SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2016
VOLUME TWO NUMBER TWO
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
NAT KING COLE
January 2-8
ETTA JAMES
January 9-15
JACKIE MCLEAN
January 16-22
TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON
January 23-29
NANCY WILSON
January 30-February 5
BOB MARLEY
February 6-12
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
February 13-19
HORACE SILVER
February 20-26
SHIRLEY HORN
February 27-March 4
T-BONE WALKER
March 5-11
HOWLIN’ WOLF
March 12-18
DIANNE REEVES
March 19-25
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/horace-silver-mn0000267354/biography
Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey
From the perspective of the 21st century, it is
clear that few jazz musicians had a greater impact on the contemporary
mainstream than Horace Silver. The hard bop style that Silver
pioneered in the '50s is now dominant, played not only by holdovers
from an earlier generation, but also by fuzzy-cheeked musicians who had
yet to be born when the music fell out of critical favor in the '60s and
'70s.
Silver's earliest musical influence was the Cape Verdean folk music he heard from his Portuguese-born father. Later, after he had begun playing piano and saxophone as a high schooler, Silver came under the spell of blues singers and boogie-woogie pianists, as well as boppers like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In 1950, Stan Getz played a concert in Hartford, Connecticut, with a pickup rhythm section that included Silver, drummer Walter Bolden, and bassist Joe Calloway. So impressed was Getz, he hired the whole trio. Silver had been saving his money to move to New York anyway; his hiring by Getz sealed the deal.
Silver's earliest musical influence was the Cape Verdean folk music he heard from his Portuguese-born father. Later, after he had begun playing piano and saxophone as a high schooler, Silver came under the spell of blues singers and boogie-woogie pianists, as well as boppers like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In 1950, Stan Getz played a concert in Hartford, Connecticut, with a pickup rhythm section that included Silver, drummer Walter Bolden, and bassist Joe Calloway. So impressed was Getz, he hired the whole trio. Silver had been saving his money to move to New York anyway; his hiring by Getz sealed the deal.
Silver worked with Getz for a year, then began to freelance around the city with such big-time players as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Oscar Pettiford. In 1952, he recorded with Lou Donaldson for the Blue Note label; this date led him to his first recordings as a leader. In 1953, he joined forces with Art Blakey to form a cooperative under their joint leadership. The band's first album, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, was a milestone in the development of the genre that came to be known as hard bop. Many of the tunes penned by Silver for that record -- "The Preacher," "Doodlin'," "Room 608" -- became jazz classics. By 1956, Silver had left the Messengers
to record on his own. The series of Blue Note albums that followed
established him for all time as one of jazz's major composer/pianists.
LPs like Blowin' the Blues Away and Song for My Father (both recorded by an ensemble that included Silver's longtime sidemen Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook) featured Silver's harmonically sophisticated and formally distinctive compositions for small jazz ensemble.
Silver's
piano style -- terse, imaginative, and utterly funky -- became a model
for subsequent mainstream pianists to emulate. Some of the most
influential horn players of the '50s, '60s, and '70s first attained a
measure of prominence with Silver -- musicians like Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Benny Golson, and the Brecker Brothers all played in Silver's band at a point early in their careers. Silver has even affected members of the avant-garde; Cecil Taylor confesses a Silver influence, and trumpeter Dave Douglas played briefly in a Silver combo.
Silver recorded exclusively for Blue Note until that label's eclipse in the late '70s, whereupon he started his own label, Silveto. Silver's '80s work was poorly distributed. During that time he began writing lyrics to his compositions, and his work began to display a concern with music's metaphysical powers, as exemplified by album titles like Music to Ease Your Disease and Spiritualizing the Senses. In the '90s, Silver abandoned his label venture and began recording for Columbia. With his re-emergence on a major label, Silver once again received a measure of the attention his contributions deserve. Certainly, no one ever contributed a larger and more vital body of original compositions to the jazz canon. Silver died in New York on June 18, 2014 at the age of 85.
Silver recorded exclusively for Blue Note until that label's eclipse in the late '70s, whereupon he started his own label, Silveto. Silver's '80s work was poorly distributed. During that time he began writing lyrics to his compositions, and his work began to display a concern with music's metaphysical powers, as exemplified by album titles like Music to Ease Your Disease and Spiritualizing the Senses. In the '90s, Silver abandoned his label venture and began recording for Columbia. With his re-emergence on a major label, Silver once again received a measure of the attention his contributions deserve. Certainly, no one ever contributed a larger and more vital body of original compositions to the jazz canon. Silver died in New York on June 18, 2014 at the age of 85.
http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2014/06/horace-silver-1928-2014-legendary.html
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Horace Silver, 1928-2014: Legendary Pianist, Composer, and Bandleader
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Horace Silver, 1928-2014: Legendary Pianist, Composer, and Bandleader
HORACE SILVER
(b. September 2, 1928--d. June 18, 2014)
(b. September 2, 1928--d. June 18, 2014)
Since January 9, 2014 we have lost the following GIANTS among us: Amiri Baraka, Mabel Williams, Chokwe Lumumba, Maya Angelou, Fred Ho, Vincent Harding, Yuri Kochiyama, Ruby Dee, and now Horace Silver. While these justly revered figures have peacefully made their respective transitions and we are now fortunate enough to fully embrace their inspiring ancestral force in our lives, it is indeed sobering and truly humbling to remember and acknowledge just how profound and valuable the quality and depth of their lives and the creative legacies they have left have been and will continue to be for all of us. For they taught us what it really means to change and transform the world through the sheer force of one's personal contribution and courageous example in both Art and Life and for that we are and must remain eternally grateful. Thank you Horace for your incredible music and the extraordinary lifeforce that it embodies and represents. Rest in Peace and Power brother...
Kofi
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/arts/music/horace-silver-85-master-of-earthy-jazz-is-dead.html?_r=0 MUSIC
Horace Silver, 85, Master of Earthy Jazz, Is Dead
By PETER KEEPNEWS
JUNE 18, 2014
New York Times
Horace Silver in 1997
Credit Alan Nahigian
Credit Alan Nahigian
Horace Silver, a pianist, composer and bandleader who was one of the most popular and influential jazz musicians of the 1950s and ’60s, died on Wednesday at his home in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 85.
His death was announced by Blue Note Records, the company for which he recorded from 1952 to 1979.
After a high-profile apprenticeship with some of the biggest names in jazz, Mr. Silver began leading his own group in the mid-1950s and quickly became a big name himself, celebrated for his clever compositions and his infectious, bluesy playing. At a time when the refined, quiet and, to some, bloodless style known as cool jazz was all the rage, he was hailed as a leader of the back-to-basics movement that came to be called hard bop.
Hard bop and cool jazz shared a pedigree: They were both variations on bebop, the challenging, harmonically intricate music that changed the face of jazz in the 1940s. But hard bop was simpler and more rhythmically driven, with more emphasis on jazz’s blues and gospel roots. The jazz press tended to portray the adherents of cool jazz (most of them West Coast-based and white) and hard bop (most of them East Coast-based and black) as warring factions. But Mr. Silver made an unlikely warrior.
His albums included “Song for My Father,” which featured his father on the cover.
Credit: Blue Note Records
“I personally do not believe in politics, hatred or anger in my musical composition,” he wrote in the liner notes to his album “Serenade to a Soul Sister” in 1968. “Musical composition should bring happiness and joy to people and make them forget their troubles.”
And Mr. Silver’s music was never as one-dimensional as it was sometimes portrayed as being. In an interview early in his career he said he was aiming for “that old-time gutbucket barroom feeling with just a taste of the backbeat.” That approach was reflected in the titles he gave to songs, like “Sister Sadie,” “Filthy McNasty” and “The Preacher,” all of which became jazz standards. But his output also included gently melodic numbers like “Peace” and “Melancholy Mood” and Latin-inflected tunes like “Señor Blues.” “Song for My Father,” probably his best-known composition, blended elements of bossa nova and the Afro-Portuguese music of the Cape Verde islands, where his father was born.
His piano playing, like his compositions, was not that easily characterized. Deftly improvising ingenious figures with his right hand while punching out rumbling bass lines with his left, he managed to evoke boogie-woogie pianists like Meade Lux Lewis and beboppers like Bud Powell simultaneously. Unlike many bebop pianists, however, Mr. Silver emphasized melodic simplicity over harmonic complexity; his improvisations, while sophisticated, were never so intricate as to be inaccessible.
Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver was born on Sept. 2, 1928, in Norwalk, Conn. His father, who was born John Silva but changed the family name to the more American-sounding Silver after immigrating to the United States, worked in a rubber factory. His mother, Gertrude, was a maid and sang in a church choir.
Although he studied piano as a child, Mr. Silver began his professional career as a saxophonist. But he had returned to the piano, and was becoming well known as a jazz pianist in Connecticut, by the time the saxophonist Stan Getz — soon to be celebrated as one of the leading lights of the cool school — heard and hired him in 1950.
“I had the house rhythm section at a club called the Sundown in Hartford,” Mr. Silver told The New York Times in 1981. “Stan Getz came up and played with us. He said he was going to call us, but we didn’t take him seriously. But a couple of weeks later he called and said he wanted the whole trio to join him.”
Mr. Silver worked briefly with Getz before moving to New York in 1951. He was soon in demand as an accompanist, working with leading jazz musicians like the saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. In 1953, Mr. Silver and the drummer Art Blakey formed a cooperative group, the Jazz Messengers, whose aggressive style helped define hard bop and whose lineup of trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums became the standard hard-bop instrumentation.
After two and a half years, during which Mr. Silver began his long and prolific association with Blue Note, he left the Jazz Messengers, which carried on with Blakey as the sole leader, and formed his own quintet. It became a showcase for his compositions.
Another album by Mr. Silver is “Further Explorations by the Horace Silver Quintet.”
Credit: Blue Note Records
Credit: Blue Note Records
Those compositions, beginning with “The Preacher” in 1955 — which his producer, Alfred Lion of Blue Note, had tried to discourage him from recording because he considered it too simplistic — captured the ears of a wide audience. Many were released as singles and garnered significant jukebox play. By the early ’60s Mr. Silver’s quintet was one of the most popular nightclub and concert attractions in jazz, and an inspiration for countless other bandleaders.
Like Blakey, Miles Davis (with whom he recorded) and a few others, Mr. Silver was known for discovering and nurturing young talent, including the saxophonists Hank Mobley, Joe Henderson and Michael Brecker; the trumpeters Art Farmer, Woody Shaw, Tom Harrell and Dave Douglas; and the drummers Louis Hayes and Billy Cobham. His longest-lived ensemble, which lasted about five years in the late 1950s and early ’60s, featured Blue Mitchell on trumpet and Junior Cook on tenor saxophone.
