Pieces of Silver

Horace Silver: Que Pasa?
From Song For My Father (1964)
Horace Silver - piano
Eugene Taylor - bass
Roy Brooks - drums

Horace Silver: Sayonara Blues
From The Tokyo Blues (1962)
Horace Silver - piano
Blue Mitchell - trumpet
Junior Cook - tenor sax
Gene Taylor - bass
Joe Harris (listed as John Harris, Jr.) - drums

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Horace Silver pretty much owns the last golden era of jazz. He was the principal pioneer of Hard Bop, a form of jazz that brought greasy R&B, soul and the sanctified sounds of gospel music back into jazz. His place in that pantheon is similar to the place Ray Charles holds in soul or James Brown in funk. He's the Godfather of what is now considered straight-ahead mainstream jazz (i.e. when people talk about the Blue Note sound, they are in essence referring to Horace Silver’s sound).

From the late nineteen fifties through the mid sixties he and his bands recorded a string of albums that are remarkable for the consistency of the top-notch song writing, sophisticated arrangements and funky playing.

“Que Pasa?” comes from Mr. Silver’s most popular album Song for My Father. This trio version beautifully illustrates his warm and accessible piano styling. Like many of his songs, it incorporates the Cape Verdean rhythms that his father introduced him to as a child and swings as effortlessly as Basie at his best.

The second tune “Sayonara Blues” comes from another gem in his discography, my personal favorite of his recordings, The Tokyo Blues. This song offers an excellent example of his ability to arrange for a small jazz ensemble -- one of the things he’s most famous for. His band coaxes new variations out of Silver’s melody at each turn, brining it from simmer to boil and back repeatedly while remaining funky for the song's entire twelve minutes.

On a closing note, I’d like to add that I first came to jazz through the post-punk filter of No Wave; reading magazines like Forced Exposure and writers like Richard Meltzer. I entered into the music at the extreme end of the avant-garde and it was many years before a record store clerk friend, Roger, introduced me to Horace Silver, and in doing so, to straight-ahead jazz. That was over fifteen years ago, that I became infected with the jazz virus, and I hope that this blog might act as a meme to help infect others as well. Enjoy!

Read more about Horace Silver:
NPR's Jazz Profiles: Horace Silver