Too often you come across an album, or a band or a musician with little or no biographical information. This is not surprising seen as the musical world is such a vast an unforgiving sphere that it’s all too easy for things to go forgotten or undocumented.
However things are a little different in the case of drummer and percussionist Billy Parker.
Enigmatic
Firstly, Parker cut his sole album, Freedom of Speech for the brilliant Strata East Records in 1974. Strata East, founded by Stanley Cowell and Charles Tolliver in 1971, has since become regarded as one of the most influential record labels in jazz, so lack of any biographical information as far as the label is concerned is a bit of an oddity to say the least.
Secondly, for this session Parker was leading some of the most respected and most influential jazz musicians of this era. His supporting cast on this album is a veritable “who’s who” of Strata East Records. In demand vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater played on this album, along with husband Cecil Bridgewater, and Cecil’s brother Ronald. All three were fresh from recording Dee Dee’s debut, the monumental Afro Blue.
Also Donald Smith, younger brother of Lonnie Liston Smith, and the brilliant bassist Cecil McBee were present (both would later collaborate on Lonnie Liston Smith’s groundbreaking Expansions album). With all this in mind it’s incredibly unfortunate that there is scant knowledge of Billy Parker.
Thankfully Simon over at the wonderful blogsite “Never Enough Rhodes” has been able to discover that Parker ended up as a music teacher at Rockland Community College, helping to build up the schools’ jazz program in 1987. From the RCC press release from 2002 there was this dedication to Parker after his death in 1996: “Billy was among those rare individuals equally gifted as artist and educator and the concert series pays homage to his legacy."
Freedom Of Speech
The album itself contains a lot of what you would expect from a Strata East record. There’s spiritual jazz of a post-Coltrane/ Pharaoh Saunders bent with “Dance of the Little Children”. The track features a strong vocal turn by Donald Smith, intoning that the children of today should find peace and happiness by connecting with their ancestry.
Cecil Bridgewater’s “Gemini’s Lullaby” is straight jazz, light and airy with some wonderful horn solos. McBee’s “Home” is a lot freer however, allowing the musicians to explore their own musical avenues, especially a crashing piano solo courtesy of Donald Smith.
Billy Parker’s own 16 minutes plus opus “Freedom of Speech” is a maelstrom of sound, starting with a 3 minute introductory drum solo by Parker himself. The rest of the track is all varying interlocking drum rhythms which just about hold on to the free improvisation of the horns, Fender Rhodes and McBee’s bass runs.
Get With It
The standout track though is the only other vocal track on the album; the Ronald Bridgewater penned “Get With it”. It is worth the price of album on its own. McBee’s lazy bass line drifts languidly over warm piano chords, whilst Parker hits out ever changing rhythms on the ride cymbal and Dee Dee Bridgewater soars over the top with an incredible vocal performance.
On the cover notes of this album Billy Parker wrote: "The Fourth World was born out of the need to preserve and develop on a tradition brought to these shores from Africa centuries ago” and it seems that through his subsequent teaching career at Rockland Community College he went some way to continue to preserve this tradition. Moreover with this one album of incredible music Billy Parker has preserved his own musical legacy, no matter how enigmatic his story continues to be.
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