“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”: Archie Shepp and Horace Parlan
Recently, we explored briefly music inspired by the blues and African-American spirituals. Following that Martin Luther King Jr. Day post, a Listeners’ Club reader pointed me to this powerful track from the 1977 studio album, Goin’ Home, by American saxophonist Archie Shepp and pianist Horace Parlan. A human voice filled with longing and lament seems to cry out through Shepp’s saxophone. In an interview with DownBeat magazine, Shepp describes the tearful emotional state which came over him during the April …