Goin' Home

Shepp, Archie and Horace Parlan

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A Shock from Shepp

In the 1970s, musicians who'd surged to the forefront of the jazz avantgarde a decade earlier faced unexpected career challenges. The New York saxophonist Archie Shepp, for example, was big stuff when the visceral, fire-breathing "freedom sound" was developing. But by the mid-'70s, that flame was cinders, a marginalized subset of jazz expression. Some artists switched gears to play tamer jazz. Some lunged more aggressively toward the stratosphere. For a brief time anyway, Shepp found gospel.

Goin' Home, Shepp's duet with pianist Horace Parlan, was recorded in 1977 but not released until 1985; it's the polar opposite of the bellicose braying that was the saxophonist's signature in the '60s. On such enduring melodies as "Go Down Moses" and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," Shepp and Parlan (the Pittsburgh native who worked with Charles Mingus for a time) play with plainspoken simplicity. The overall tone is one of reverence. Much of this record is tempoless, a mood that gives the themes an extra shot of majesty. As Shepp sings "Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child" in the pip-squeak upper register of his soprano saxophone, Parlan listens closely without adding too much, eventually contributing apt and unobtrusive chords. Several pieces find Shepp echoing his wilder Impulse years (see "Amazing Grace," which Parlan sets up as an ambling stride exercise). But even then, the saxophonist hints at rebellion in supremely melodic fashion. And both improvisers, working together, do whatever is necessary to bring the spirit to the forefront.

Genre: Gospel, Jazz
Released: 1985, SteepleChase
Key Tracks: Low Sweet Chariot," "Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child," "Amazing Grace."
Catalog Choice: Shepp: Three for a Quarter, One for a Dime. Parlan: Us Three
Next Stop: Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron: Hot House
Book Pages: 694–695

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