As interest in jazz declined in the ’70s, Mr. Silver disbanded his quintet and began concentrating on writing lyrics as well as music, notably on a three-album series called “The United States of Mind,” his first album to feature vocalists extensively. He later resumed touring, but only for a few months each year, essentially assembling a new group each time he went on the road.
“I’m shooting for longevity,” he explained. “The road is hard on your body. I’m trying to get it all over with in four months and then recoup.” He said he also wanted to spend more time with his son, Gregory, who survives him.
In 1981, Mr. Silver formed his own label, Silveto. His recordings for that label featured vocalists and were largely devoted to what he called “self-help holistic metaphysical music” — life lessons in song with titles like “Reaching Our Goals in Life” and “Don’t Dwell on Your Problems” that left critics for the most part unimpressed.
Jon Pareles of The Times wrote in 1986 that Mr. Silver’s “naïvely mystical lyrics” made his new compositions sound like “near-miss pop songs.” On later albums for Columbia, Impulse and Verve, Mr. Silver returned to a primarily instrumental approach.
Mr. Silver was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 1995 and received a President’s Merit Award from the Recording Academy in 2005.
Many of his tunes became staples of the jazz repertoire — a development, he said, that surprised him. “When I wrote them,” he said in a 2003 interview for the website All About Jazz, “I would say to myself that I hope these at least withstand the test of time. I hope they don’t sound old in 10 years or something.”
Rather than sounding dated, his compositions continued to be widely performed and recorded well into the 21st century. And while he acknowledged that “occasionally I hear an interpretation of one of my tunes that I say that they sure messed that one up,” he admitted, “For the most part I enjoy all of it.”
Monday, September 2, 2013
HAPPY 85th BIRTHDAY TO THE GREAT HORACE SILVER, LEGENDARY PIANIST AND COMPOSER
HORACE SILVER
(b. September 2, 1928)
All,
The legendary pianist and composer Horace Silver (b. September 2, 1928), one of the seminal and crucial creative links between the black modernist musical styles known popularly as "bebop" and "hardbop" throughout the 1950s, '60s, '70s and beyond as well as one of the masters of developing a fresh and innovative synthesis of these dynamic post 1945 styles with black vernacular traditions in blues, funk, and gospel musics which became a very popular genre known widely as "Soul Jazz" which were represented by such major groups of the period as the original 'Jazz Messengers' an ensemble which Silver cofounded with the famed drummer Art Blakey in 1954 as well as various bands led by such important musicians and composers as Cannonball and Nat Adderley, the electrifying Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, and many different trios, quartets, and larger ensembles led by a large and prominent number of pianists, organists, drummers, trumpet players, and saxophonists of so-called Modern Jazz in the elctrifying 1945-1980 era. What follows is a heartfelt tribute to one of the most creatively lyrical, soulful, and consistently compelling musicians and composers in post WW2 American music on his 85th birthday. ENJOY...
Kofi
The legendary pianist and composer Horace Silver (b. September 2, 1928), one of the seminal and crucial creative links between the black modernist musical styles known popularly as "bebop" and "hardbop" throughout the 1950s, '60s, '70s and beyond as well as one of the masters of developing a fresh and innovative synthesis of these dynamic post 1945 styles with black vernacular traditions in blues, funk, and gospel musics which became a very popular genre known widely as "Soul Jazz" which were represented by such major groups of the period as the original 'Jazz Messengers' an ensemble which Silver cofounded with the famed drummer Art Blakey in 1954 as well as various bands led by such important musicians and composers as Cannonball and Nat Adderley, the electrifying Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, and many different trios, quartets, and larger ensembles led by a large and prominent number of pianists, organists, drummers, trumpet players, and saxophonists of so-called Modern Jazz in the elctrifying 1945-1980 era. What follows is a heartfelt tribute to one of the most creatively lyrical, soulful, and consistently compelling musicians and composers in post WW2 American music on his 85th birthday. ENJOY...
Kofi
HORACE SILVER AT THE PIANO IN 1968:
Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty:
The Autobiography of Horace Silver
by Horace Silver
with Phil Pastras (Editor)
by Horace Silver
with Phil Pastras (Editor)
Steve Isoardi (Introduction), Joe Zawinul (Foreword)
University of California Press; First edition (hardcover), 2006; first edition (paperback), August, 2007
Horace Silver is one of the last giants remaining from the incredible flowering and creative extension of bebop music that became known as "hard bop" in the 1950s. This freewheeling autobiography of the great composer, pianist, and bandleader takes us from his childhood in Norwalk, Connecticut, through his rise to fame as a musician in New York, to his comfortable life “after the road” in California. During that time, Silver composed an impressive repertoire of tunes that have become standards and recorded a number of classic albums. Well-seasoned with anecdotes about the music, the musicians, and the milieu in which he worked and prospered, Silver’s narrative—like his music—is earthy, vernacular, and intimate. His stories resonate with lessons learned from hearing and playing alongside such legends as Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young. His irrepressible sense of humor combined with his distinctive spirituality make his account both entertaining and inspiring. Most importantly, Silver’s unique take on the music and the people who play it opens a window onto the creative process of jazz and the social and cultural worlds in which it flourishes.
Let’s Get to the Nitty Gritty also describes Silver’s spiritual awakening in the late 1970s. This transformation found its expression in the electronic and vocal music of the three-part work called The United States of Mind and eventually led the musician to start his own record label, Silveto. Silver details the economic forces that eventually persuaded him to put Silveto to rest and to return to the studios of major jazz recording labels like Columbia, Impulse, and Verve, where he continued expanding his catalogue of new compositions and recordings that are at least as impressive as his earlier work.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/horace-silver-hard-bop-pioneer-forges-ahead-horace-silver-by-katie-alvarez.php
By
Horace Silver: Hard Bop Pioneer Forges Ahead
Looking
back over the last fifty years of jazz it is clear that few musicians
have had a greater impact on the contemporary mainstream than Horace
Silver. The hard bop style that Silver pioneered in the '50s is now
dominant, played not only by holdovers from an earlier generation, but
also by fuzzy-cheeked musicians who had yet to be born when the music
fell out of critical favor in the '60s and '70s. One of the most
individual and distinctive pianists in jazz, Horace Silver is also a
prolific composer, an accomplished bandleader, and one of the main
originators of the styles known as hard bop and soul jazz.
Silver's earliest musical influence was the Cape Verdean folk music he heard from his Portugese-born father growing up in Connecticut. Later, after he had begun playing piano and saxophone as a high schooler, Silver came under the spell of blues singers and boogie-woogie pianists, as well as boppers like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In 1950, Stan Getz played a concert in Hartford, Connecticut, with a pickup rhythm section that included Silver, drummer Walter Bolden, and bassist Joe Calloway. So impressed was Getz, he hired the whole trio. Silver had been saving his money to move to New York anyway; his hiring by Getz sealed the deal. Silver worked with Getz for a year, then began to freelance around the city with such big-time players as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Oscar Pettiford.
He made several recordings with Getz, proving that Silver's funky, bluesy style of piano was already well-formed in his early 20s. Silver worked with a wide range of musicians and played regularly at a number of Manhattan clubs. His big break came when Lou Donaldson abruptly cancelled a recording date, and Blue Note asked Silver to make the session instead with his own trio.
This began a long relationship with the label, and provided a platform for his playing with several other leaders, including Miles Davis and Art Blakey, as well as a chance to record many of his own compositions. Silver's start with Blue Note in 1952 led him to his first recordings as a leader. In 1953, he joined forces with Art Blakey to form a cooperative under their joint leadership. The band's first album, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, was a milestone in the development of the genre that came to be known as hard bop. Many of the tunes penned by Silver for that record — "The Preacher," "Doodlin'," "Room 608" — became jazz classics and have been performed and recorded by many musicians including Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, and Dizzy Gillespie among others. These same songs set a new standard in using soul in jazz. From 1954-6, Silver and Blakey played in the co-operative Jazz Messengers, until Blakey took over the band and Silver formed his own quintet.
He has led his own groups consistently since 1956. Silver's first breakthrough as a composer came with pieces written for the Messengers, such as The Preacher, but on his own albums he went on to create a string of memorable pieces that similarly combined a catchy tune with a forceful gospel-inspired beat, such as Sister Sadie, Cape Verdean Blues and Song For My Father. His bands have consistently been a training ground for great soloists, and his sidemen have included a host of subsequently famous names. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he experimented with larger groups and a different style, but from midway through the '80s he returned to hard bop, and in the 1990s signed with Verve records, creating some worthy successors to the many classic albums he made during his 28 years at Blue Note. His piano style involves sharply defined, bluesy right hand phrasing, over a grumbling left-hand bass that is unlike the style of any other player, and remains his immediately identifiable musical signature.
His influence continues with the release of Rockin’ With Rachmaninoff, Silver’s Bop City Records debut. The concept of the album is based on a dream of Silver’s in which Duke Ellington and Rachmaninoff meet in heaven. Rachmaninoff is then introduced to many jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, “Muddy” Waters, Mahalia Jackson and many others. These musical tales converge many of the great styles largely pioneered by Silver throughout his career. These songs are driven by Silver’s signature piano styling and powerful arrangements, and once again demonstrate his significant impact on the contemporary mainstream of jazz.
http://alldylan.com/today-horace-silver-is-85/
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/a-fireside-chat-with-horace-silver-horace-silver-by-aaj-staff__1982.php
It's difficult for me to imagine hard bop without Horace Silver. It is impossible for me to imagine Blue Note without Horace Silver. And I would wake up in a cold sweat at the mere thought of not having Six Pieces of Silver, The Stylings of Silver, Further Explorations by the Horace Silver Quintet, Finger Poppin' with the Horace Silver Quintet, Blowin' the Blues Away, Horace-Scope, Doin' the Ting (At the Village Gate; the Tokyo Blues and Silver's Serenade in my less than impressive collection. So to say that I am a fan does not do Silver justice. Justice, he has never received from the formal jazz media and anal retentive critics, that obviously do not have their ear to the ground considering Silver is a populous favorite. Even as he is but just a few years away from his 75th birthday, the pianist / leader / composer shows no signs of slowing down. Allow me to give Silver the stage, as always, I bring it to you unedited and in his own words.
FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
HORACE SILVER: I took up the piano, merely as a monkey see, monkey do type of a thing. There was a girl who lived next door to me. We were about the same age and we used to play together. She had a younger sister and sometimes we would play with her too. She was pretty young, but me and this girl, we used to play together. When her dad or mother bought her a bicycle, I went and I asked my dad for a bicycle. When she got her roller skates, I asked my dad for them. I tried to copy all the stuff that her parents were giving her, I asked my dad for. So finally, her brother was a pianist and he played in some bands around town here locally and finally, she decided that she wanted to study the piano and so her parents got her a piano, well, they had a piano actually. So I wanted to play the piano and do the same thing, copy her.
So my uncle worked out in the country somewhere for these rich white people who were moving to Florida and they had an old, upright piano that they wanted to get rid of and so he asked if he could get it and him and my dad found somebody with a truck and they went out there and got the piano and brought it home and put it in the kitchen and then I started taking lessons. That is how I started. After two weeks or three weeks, I got bored with playing scales and exercises and I told my dad that I wanted to quit, but he said, "No, you are not going to quit. You wanted this and I got it for you and you are going to stick with it." He said, "One day, you will thank me for this." And I do, today, thank him for it. But that is how I got started. Actually, Fred, I wasn't that much interested in it at that time.
It wasn't until I started being able to read music a little bit then I would go to the five and ten cent store and buy sheet music like "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller and "Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael and all of these things that I would bring home and play to make it a little bit more interesting to me. It wasn't really until I heard the Jimmie Lunceford band at a local amusement park in Connecticut. I heard that band one Sunday, me and my dad and that band turned me on. That Lunceford band, they sounded so good. I just said to myself, "That's what I want to be. I want to be a musician." I made my dedication that night. I was about eleven years old at the time.
FJ: What were some of your other listening pleasures?
HS: Well, I used to go to the five and ten cents store at Woolworth and they had a record section, the old 78 rpm records and I would buy Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie, Slim and Slam, Slim Gaillard, Slim and Slam, and various other records. Whatever appealed to me, I would take them home and listen to them and get inspired.
FJ: During your distinguished career, you have played alongside the likes of Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Sonny Rollins, Milt Jackson, Cannonball Adderley, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Kenny Dorham, and Art Farmer. Does anyone linger in your memory?
HS: Yeah, well, Miles Davis because I always tell people that you learn with everybody you play with. They're older musicians. They're geniuses. They're inspirational and you learn a lot from playing with them. Either they show you things or else you learn from observing what they do. But I think I learned the most, from any one guy, and that was from Miles Davis. We used to live in the same hotel and he used to come to my room and I had a piano in my room and he would show me some different chords on the piano and I learned some harmonic voicings from him. Also, I just learned from watching what he did and being inspired by his great genius.
FJ: In three decades, during the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, you led well over thirty sessions as a leader for Blue Note Records, not counting the numerous sessions you appeared on. It almost seems like you were the house pianist.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91687982
Bassist Christian McBride is the creative chair for jazz at the
Los Angeles Philharmonic –- which means he gets to put together programs
at Walt Disney Concert Hall with music he loves. One of the musicians
he loves most is jazz pianist and composer Horace Silver.
"Horace Silver's music has always represented what jazz musicians preach but don't necessarily practice, and that's simplicity," McBride says. "It sticks to the memory; it's very singable. It gets in your blood easily; you can comprehend it easily. It's very rooted, very soulful."
In a career that's spanned more than 50 years, Silver has performed with great jazz instrumentalists such as Stan Getz, Lester Young, Miles Davis, and Art Blakey. The pianist was one of the first to combine R&B and gospel with jazz to create a style called hard bop.
A legion of all-stars gathered at Walt Disney Concert Hall to celebrate Silver's music. Artists such as Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell, and Randy Brecker took turns performing some of Silver's compositions for quintet, while pianist Cedar Walton played Silver's part on the piano. The performance also featured vocals from Andy Bey and Dee Dee Bridgewater.
But there was one musician that McBride was determined to add to the evening's line-up: drummer Roger Humphries. McBride says he had to track him down.
"Roger Humphries has been such a legendary underworld figure for so many years," McBride says. "I mean, he's one of those kind of guys where he sounded so great on all those Horace Silver records, but he moved back to Pittsburgh over 30 years ago. And, you know, he just stopped traveling. Nobody had really heard from him, except people in Pittsburgh. So it was time for him to make his comeback on the national scene. So Roger came in and just sounded so good, sounded so good –- I was really honored to play with him."
Silver doesn't play anymore, so he watched from the audience, as many of his former colleagues played in his honor.
"I figured that so many of Horace Silver's former musicians are still alive and sounding great, why not put 'em back together again?" McBride says.
"Senor Blues" by Horace Silver 1959:
“NUTVILLE" (1968):
The music played is certainly inspired, well recorded and with great close-ups of the musicians.
Pianist Horace Silver together with trumpeter Blue Mitchell, tenor saxophonist Junior Cook, bassist Gene Tailor and drummer Louis Hayes play their new style of hard bop with great flair and skill. The instrumentation of his quintet (trumpet, tenor sax, piano, double bass, and drums) served as a model for small jazz groups from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s.
Related Articles A Fireside Chat with Horace Silver (2003) A Fireside Chat With Horace Silver (2001) My Conversation with Horace Silver (1999)
Discuss Horace Silver and his music... Horace Silver Corner Horace Silver Discography
http://alyoung.org/2014/06/19/horace-silver-september-2-1928-june-18-2014-in-memoriam/
HORACE SILVER | September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014 | in memoriam
_________________________________________________
Courtesy Blue Note Records
Legendary jazz pianist, composer-arranger and poet-sculptor of funky hard bop, dies at age 85
Horace Silver was brilliant. A populist musician-performer. he loved and respected the audience he’d helped build for an earthy style of bebop deeply rooted in jazz’s blues and gospel origins. With drummer Art Blakey, Silver co-founded the conquering Jazz Messengers. I’m old enough to remember seeing his name listed as Stan Getz’s pianist on 78- and 45-rpm discs on the Royal Roost label when, at age 12, I began to collect records in earnest. I remember, too, the time I called to speak to him when Phil McKellar, a radio DJ at CKLW — a Canadian station in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit — was interviewing Silver right after Six Pieces of Silver, his first Blue Note album, came out.
A tuba player in Detroit’s Central High band, I was just beginning to play trumpet. In a live broadcast Horace asked: “Al, do you play?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What?”
“Trumpet.”
“Oh, yeah, all right! Come on down to the club, man — and bring your horn.”
I almost died. I’d just started taking lessons. By the time he reached his late teens, Horace Silver had moved from Connecticut to New York to play professionally.
Consider the titles of some of his classics: “Señor Blues,” “Opus de Funk,” “Quicksilver,” “The Preacher,” “Filthy McNasty ,” “Sister Sadie,” “Doodlin’,” “Opus de Funk,” “Nica’s Dream,” “Strollin,’” ‘The Tokyo Blues” “The Bagdhad Blues,” “Psychedelic Sally,” and “Song for My Father.”
Silver's earliest musical influence was the Cape Verdean folk music he heard from his Portugese-born father growing up in Connecticut. Later, after he had begun playing piano and saxophone as a high schooler, Silver came under the spell of blues singers and boogie-woogie pianists, as well as boppers like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In 1950, Stan Getz played a concert in Hartford, Connecticut, with a pickup rhythm section that included Silver, drummer Walter Bolden, and bassist Joe Calloway. So impressed was Getz, he hired the whole trio. Silver had been saving his money to move to New York anyway; his hiring by Getz sealed the deal. Silver worked with Getz for a year, then began to freelance around the city with such big-time players as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Oscar Pettiford.
He made several recordings with Getz, proving that Silver's funky, bluesy style of piano was already well-formed in his early 20s. Silver worked with a wide range of musicians and played regularly at a number of Manhattan clubs. His big break came when Lou Donaldson abruptly cancelled a recording date, and Blue Note asked Silver to make the session instead with his own trio.
This began a long relationship with the label, and provided a platform for his playing with several other leaders, including Miles Davis and Art Blakey, as well as a chance to record many of his own compositions. Silver's start with Blue Note in 1952 led him to his first recordings as a leader. In 1953, he joined forces with Art Blakey to form a cooperative under their joint leadership. The band's first album, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, was a milestone in the development of the genre that came to be known as hard bop. Many of the tunes penned by Silver for that record — "The Preacher," "Doodlin'," "Room 608" — became jazz classics and have been performed and recorded by many musicians including Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, and Dizzy Gillespie among others. These same songs set a new standard in using soul in jazz. From 1954-6, Silver and Blakey played in the co-operative Jazz Messengers, until Blakey took over the band and Silver formed his own quintet.
He has led his own groups consistently since 1956. Silver's first breakthrough as a composer came with pieces written for the Messengers, such as The Preacher, but on his own albums he went on to create a string of memorable pieces that similarly combined a catchy tune with a forceful gospel-inspired beat, such as Sister Sadie, Cape Verdean Blues and Song For My Father. His bands have consistently been a training ground for great soloists, and his sidemen have included a host of subsequently famous names. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he experimented with larger groups and a different style, but from midway through the '80s he returned to hard bop, and in the 1990s signed with Verve records, creating some worthy successors to the many classic albums he made during his 28 years at Blue Note. His piano style involves sharply defined, bluesy right hand phrasing, over a grumbling left-hand bass that is unlike the style of any other player, and remains his immediately identifiable musical signature.
His influence continues with the release of Rockin’ With Rachmaninoff, Silver’s Bop City Records debut. The concept of the album is based on a dream of Silver’s in which Duke Ellington and Rachmaninoff meet in heaven. Rachmaninoff is then introduced to many jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, “Muddy” Waters, Mahalia Jackson and many others. These musical tales converge many of the great styles largely pioneered by Silver throughout his career. These songs are driven by Silver’s signature piano styling and powerful arrangements, and once again demonstrate his significant impact on the contemporary mainstream of jazz.
http://alldylan.com/today-horace-silver-is-85/
Today: Horace Silver is 85
"Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it. You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, relax, and uplift the mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls of those who play it was well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body." ~Horace Silver
“We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different.” ~Horace Silver
A Fireside Chat with Horace Silver
by
I have interviewed Horace Silver through the years and he remains an
icon to me. The more I appreciate the Lion/Wolff Blue Note days of
yesteryear, the more admirable Silver's Blue Notes are. There is enough
bio and cred info on Silver's career, done in a more fitting manner than
I could, so allow me folks, Mr. Horace Silver, unedited and in his own
words.
FRED JUNG: When did you become an Angeleno?
