul-jazz touches.
Parlan's "Wadin'" moves the off-minor key of "Wade in the Water" and funkifies the rhythm, paraphrasing and improvising as the rhythm section struts it out. On the title track, there is a gorgeous lilt in his playing that corresponds to a behind-the-beat walk by
Tucker that makes
Harewood slip and shimmy constantly on the cymbals with his brushes. There and on "I Want to Be Loved" as well as "Return Engagement" (another
Parlan original), something else starts to creep into his playing: the spacy, spare feel of
Ahmad Jamal, who
Parlan cited as a contemporary influence. The economy of touch, which stands in stark contrast to the hard bop he played with
Donaldson and the energetic music he played with
Mingus, is in some ways more complex harmonically, and more emotionally satisfying. This is a fine effort from an underappreciated trio. ~ Thom Jurek