"Horace Parlan is a tall, quiet-mannered man, essentially a gentle person with virtually irremovable easy smile," wrote Leonard Feather for the liner notes of the young pianist's solo album debut.
50 years on, even some of the recent videos of Parlan, who passed away last week, shows that the "irremovable easy smile" wasn't removed until the end.
The 29-year old pianist of whom Feather highly spoke was from the city of Mary Lou Williams and Erroll Garner, but also Ahmad Jamal with whom he shared the same music teacher.
The key incident of his early life occurred at the age of 5, when his right hand was paralyzed due to a polio attack. After that opting for becoming a pianist wouldn't have been the first obvious choice but he went in that direction both because he had fallen in love with jazz by listening to Woody Herman on the radio, but also playing piano was a form of therapy for his fingers.