HORACE SILVER: I've been divorced for years. I got divorced when my son was about five years old. At that time, I was married and we were undergoing some bad experiences in New York. You know, Fred, I love New York. I still love New York, but we had been burglarized. Me and my wife had gone on vacation and we came back and our apartment had been burglarized. They just about cleaned the whole damn apartment out, took her fur coat and all her jewelry, took the stereo and kitchen appliances, the place was almost empty. They got us good because we were in Europe on a vacation for two weeks. We decided that we wanted to get out of New York. I always did love California. I used to come out from New York and play here once a year and I always enjoyed it so much. I loved the weather and the people. I talked it over with my wife and she agreed and we decided to move out here.
FJ: There is the cautionary phrase, "out of sight, out of mind," were you ever troubled that perhaps being away from New York would have an adverse fallout to your robust career?
HS: No, no, I didn't. Maybe earlier I had that fear, but I didn't have that fear then because by that time I had made a name for myself in jazz. I could move anywhere and commute and do my gigs and still do my tours and recordings. I felt that I could live where I wanted to live because by that time I had built a reputation.
FJ: Word around town is that you have long supported the music in Los Angeles, regularly attending shows at the Jazz Bakery and Catalina Bar & Grill.
HS: I want to keep up with what's going on. I want to hear all the old timers that come in from New York, who play at the Jazz Bakery or Catalina's, check them out and give them a hug, but I also want to hear some of these youngsters that are coming out here. There are some fine, young players and I like to go out and check them out and encourage them.
FJ: It has become a part of jazz lore, but as the story goes, very early in your career, you were struggling to move to New York, Stan Getz hired you and you were able to do so.
HS: That's pretty right. I had been saving my money to go to New York and try to make it in music. I got sick at that time and I had maybe seven hundred dollars in the bank and I had spent all that money on doctor bills. So I guess I used that as an excuse not to go because deep down within. I had a fear of going because what if I went down to New York and I didn't make it? So I had procrastinated on going, although I had all this money saved up. Then when the medical bills came and I had spent all this money, it gave me an excuse not to make the move. But the good Lord was looking after me and Stan Getz came through Hartford and heard me and my trio and hired us. That was a blessing.
FJ: Perhaps raw pre-Getz, you fastly became the most significant addition to the Blue Note catalog.
HS: I used to play at the Paradise Bar and Grill on 110th Street and 8th Avenue with a guy named Big Nick Nicholas. We had the gig there five nights a week. It was him on tenor, Kalil Mahdi on drums, and myself on piano, no bass, and we played there five nights a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we could play anything we wanted to play and all the guys could come and sit in and jam with us. But Friday and Saturday, we had to play for dancing and for the floorshow. Charlie Parker came in and sat in with us a couple of times. Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Joe Newman, Ike Quebec, a mixture of swing era and bebop musicians would come in and sit in with us. Lou Donaldson came in, and that is how I met Alfred Lion. I was a good friend of Lou Donaldson and Alfred used to come in, because he was always scouting for talent, and he heard Lou and he liked Lou and so he recorded Lou. Lou asked me to be on his session and so I made this record with Lou and then a second record for Blue Note. Lou was supposed to make a third record for Blue Note, which I was supposed to be on and Alfred called me and said that Lou couldn't make the session and that he had already booked the studio and to come in and make a trio album for him. That was my opportunity.
FJ: Interesting that he scouted talent, rather than waiting for tapes to come to him a day late and a dollar short.
HS: That is the thing, he didn't wait for somebody to tell him who was great. Alfred got out and went to the clubs at night. He came to the Paradise and listen to the jam sessions to see if there was anything he liked and that is how he discovered Lou.
FJ: Your Blue Note sessions are not only touted for the music, but also the esthetic, the covers were art.
HS: They let me approve them. Frank Wolff usually took all the picture and Reid Miles did all of the designing. When they would get it together, they would have me come in and take a look at it. Most of the time, I approved of it. I told Alfred that most of the guys that recorded for him were concerned with doing a good record and the packaging, they didn't give a shit about. I didn't want a picture on the cover that I didn't like and every time I looked at the cover, I cringed. He gave me that privilege of doing that and that is how I learned to be a producer, watching him and what he did and him allowing me to have input on the covers and liner notes.
FJ: Blue Note has an aggressive reissue program, so eventually, all your releases will be available to the public in some fashion. Do you have plans on doing the same for your Silveto recordings?
HS: Not really. Silveto is still a production company, but I don't produce records anymore. I've got this new record coming out on Bop City Records, which I leased to them. I've leased them the master.
FRED JUNG: When did you become an Angeleno?
HORACE SILVER: I've been divorced for years. I got divorced when my son was about five years old. At that time, I was married and we were undergoing some bad experiences in New York. You know, Fred, I love New York. I still love New York, but we had been burglarized. Me and my wife had gone on vacation and we came back and our apartment had been burglarized. They just about cleaned the whole damn apartment out, took her fur coat and all her jewelry, took the stereo and kitchen appliances, the place was almost empty. They got us good because we were in Europe on a vacation for two weeks. We decided that we wanted to get out of New York. I always did love California. I used to come out from New York and play here once a year and I always enjoyed it so much. I loved the weather and the people. I talked it over with my wife and she agreed and we decided to move out here.
FJ: There is the cautionary phrase, "out of sight, out of mind," were you ever troubled that perhaps being away from New York would have an adverse fallout to your robust career?
HS: No, no, I didn't. Maybe earlier I had that fear, but I didn't have that fear then because by that time I had made a name for myself in jazz. I could move anywhere and commute and do my gigs and still do my tours and recordings. I felt that I could live where I wanted to live because by that time I had built a reputation.
FJ: Word around town is that you have long supported the music in Los Angeles, regularly attending shows at the Jazz Bakery and Catalina Bar & Grill.
HS: I want to keep up with what's going on. I want to hear all the old timers that come in from New York, who play at the Jazz Bakery or Catalina's, check them out and give them a hug, but I also want to hear some of these youngsters that are coming out here. There are some fine, young players and I like to go out and check them out and encourage them.
FJ: It has become a part of jazz lore, but as the story goes, very early in your career, you were struggling to move to New York, Stan Getz hired you and you were able to do so.
HS: That's pretty right. I had been saving my money to go to New York and try to make it in music. I got sick at that time and I had maybe seven hundred dollars in the bank and I had spent all that money on doctor bills. So I guess I used that as an excuse not to go because deep down within. I had a fear of going because what if I went down to New York and I didn't make it? So I had procrastinated on going, although I had all this money saved up. Then when the medical bills came and I had spent all this money, it gave me an excuse not to make the move. But the good Lord was looking after me and Stan Getz came through Hartford and heard me and my trio and hired us. That was a blessing.
FJ: Perhaps raw pre-Getz, you fastly became the most significant addition to the Blue Note catalog.
HS: I used to play at the Paradise Bar and Grill on 110th Street and 8th Avenue with a guy named Big Nick Nicholas. We had the gig there five nights a week. It was him on tenor, Kalil Mahdi on drums, and myself on piano, no bass, and we played there five nights a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we could play anything we wanted to play and all the guys could come and sit in and jam with us. But Friday and Saturday, we had to play for dancing and for the floorshow. Charlie Parker came in and sat in with us a couple of times. Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Joe Newman, Ike Quebec, a mixture of swing era and bebop musicians would come in and sit in with us. Lou Donaldson came in, and that is how I met Alfred Lion. I was a good friend of Lou Donaldson and Alfred used to come in, because he was always scouting for talent, and he heard Lou and he liked Lou and so he recorded Lou. Lou asked me to be on his session and so I made this record with Lou and then a second record for Blue Note. Lou was supposed to make a third record for Blue Note, which I was supposed to be on and Alfred called me and said that Lou couldn't make the session and that he had already booked the studio and to come in and make a trio album for him. That was my opportunity.
FJ: Interesting that he scouted talent, rather than waiting for tapes to come to him a day late and a dollar short.
HS: That is the thing, he didn't wait for somebody to tell him who was great. Alfred got out and went to the clubs at night. He came to the Paradise and listen to the jam sessions to see if there was anything he liked and that is how he discovered Lou.
FJ: Your Blue Note sessions are not only touted for the music, but also the esthetic, the covers were art.
HS: They let me approve them. Frank Wolff usually took all the picture and Reid Miles did all of the designing. When they would get it together, they would have me come in and take a look at it. Most of the time, I approved of it. I told Alfred that most of the guys that recorded for him were concerned with doing a good record and the packaging, they didn't give a shit about. I didn't want a picture on the cover that I didn't like and every time I looked at the cover, I cringed. He gave me that privilege of doing that and that is how I learned to be a producer, watching him and what he did and him allowing me to have input on the covers and liner notes.
FJ: Blue Note has an aggressive reissue program, so eventually, all your releases will be available to the public in some fashion. Do you have plans on doing the same for your Silveto recordings?
HS: Not really. Silveto is still a production company, but I don't produce records anymore. I've got this new record coming out on Bop City Records, which I leased to them. I've leased them the master.
FJ: Rockin' with Rachmaninoff, what is the story behind amusing concept?
HS: I had a dream one night that Duke Ellington and Rachmaninoff met in heaven and they both were admirerers of each other's music and Duke took Rachmaninoff on a tour around heaven to meet all the jazz greats that had died and gone there like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Thelonious Monk. When I woke up from the dream, I thought that this would make a good idea for a stage play. So I sat down and wrote one. After I got it done, I was concerned as to how I was going to put this on. I knew Mayor Tom Bradley was a big jazz fan and so I approached him at an affair. Him and Billy Taylor went to college together and Billy Taylor was performing in town and I went there and brought a package of my Silveto Records and gave them to Mayor Bradley as a present. I included a little letter in there saying if he could help me get Rockin' with Rachmaninoff put on in L.A., I would donate my services free. They would just have to pay the dancers, singers, and narrator. His secretary called me a few weeks later and said that he wanted to have a meeting with me. He introduced me to the head of the cultural affairs department and it took us about a year to get this thing put on, but we did put it on at a theater in Hollywood for a weekend. We got a great review in the paper, but nothing ever happened after that. So I decided to take the band and singers into the studio and record this music for posterity.
This was a major point in my career. I had never written a stage play before. I wanted to put this down on tape and bring it out on my Silveto label. That was my intent, but in the meantime, things got so bad with the Silveto label, where the distributors were not paying me, I had to throw in the towel. I went to Columbia and asked them if they would be interested in listening to it, but they weren't even interested in listening to it.
Then I went to Impulse! and same thing. The thing sat there in my closet for eleven years. Finally my contract with Verve ended and I was free. I thought that now would be the time to get this thing out of the closet and mix the sound because I had never mixed the sound before. It was on two-inch tape. So we got in the studio and mixed the sound and I wanted to find someone to release it because I wasn't going back to trying to put out my own records anymore because these distributors are a bunch of crooks. They take your records and they never pay you for them. Then I heard Al Schmitt and some partners were starting this company, Bop City Records. I called Al and asked if he wanted to hear it and he said yes and I sent him a copy. He called me back and said he liked it and I made a deal to lease it to them. It is coming out October 28.
