Harold Mabern
Right on Time and To Love and Be Loved
(Smoke)

HAROLD MABERN is part of that great tradition of pianists from the southern city US city of Memphis, which also birthed Phineas Newborn, James Williams and Donald Brown.

[[{"fid":"4185","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]Mabern, born in 1936, grew up wanting to be a drummer and he tells how he used to beat on cans as a child. It was then that he heard a young girl playing the song I Stuck My Dollar in the Mud on the piano, which inspired him to teach himself the instrument and join his high school band. He met local jazz eminences like saxophonist George Coleman, trumpeter Louis Smith and the prodigious Newborn, which propelled him into the heart of the music.

He moved from Chicago to New York in 1959 where he worked with an eclectic array of jazz luminaries from Lionel Hampton and Sarah Vaughan to Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery, JJ Johnson and Sonny Rollins.