Horace Parlan

Little Esther is a quartet album by pianist Horace Parlan, recorded at Barigozzi Studio in Milan on March 12 and 13, 1987 and released by Soul Note that year. Parlan, born in Pittsburgh in 1931, had polio as a small child and kept two paralysed fingers on his right hand. He built his playing on a strong left hand and percussive right-hand voicings. In the late 1950s he was in Charles Mingus's Jazz Workshop, on Mingus Ah Um and Blues & Roots, and in the early 1960s he made six albums of his own for Blue Note while backing Lou Donaldson, Dexter Gordon and Stanley Turrentine on the same label. He counted Bud Powell and Ahmad Jamal among the pianists he most admired. He moved to Denmark in the early 1970s and recorded more than a dozen albums for SteepleChase there.

The quartet sets Parlan beside baritone saxophonist Per Goldschmidt, with Klavs Hovman on bass and Massimo De Majo on drums, so the only horn in the band is a low one. The seven pieces run from the title track, Little Esther, through Opus 16A, Snow Girl, Arrival and Something For Silver to Precious Lady and T For Tjazz.

This is the Soul Note CD 121145-2 of the album first released on LP in 1987 as 121145-1.