FJ: And health and wealth are in the win column?
HS: Almost, not quite. I am working on something right now. Norah Jones did my tune "Peace" and I feel I haven't been paid the right money for it. They never applied for a license for it and when I found out about it, it had been out already for a year and a half or so. I sent them a license and they signed it and sent it back, but they paid me from the date on the license and not the release. I am trying to get that resolved because Norah Jones sells a lot of records. But I'm feeling pretty good. I have a little sciatic problem that bothers me from time to time, my right hip, but I am getting treatment for it. Other than that, I am fine.
FJ: Have you retired from performing?
HS: Not exactly. Let me put it this way, Fred, I've been out there on the road for fifty years and I am kind of tired of it now. It is not that I don't want to play in front of the people. I like to do that. I am going into the studio in April to do a new album with the Silver Brass Ensemble and then I would like to tour behind that.
FJ: Impressively, even Cecil Taylor suggests your influence.
HS: I haven't seen Cecil in a long time, but one thing is for sure, if I am playing somewhere and Cecil is anywhere near it, he always shows up and we hang out. I'm very pleased that he likes my stuff.
FJ: And the future?
HS: Well, I am hoping and praying that God will alert me when I get too old and feeble to make a good record and stop making records.
FJ: Here is hoping that never happens.
HS: Me too (laughing). A few of my idols have fallen under that. Lester Young, as great as he is, towards his later years, he was not in good physical health, but I presume he needed the money and he made some records that were not up to his standard. Same thing with Coleman Hawkins, the last record he made was not up to his standard, Bud Powell, same thing. One thing I can say about Thelonious Monk, he quit when he was ahead. He knew when to stop. You won't find a weak record out by Thelonious. Also, I've started a non-profit organization called the Horace Silver Foundation to give annual scholarships to deserving piano students. I am affiliated with USC and our first show will be there November 16, Sunday afternoon at 4. The winner will receive a ten thousand dollar scholarship and go directly to the school of their choice. It is free and please come.
HS: I had a dream one night that Duke Ellington and Rachmaninoff met in heaven and they both were admirerers of each other's music and Duke took Rachmaninoff on a tour around heaven to meet all the jazz greats that had died and gone there like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Thelonious Monk. When I woke up from the dream, I thought that this would make a good idea for a stage play. So I sat down and wrote one. After I got it done, I was concerned as to how I was going to put this on. I knew Mayor Tom Bradley was a big jazz fan and so I approached him at an affair. Him and Billy Taylor went to college together and Billy Taylor was performing in town and I went there and brought a package of my Silveto Records and gave them to Mayor Bradley as a present. I included a little letter in there saying if he could help me get Rockin' with Rachmaninoff put on in L.A., I would donate my services free. They would just have to pay the dancers, singers, and narrator. His secretary called me a few weeks later and said that he wanted to have a meeting with me. He introduced me to the head of the cultural affairs department and it took us about a year to get this thing put on, but we did put it on at a theater in Hollywood for a weekend. We got a great review in the paper, but nothing ever happened after that. So I decided to take the band and singers into the studio and record this music for posterity.
This was a major point in my career. I had never written a stage play before. I wanted to put this down on tape and bring it out on my Silveto label. That was my intent, but in the meantime, things got so bad with the Silveto label, where the distributors were not paying me, I had to throw in the towel. I went to Columbia and asked them if they would be interested in listening to it, but they weren't even interested in listening to it.
Then I went to Impulse! and same thing. The thing sat there in my closet for eleven years. Finally my contract with Verve ended and I was free. I thought that now would be the time to get this thing out of the closet and mix the sound because I had never mixed the sound before. It was on two-inch tape. So we got in the studio and mixed the sound and I wanted to find someone to release it because I wasn't going back to trying to put out my own records anymore because these distributors are a bunch of crooks. They take your records and they never pay you for them. Then I heard Al Schmitt and some partners were starting this company, Bop City Records. I called Al and asked if he wanted to hear it and he said yes and I sent him a copy. He called me back and said he liked it and I made a deal to lease it to them. It is coming out October 28.
FJ: And health and wealth are in the win column?
HS: Almost, not quite. I am working on something right now. Norah Jones did my tune "Peace" and I feel I haven't been paid the right money for it. They never applied for a license for it and when I found out about it, it had been out already for a year and a half or so. I sent them a license and they signed it and sent it back, but they paid me from the date on the license and not the release. I am trying to get that resolved because Norah Jones sells a lot of records. But I'm feeling pretty good. I have a little sciatic problem that bothers me from time to time, my right hip, but I am getting treatment for it. Other than that, I am fine.
FJ: Have you retired from performing?
HS: Not exactly. Let me put it this way, Fred, I've been out there on the road for fifty years and I am kind of tired of it now. It is not that I don't want to play in front of the people. I like to do that. I am going into the studio in April to do a new album with the Silver Brass Ensemble and then I would like to tour behind that.
FJ: Impressively, even Cecil Taylor suggests your influence.
HS: I haven't seen Cecil in a long time, but one thing is for sure, if I am playing somewhere and Cecil is anywhere near it, he always shows up and we hang out. I'm very pleased that he likes my stuff.
FJ: And the future?
HS: Well, I am hoping and praying that God will alert me when I get too old and feeble to make a good record and stop making records.
FJ: Here is hoping that never happens.
HS: Me too (laughing). A few of my idols have fallen under that. Lester Young, as great as he is, towards his later years, he was not in good physical health, but I presume he needed the money and he made some records that were not up to his standard. Same thing with Coleman Hawkins, the last record he made was not up to his standard, Bud Powell, same thing. One thing I can say about Thelonious Monk, he quit when he was ahead. He knew when to stop. You won't find a weak record out by Thelonious. Also, I've started a non-profit organization called the Horace Silver Foundation to give annual scholarships to deserving piano students. I am affiliated with USC and our first show will be there November 16, Sunday afternoon at 4. The winner will receive a ten thousand dollar scholarship and go directly to the school of their choice. It is free and please come.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/a-fireside-chat-with-horace-silver-horace-silver-by-aaj-staff__1982.php
A Fireside Chat With Horace Silver
by
When I wrote them, I would say to myself that I hope these at least withstand the test of time. I hope they don't sound old in ten years...
It's difficult for me to imagine hard bop without Horace Silver. It is impossible for me to imagine Blue Note without Horace Silver. And I would wake up in a cold sweat at the mere thought of not having Six Pieces of Silver, The Stylings of Silver, Further Explorations by the Horace Silver Quintet, Finger Poppin' with the Horace Silver Quintet, Blowin' the Blues Away, Horace-Scope, Doin' the Ting (At the Village Gate; the Tokyo Blues and Silver's Serenade in my less than impressive collection. So to say that I am a fan does not do Silver justice. Justice, he has never received from the formal jazz media and anal retentive critics, that obviously do not have their ear to the ground considering Silver is a populous favorite. Even as he is but just a few years away from his 75th birthday, the pianist / leader / composer shows no signs of slowing down. Allow me to give Silver the stage, as always, I bring it to you unedited and in his own words.
FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
HORACE SILVER: I took up the piano, merely as a monkey see, monkey do type of a thing. There was a girl who lived next door to me. We were about the same age and we used to play together. She had a younger sister and sometimes we would play with her too. She was pretty young, but me and this girl, we used to play together. When her dad or mother bought her a bicycle, I went and I asked my dad for a bicycle. When she got her roller skates, I asked my dad for them. I tried to copy all the stuff that her parents were giving her, I asked my dad for. So finally, her brother was a pianist and he played in some bands around town here locally and finally, she decided that she wanted to study the piano and so her parents got her a piano, well, they had a piano actually. So I wanted to play the piano and do the same thing, copy her.
So my uncle worked out in the country somewhere for these rich white people who were moving to Florida and they had an old, upright piano that they wanted to get rid of and so he asked if he could get it and him and my dad found somebody with a truck and they went out there and got the piano and brought it home and put it in the kitchen and then I started taking lessons. That is how I started. After two weeks or three weeks, I got bored with playing scales and exercises and I told my dad that I wanted to quit, but he said, "No, you are not going to quit. You wanted this and I got it for you and you are going to stick with it." He said, "One day, you will thank me for this." And I do, today, thank him for it. But that is how I got started. Actually, Fred, I wasn't that much interested in it at that time.
It wasn't until I started being able to read music a little bit then I would go to the five and ten cent store and buy sheet music like "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller and "Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael and all of these things that I would bring home and play to make it a little bit more interesting to me. It wasn't really until I heard the Jimmie Lunceford band at a local amusement park in Connecticut. I heard that band one Sunday, me and my dad and that band turned me on. That Lunceford band, they sounded so good. I just said to myself, "That's what I want to be. I want to be a musician." I made my dedication that night. I was about eleven years old at the time.
FJ: What were some of your other listening pleasures?
HS: Well, I used to go to the five and ten cents store at Woolworth and they had a record section, the old 78 rpm records and I would buy Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie, Slim and Slam, Slim Gaillard, Slim and Slam, and various other records. Whatever appealed to me, I would take them home and listen to them and get inspired.
FJ: During your distinguished career, you have played alongside the likes of Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Sonny Rollins, Milt Jackson, Cannonball Adderley, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Kenny Dorham, and Art Farmer. Does anyone linger in your memory?
HS: Yeah, well, Miles Davis because I always tell people that you learn with everybody you play with. They're older musicians. They're geniuses. They're inspirational and you learn a lot from playing with them. Either they show you things or else you learn from observing what they do. But I think I learned the most, from any one guy, and that was from Miles Davis. We used to live in the same hotel and he used to come to my room and I had a piano in my room and he would show me some different chords on the piano and I learned some harmonic voicings from him. Also, I just learned from watching what he did and being inspired by his great genius.
FJ: In three decades, during the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, you led well over thirty sessions as a leader for Blue Note Records, not counting the numerous sessions you appeared on. It almost seems like you were the house pianist.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91687982
Concerts
For Senor Blues: A Horace Silver Tribute
Set List
- "Peace"
- "Senor Blues"
- "Nica's Dream"
- "The Jody Grind"
- "Doodlin'"
- "Filthy McNasty"
- "Song for My Father"
Performers
- Christian McBride, bass
- Cedar Walton, piano
- Tom Harrell, trumpet
- Charles Tolliver, trumpet
- Randy Brecker, trumpet
- George Coleman, sax
- Bennie Maupin, sax
- Joe Lovano, sax
- Roger Humphries, drums
- Andy Bey, vocals
- Dee Dee Bridgewater, vocals
Horace Silver, during a recording session for Blue Note records. Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images
Bassist Christian McBride organized the tribute to Horace Silver, who was in the audience watching. John Abbott
"Horace Silver's music has always represented what jazz musicians preach but don't necessarily practice, and that's simplicity," McBride says. "It sticks to the memory; it's very singable. It gets in your blood easily; you can comprehend it easily. It's very rooted, very soulful."
In a career that's spanned more than 50 years, Silver has performed with great jazz instrumentalists such as Stan Getz, Lester Young, Miles Davis, and Art Blakey. The pianist was one of the first to combine R&B and gospel with jazz to create a style called hard bop.
A legion of all-stars gathered at Walt Disney Concert Hall to celebrate Silver's music. Artists such as Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell, and Randy Brecker took turns performing some of Silver's compositions for quintet, while pianist Cedar Walton played Silver's part on the piano. The performance also featured vocals from Andy Bey and Dee Dee Bridgewater.
But there was one musician that McBride was determined to add to the evening's line-up: drummer Roger Humphries. McBride says he had to track him down.
"Roger Humphries has been such a legendary underworld figure for so many years," McBride says. "I mean, he's one of those kind of guys where he sounded so great on all those Horace Silver records, but he moved back to Pittsburgh over 30 years ago. And, you know, he just stopped traveling. Nobody had really heard from him, except people in Pittsburgh. So it was time for him to make his comeback on the national scene. So Roger came in and just sounded so good, sounded so good –- I was really honored to play with him."
Silver doesn't play anymore, so he watched from the audience, as many of his former colleagues played in his honor.
"I figured that so many of Horace Silver's former musicians are still alive and sounding great, why not put 'em back together again?" McBride says.
Related NPR Stories
Bassist Christian McBride, Plying the Bottom Groove April 11, 2006
Horace Silver: 'Song for My Father' Aug. 1, 2001
Web Resources
Featured Artist
THE MUSIC OF HORACE SILVER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH HORACE SILVER:
Horace Silver - "Song for My Father":
Recorded
live in Copenhagen, Denmark, April 1968. Song for My Father was
recorded in October 1964 and released on the Blue Note label. The album
was inspired by a trip that Silver had made to Brazil. The cover artwork
features a photograph of Silver's father, John Tavares Silva, to whom
the title song was dedicated. "My mother was of Irish and Negro descent,
my father of Portuguese origin", Silver recalls in the liner notes, "He
was born on the island of Maio, one of the Cape Verde Islands." The
album line-up differs from the Copenhagen musicians here.
Horace Silver - "Señor Blues"
COMPOSITION BY HORACE SILVER
HORACE SILVER: PIANO
JUNIOR COOK: TENOR SAXOPHONE
BLUE MITCHELL: TRUMPET
GENE TAYLOR: BASS
LOUIS HAYES: DRUMS
Live in concert:
"Senor Blues" by Horace Silver 1959:
In the fifties and sixties the Netherlands as well as the Scandinavian countries had an enormous attraction for American jazz musicians. It appeared that they were much more appreciated and also, there were no racial barriers for so many to overcome in their homeland.
We see here a clip with the Horace Silver Quintet in 1959 recorded, in what looks to me the Singer Theatre in Laren, about 15 minutes on a bicycle from my home in Bussum. In 1951, Horace Silver (born in 1929) moved to New York City where he accompanied saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and many other legends. In the following year, he met the executives at Blue Note while working as a sideman for saxophonist Lou Donaldson. This meeting led to Silver signing with the label where he would remain until 1980. He also collaborated with Art Blakey in forming the Jazz Messengers during the early 1950s (which Blakey would continue to lead after Silver formed his own quintet in 1956).
During these years, Silver helped create the rhythmically forceful branch of jazz known as "hard bop" He based much of his own writing on blues and gospel---the latter is particularly prominent on one of his biggest tunes, "The Preacher." While his compositions at this time featured surprising tempo shifts and a range of melodic ideas, they immediately caught the attention of a wide audience. Silver's own piano playing easily shifted from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic within just a few bars. At the same time, his sharp use of repetition was funky even before that word could be used in polite company. Along with Silver's own work, his bands often featured such rising jazz stars as saxophonists Junior Cook and Hank Mobley, trumpeter Blue Mitchell, and drummer Louis Hayes.
Horace Silver - "Song for My Father"--1964
(Composition by Horace Silver):
Album on the Blue Note Label
Song for my Father (1964)
Personnel:
Horace Silver — piano
Carmell Jones — trumpet
Joe Henderson — tenor saxophone
Teddy Smith — bass
Roger Humphries — drums
Horace Silver - "Serenade to a Soul Sister"
(Composition by Horace Silver, 1968)
Horace Silver - piano
Charles Tolliver - trumpet
Stanley Turrentine - tenor saxophone
Bob Cranshaw - bass, electric bass
Mickey Roker - drums
Horace Silver - "Filthy McNasty":
Horace Silver - piano; Blue Mitchell - piano; Junior Cook - tenor sax; Gene Taylor - Bass; Roy Brooks - drums.
Horace Silver at Newport 1959:
Horace Silver - piano
Junior Cook - tenor
Blue Mitchell - trumpet
Gene Taylor - bass
Roy Brooks - drums
“NUTVILLE" (1968):
Composition by Horace Silver
Billy Cobham--Drums
Horace Silver--Piano
Bill Hardman--Trumpet
Bennie Maupin--Tenor sacxophone
John Williams--Bass
Horace Silver - "The Jody Grind":
Recorded on 1966 for Blue Note
Horace Silver (piano) * Woody Shaw (trumpet) * James Spaulding
(flute, alto sax) * Tyrone Washington (tenor sax) * Larry Ridley
(bass) * Roger Humphries (drums)
HORACE SILVER QUINTET-- "Let's Get To The Nitty Gritty" (1963):
"Cool Eyes" - Horace Silver Quintet 1958:
Live in concert in Denmark
The enormously popular Horace Silver Quintet play their signature tune, "Cool Eyes" during a 1959 broadcast for the Dutch KRO Company (KRO stands for Catholic Radio Broadcaster). These broadcasts were usually done during the day in a theater close to Hilversum, the Dutch radio and TV town. I vaguely remember that the public during these radio- and TV performances was usually invited and tickets were free. When one looks at this audience there is very little that would inspire any musician and maybe that is why the band had their backs towards that audience.
The music played is certainly inspired, well recorded and with great close-ups of the musicians.
Pianist Horace Silver together with trumpeter Blue Mitchell, tenor saxophonist Junior Cook, bassist Gene Tailor and drummer Louis Hayes play their new style of hard bop with great flair and skill. The instrumentation of his quintet (trumpet, tenor sax, piano, double bass, and drums) served as a model for small jazz groups from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s.
Related Articles A Fireside Chat with Horace Silver (2003) A Fireside Chat With Horace Silver (2001) My Conversation with Horace Silver (1999)
Discuss Horace Silver and his music... Horace Silver Corner Horace Silver Discography
http://alyoung.org/2014/06/19/horace-silver-september-2-1928-june-18-2014-in-memoriam/
HORACE SILVER | September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014 | in memoriam
_________________________________________________
Courtesy Blue Note Records
Legendary jazz pianist, composer-arranger and poet-sculptor of funky hard bop, dies at age 85
Horace Silver was brilliant. A populist musician-performer. he loved and respected the audience he’d helped build for an earthy style of bebop deeply rooted in jazz’s blues and gospel origins. With drummer Art Blakey, Silver co-founded the conquering Jazz Messengers. I’m old enough to remember seeing his name listed as Stan Getz’s pianist on 78- and 45-rpm discs on the Royal Roost label when, at age 12, I began to collect records in earnest. I remember, too, the time I called to speak to him when Phil McKellar, a radio DJ at CKLW — a Canadian station in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit — was interviewing Silver right after Six Pieces of Silver, his first Blue Note album, came out.
A tuba player in Detroit’s Central High band, I was just beginning to play trumpet. In a live broadcast Horace asked: “Al, do you play?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What?”
“Trumpet.”
“Oh, yeah, all right! Come on down to the club, man — and bring your horn.”
I almost died. I’d just started taking lessons. By the time he reached his late teens, Horace Silver had moved from Connecticut to New York to play professionally.
Consider the titles of some of his classics: “Señor Blues,” “Opus de Funk,” “Quicksilver,” “The Preacher,” “Filthy McNasty ,” “Sister Sadie,” “Doodlin’,” “Opus de Funk,” “Nica’s Dream,” “Strollin,’” ‘The Tokyo Blues” “The Bagdhad Blues,” “Psychedelic Sally,” and “Song for My Father.”
Is there a price we can place on the treasury of pleasure Horace Silver has left to us?
– Al Young
Jazz Profiles from NPR
Horace Silver
Produced by Miyoshi Smith
Read and listen
Horace Silver is widely regarded as the father of hard bop piano. He places heavy emphasis on the blues and even gospel roots of jazz, while working in intricate, original improvisations. His energetic playing and infectious compositions never fail to get listeners moving to the rhythm.
Listen to trumpeter Randy Brecker, drummer Louis Hayes, and writer Gary Giddins talk about Horace's music
Born of African American and Portuguese parentage on September 3, 1928 in Norwalk, Connecticut, Horace's first introduction to music came in high school, where he played saxophone in the marching band and orchestra. He didn't get really serious about music until after he heard Jimmy Lunceford's band play.
Listen to Horace recall listening with his father to Jimmy Lunceford's band
Horace switched from saxophone to piano and immersed himself in jazz, teaching himself to play and jamming frequently with his teenage friends. His big break came when he was offered a job at the Sundown nightclub in Hartford, where he backed some of the most famous names in jazz, including saxophonist Stan Getz who was so impressed with him that he asked him to join him on the road.
Eventually, Horace settled in New York, finding steady work as a jazz recording session pianist. His remarkable solos on Miles Davis' 1954 Prestige album, Walkin', that caught the attention of many jazz musicians and critics.
A few months prior to Miles' Walkin' sessions, Horace teamed up with drummer Art Blakey and formed the Jazz Messengers. The first edition included trumpeter Kenny Dorham, tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, and bassist Doug Watkins. Their soulful sound soon became synonymous with the group's label, Blue Note Records.
Listen to Giddins explain how Horace's music came to define the mid-1950s Blue Note sound
"I hope my stuff will be naturally commercial, but it has to be natural, you know. I'm not gonna do something that's not me. I've been myself my whole life, throughout my musical career."
-- Horace Silver
Horace left the Messengers in 1956, but he kept up a relationship with Blue Note that lasted over 25 years, recording some of the label's most treasured albums. His ensembles became hands-on training grounds for future jazz stars including Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Joe Henderson, and many others.
Listen to saxophonist Joe Henderson and Brecker explain Silver's compositional and leadership style.
Horace created signature compositional elements that would later be closely studied by both his contemporaries and those who followed in his footsteps. One was the way he would write unison parts for the bass player and his left-hand rhythmic figure on piano; another was the way he wrote bracing horn harmonies on top of rollicking rhythms.
Listen to Horace explain some of his compositional methods
Despite the immediate distinction of Horace's music, he doesn't adhere to any particular formula. He draws from a wide array of complex harmonies, rhythmic motifs, and codas.
Listen to Horace dismiss formulaic approach to compositon
As a pianist, Horace has never demonstrated the pyrotechnics of an Art Tatum or Oscar Peterson, becoming instead an artist who works brillantly within his means, especially when it comes accompanying other soloists.
Listen to Giddins and Horace talk about his piano playing
Horace's music always betrays his love for Latin music. He grew up listening to Cape Verdean folk songs from his father, who hailed from that region. On songs such as "The Cape Verdean Blues" and "Señor Blues," Horace pushes the Latin influences to the forefront.
Listen to Horace share his love for Latin music
After leaving Blue Note Records in 1979, Horace released material on his independent lables, Silverto and Emerald. He transitioned back to the major labels in the 1990s, releasing critically acclaimed CDs for Columbia and Impulse! Records. Now in his seventies, Horace is still thrilling audiences with his soulful playing.
Listen to Horace reflect on his music
SHOW PLAYLIST
View Horace Silver show playlist
NPR RESOURCES
Listen to the NPR Basic Jazz Record Library entry for Horace Silver' 1964 album Song For My Father
Browse the NPR Jazz Web site -- NPRJazz.org
_________________________________________________
1983 HORACE SILVER INTERVIEW
Three Audio Clips
Canadian Jazz Archive Online | FM 91 (Toronto)
_________________________________________________
© Blue Note Records
Listen to “Song for My Father,”(Canção para Meu Pai) just one of Horace Silver’s celebrated and much-played works.
Seasoned jazz lovers A.B. Spellman and Murray Horowitz revisit Horace Silver’s music to discuss in depth his deathless “Song for My Father.”
_________________________________________________
“Nica’s Dream”
(1956)
Horace Silver, composer and pianist; Donald Byrd, trumpet, Hank Mobley, tenor saxophone; Doug Watkins, bass; Art Blakey, drums
© Columbia Records
Horace Silver
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Horace Silver | ||
|---|---|---|
Silver by Dmitri Savitski, 1989
|
||
| Background information | ||
| Born | September 2, 1928 Norwalk, Connecticut, U.S. | |
| Died | June 18, 2014 (aged 85) New Rochelle, New York, U.S. | |
| Genres | Jazz, hard bop, mainstream jazz, soul jazz, jazz fusion | |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, arranger | |
| Instruments | Piano | |
| Years active | 1946–2004 | |
| Labels | Blue Note, Silveto, Emerald, Columbia, Impulse!, Verve | |
| Associated acts | Art Blakey, Junior Cook, Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Joe Henderson, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley | |
| Website | Official website | |
Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver[note 1] (September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, particularly in the hard bop style that he helped pioneer in the 1950s.
After playing tenor saxophone and piano at school in Connecticut, Silver got his break on piano when his trio was recruited by Stan Getz in 1950. Silver soon moved to New York City, where he developed a reputation as a composer and for his bluesy playing. Frequent sideman recordings in the mid-1950s helped further, but it was his work with the Jazz Messengers, co-led by Art Blakey, that brought both his writing and playing most attention. Their Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers album contained Silver's first hit, "The Preacher". After leaving Blakey in 1956, Silver formed his own quintet, with what became the standard small group line-up of tenor saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums. Their public performances and frequent recordings for Blue Note Records increased Silver's popularity, even through changes of personnel. His most successful album was Song for My Father, made with two iterations of the quintet in 1963 and 1964.
Several changes occurred in the early 1970s: Silver disbanded his group to spend more time with his wife and to concentrate on composing; he included lyrics in his recordings; and his interest in spiritualism developed. The last two of these were often combined, resulting in commercially unsuccessful releases such as The United States of Mind series. Silver left Blue Note after 28 years, founded his own record label, and scaled back his touring in the 1980s, relying in part on royalties from his compositions for income. In 1993, he returned to major record labels, releasing five albums before gradually withdrawing from public view because of health problems.
As a player, Silver transitioned from bebop to hard bop by stressing melody rather than complex harmony, and combined clean and often humorous right-hand lines with darker notes and chords in a near-perpetual left-hand rumble. His compositions similarly emphasized catchy melodies, but often also contained dissonant harmonies. Many of his varied repertoire of songs became jazz standards that are still widely played. His considerable legacy encompasses his influence on other pianists and composers, and the development of young jazz talents who appeared in his bands over the course of four decades.
Contents
Early life
Silver was born on September 2, 1928, in Norwalk, Connecticut.[2] His mother, Gertrude, was from Connecticut; his father, John Tavares Silver, was born on the island of Maio, Cape Verde, and emigrated to the United States as a young man.[3][note 2] She was a maid and sang in a church choir;[5] he worked for a tire company.[6] Horace had a much older half-brother, Eugene Fletcher, from his mother's first marriage, and was the third child for his parents, after John, who lived to 6 months, and Maria, who was stillborn.[7]Silver began playing the piano in his childhood and had classical music lessons.[8] His father taught him the folk music of Cape Verde.[9] At the age of 11 Silver became interested in becoming a musician, after hearing the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra.[10] His early piano influences included the styles of boogie-woogie and the blues, the pianists Nat "King" Cole, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Teddy Wilson, as well as some jazz horn players.[11] Silver graduated from St. Mary's Grammar School in 1943.[12] From ninth grade he played Lester Young-influenced tenor saxophone in the Norwalk High School band and orchestra.[13] Silver played gigs locally on both piano and tenor saxophone while still at school.[14] He was rejected for military service by a draft board examination that concluded that he had an excessively curved spine.[15] Around 1946 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut to take up a regular job as pianist in a nightclub.[16]
Later life and career
1950–55
Silver's break came in 1950, when his trio backed saxophonist Stan Getz at a club in Hartford: Getz liked Silver's band and recruited them to tour with him.[2] The saxophonist also gave Silver his recording debut, in December 1950, for the Stan Getz Quartet album.[17] After about a year, Silver was replaced as pianist in Getz's band and he moved to New York City.[18] There, working as a freelance, he quickly built a reputation, based on his compositions and bluesy playing.[19][20] He worked for short periods with tenor saxophonists Young and Coleman Hawkins,[21] before meeting altoist Lou Donaldson, with whom he developed his bebop understanding.[22] Donaldson made his first recording on Blue Note Records in 1952, with Silver on piano, Gene Ramey on bass and Art Taylor on drums.[22] Later that year, another Blue Note quartet session was booked for Donaldson, with Art Blakey replacing Taylor, but the saxophonist withdrew and producer–owner Alfred Lion offered Silver the studio time for a trio recording.[23] Most of the tracks recorded at it were Silver originals,[2] and he went on to stay with Blue Note as a leader for the following 28 years.[21]Silver was also busy recording as a sideman. In 1953, he was pianist on sessions led by Sonny Stitt, Howard McGhee, and Al Cohn, and, the following year, by Art Farmer, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson and others.[24] He also won the Down Beat critics' new star award for piano players in 1954,[25] and appeared at the first Newport Jazz Festival, substituting for John Lewis in the Modern Jazz Quartet.[26] Silver's early 1950s recordings demonstrate that Powell was a major pianistic influence, but this had waned by the middle of the decade.[27]
In New York, Silver and Blakey co-founded the Jazz Messengers, a cooperatively-run group that initially recorded under various leaders and names.[28] Their first two studio recordings, with Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Kenny Dorham on trumpet, and Doug Watkins on bass, were made in late 1954 and early 1955 and were released as two 10-inch albums under Silver's name,[29] then soon thereafter as the 12-inch Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers.[2] This album contained Silver's first hit, "The Preacher".[30] Unusually in Silver's career, recordings of concert performances were also released at this time, involving quintets at Birdland (1954) and the Café Bohemia (1955).[31] This set of studio and concert recordings was pivotal in the development and defining of hard bop,[32] which combined elements of blues, gospel, and R&B, with bebop-based harmony and rhythm.[33] The new, funky hard bop was commercially popular,[34] and helped to establish Blue Note as a successful business.[35]
1956–69
Silver's final recordings with the Jazz Messengers were in May 1956.[36] Later that year, he left Blakey after one and a half years,[33][37] in part because of the heroin use prevalent in the band,[2] which Silver did not want to be involved in.[38] Soon after leaving, Silver formed his own long-term quintet, after receiving offers of work from club owners who had heard his albums.[39] The first line-up was Mobley (tenor saxophone), Farmer (trumpet), Watkins (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums).[39] The quintet, with various line-ups, continued to record, helping Silver to build his reputation.[40] He wrote almost all of the material they played, and, in concert, he "won over the crowds through his affable personality and all-action approach. He crouched over the piano as the sweat poured out, with his forelock brushing the keys and his feet pounding."[2]After more than a dozen sideman recording sessions in 1955 and a similar number in 1956–57, Silver's appearance on Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2 in April 1957 was his last for another leader, as he opted to concentrate on his own band.[21][41] For several years from the late 1950s, this contained Junior Cook (tenor saxophone), Blue Mitchell (trumpet), Gene Taylor (bass), and either Hayes or Roy Brooks (drums). Their first album was Finger Poppin', in 1959.[42] Silver's tour of Japan early in 1962[43][44] led to the album The Tokyo Blues, recorded later that year.[45] By the early 1960s, Silver's quintet had influenced numerous bandleaders and was among the most popular performers at jazz clubs.[5] They also released singles, including "Blowin' the Blues Away", "Juicy Lucy", and "Sister Sadie", for jukebox and radio play.[46][47] This quintet's sixth and final album was Silver's Serenade, in 1963.[48]
Around this time, Silver composed music for a television commercial for the drink Tab.[49] Early in 1964, Silver visited Brazil for three weeks,[50] an experience he credited with increasing his interest in his heritage.[49] In the same year, he created a new quintet, featuring Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone and Carmell Jones on trumpet.[51] This band recorded most of Silver's best-known album, Song for My Father,[51] which reached No. 95 on the Billboard 200 in 1965,[9] and was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.[52] Recordings and personnel changes – sometimes expanding the band to a sextet – continued in the mid-1960s.[53] In 1966, The Cape Verdean Blues charted at No. 130.[9] The liner notes to the album Serenade to a Soul Sister (1968) included lyrics (written but not sung), indicating a new interest for Silver.[54] His quintet, by then including saxophonist Bennie Maupin, trumpeter Randy Brecker, and drummer Billy Cobham, toured parts of Europe in October and November 1968, sponsored by the U.S. government.[55][56] They also recorded one of Silver's last quintet albums for Blue Note, You Gotta Take a Little Love.[57] The Penguin Guide to Jazz's retrospective summary of Silver's main Blue Note recordings was that they were of a consistently high standard: "each album yields one or two themes that haunt the mind, each usually has a particularly pretty ballad, and they all lay back on a deep pile of solid riffs and workmanlike solos."[45]
1970–80
Silver at Keystone Korner, San Francisco in 1978
Silver included lyrics in more of his compositions at this point, although these were sometimes regarded as doggerel or proselytizing.[2][33] The first album to contain vocals, That Healin' Feelin' (1970[62]), was commercially unsuccessful and Silver had to insist on the support of Blue Note executives to continue releasing music of the same, new style.[33] They agreed to a further two albums that contained vocals and Silver on an RMI electric keyboard; the three were later compiled as The United States of Mind, but were soon dropped from the catalog.[63]
Silver reformed a touring band in 1973.[58] This contained brothers Michael and Randy Brecker.[64] Around this time, according to saxophonist Dave Liebman, Silver's reputation among aspiring young jazz musicians was that he was "a little – not commercial, but not quite the real deal [in jazz]."[65] Silver and his family decided to move to California around 1974, after a burglary at their New York City apartment while they were in Europe.[66] The couple divorced in the mid-1970s.[60]
In 1975, he recorded Silver 'n Brass, the first of five Silver 'n albums, which had other instruments added to the quintet.[67][68] The personnel in his band continued to change, and continued to contain young musicians who made telling contributions.[69] One of these was trumpeter Tom Harrell, who stayed from 1973 to 1977.[69][70] Silver's pattern in the late 1970s was to tour for six months a year.[71] His final Blue Note album was Silver 'n Strings, recorded in 1978 and 1979.[72] His stay was the longest in the label's history.[73] By Silver's account, he left Blue Note after its parent company was sold and the new owners were not interested in promoting jazz.[74] In 1980, he formed the record label Silveto, "dedicated to the spiritual, holistic, self-help elements in music", he commented.[33] Silver also formed Emerald at the same time,[74] a label for straight-ahead jazz, but it was short-lived.[33]
1981–98
Silver in Berkeley, California, 1983
Rockin' with Rachmaninoff, a musical work featuring dancers and narration, written by Silver and choreographed and directed by Donald McKayle, was staged in Los Angeles in 1991.[87] A recording of the work was released on Bop City Records in 2003.[88] After a decade of trying to make his independent label work, Silver abandoned it in 1993, and signed to Columbia Records.[89][90] This also signalled a return to mostly instrumental releases.[5] The first of these, It's Got to Be Funky, was a rare big band album.[90][91] Silver came close to dying soon after its release: he was hospitalized with a previously undiagnosed blood clot problem,[92] but went on to record Pencil Packin' Papa, containing a six-piece brass section, in 1994.[93] That year, he also played as a guest on Dee Dee Bridgewater's album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver.[94]
Silver received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters award in 1995,[5] and in the following year was added to Down Beat's Jazz Hall of Fame.[95] He moved from Columbia to Impulse! Records, where he made the septet The Hardbop Grandpop (1996) and the quintet A Prescription for the Blues (1997).[96] The former was nominated for two Grammy Awards: as an album for best instrumental performance, individual or group; and for Silver's solo on "Diggin' on Dexter".[97] He was again unwell in 1997, so was unable to tour to promote his records.[92] His final studio recording was made in the following year – Jazz Has a Sense of Humor, for Verve Records.[98] One continuation from his early career was that Silver recorded his own compositions for his later albums and they were typically new, rather than re-workings of previous releases.[99]
1999–2014
Silver performed in public for the first time in four years in 2004, appearing with an octet at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York.[100] He was not often seen in public after this.[101] In 2005, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences awarded him its President's Merit Award.[5][52] In 2006, Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver, was published by the University of California Press.[102] A 2008 release, Live at Newport '58, from a Silver concert fifty years earlier, reached the top ten of Billboard's jazz chart.[103]Bassist Christian McBride revealed in 2007 that Silver had Alzheimer's disease.[104][105] Silver died of natural causes in New Rochelle, New York on June 18, 2014.[33] He was survived by his son.[9]
Playing style
Silver's early recordings displayed "a crisp, chipper but slightly wayward style, idiosyncratic enough to take him out of the increasingly stratified realms of bebop".[106] In contrast to the more elaborate bebop piano, he stressed straightforward melodies rather than complex harmonies, and included short riffs and motifs that came and went over the course of a solo.[5][107] While his right hand provided cleanly played lines, his left added bouncy, darker notes and chords in a near-perpetual rumble.[36][107] Silver "always played percussively, rarely suggesting excessive force on the keys but mustering a crisp [...] sound."[107] His fingering was idiosyncratic, but this added to the individuality of his pianism, particularly to the authenticity of the blues facets of his playing.[108] The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave the overall assessment that "Blues and gospel-tinged devices and percussive attacks give his methods a more colourful style, and a generous good humour gives all his records an upbeat feel."[106] Part of the humor was Silver's predilection for quoting other pieces of music in his own playing.[109]Writer and academic Thomas Owens stated that characteristics of Silver's solos were: "the short, simple phrases that all derive from the three-beat figure ♩ ♩ | ♩, or a variant of it; the pianist's 'blue fifth' (those rapid slurs up to [... a flattened fifth]); and the low tone cluster used strictly as a rhythmic punctuation".[109] He also employed blues and minor pentatonic scales.[110] Music journalist Marc Myers observed that "Silver's advantage was pianistic grace and a keen awareness that by resolving dark, minor-passages in airy, ascending and descending major-key chord configurations, the result could produce an exciting and uplifting feeling."[40] In his accompanying of a soloing saxophonist or trumpeter, Silver was also distinctive: "Rather than reacting to the soloist's melody and waiting for melodic holes to fill, he typically plays background patterns similar to the background riffs that saxes or brasses play behind soloists in big bands."[110]
Compositions
Early in his career, Silver composed contrafacts and blues-based melodies (including "Doodlin'" and "Opus de Funk").[99] The latter was "a typical Silver creation: advanced in its harmonic structure and general approach but with a catchy tune and finger-snapping beat."[98] His innovative incorporation of gospel and blues sounds into jazz compositions took place while they were also being added to rock 'n' roll and R&B pieces.[111]Silver soon expanded the range and style of his writing,[99] which grew to include "funky groove tunes, gentle mood pieces, vamp songs, outings in 3/4 and 6/8 time, Latin workouts of various stripes, up-tempo jam numbers, and examples of almost any and every other kind of approach congruent with the hard bop aesthetic."[112] An unusual case is "Peace", a ballad that prioritizes a calm mood over melodic or harmonic effects.[113] Owens observed that "Many of his compositions contain no folk blues or gospel music elements, but instead have highly chromatic melodies supported by richly dissonant harmonies".[110] The compositions and arrangements were also designed to make Silver's typical line-up sound larger than a quintet.[114]
Silver himself commented that inspiration came from multiple sources: "I'm inspired by nature and by some of the people I meet and some of the events that take place in my life. I'm inspired by my mentors. I'm inspired by various religious doctrines. [...] Many of my songs are impressed on my mind just before I wake up. Others I get from just doodlin' around on the piano".[115] He also wrote that, "when I wake up with a melody in my head, I jump right out of bed before I forget it and run to the piano and my tape recorder. I play the melody with my right hand and then harmonize it with my left. I put it down on my tape recorder, and then I work on getting a bridge or eightbar release for the tune."[116]
Influence and legacy
Silver was among the most influential jazz musicians of his lifetime.[98] Grove Music Online states that his legacy is at least fourfold: as a pioneer of hard bop; as a user of what become the archetypal quintet instrumentation of tenor saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums; as a developer of young musicians who went on to become important players and bandleaders; and for his skill as a composer and arranger.[117]Silver was also an influence as a pianist: his first Blue Note recording as leader "redefined the jazz piano, which up until then was largely modeled on the dexterity and relentless attack of Bud Powell", in Myers' words.[40] As early as 1956, Silver's piano playing was described by Down Beat as "a key influence on a large segment of modern jazz pianists."[21] This went on to include Ramsey Lewis, Les McCann, Bobby Timmons,[117] and Cecil Taylor, who was impressed by Silver's aggressive style.[2]
Silver's legacy as a composer may be greater than as a pianist, because his works, many of which are jazz standards, continue to be performed and recorded worldwide.[21] As a composer, he led a return to a stress on melody, observed critic John S. Wilson: for a long time, jazz musicians had written contrafacts of great technical complexity, but "Silver wrote originals that were not only actually original but memorably melodic, presaging a gradual return to melodic creativity among writing jazzmen."[118]
Discography
Main article: Horace Silver discography
Notes
- This account of his father's early life is widely reported. The U.S. census of 1930 gives his name as "John M. Silva" and his birthplace as "Porto [Puerto] Rico".[4]
References
- Wilson, John S. (1959). The Collector's Jazz – Modern. J. B. Lippincott. p. 271.
- Bibliography
- Cook, Richard (2003). Blue Note Records: The Biography. Justin, Charles & Co. ISBN 978-1-932112-10-8.
- Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-103401-0.
- Gioia, Ted (2012). The Jazz Standards – A Guide to the Repertoire. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-993739-4.
- Owens, Thomas (1996). Bebop – The Music and Its Players. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-510651-0.
- Shipton, Alan (2001). A New History of Jazz. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-4754-8.
- Silver, Horace (2006). Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25392-6.
Further reading
- Silver, Horace (1995) The Art of Small Jazz Combo Playing. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-0-7935-5688-5.
External links
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Horace Silver. |
- Horace Silver Discography at the Hard Bop Home Page
- Listening In: An Interview with Horace Silver by Bob Rosenbaum, Los Angeles, December 1981 (PDF file)
- "The Dozens: Twelve Essential Horace Silver Recordings" by Bill Kirchner
