It's gone pretty much the way I wanted it to, the way I dreamed that it would. I've
gotten to work with many of my idols, Coleman Hawkins, Pres, Miles,
Art Blakey. I'm a happy man.
Horace
Silver (1996)
Pianist, composer and band leader
Horace Silver died Wednesday, June 18, of natural causes, at his home
in New Rochelle, NY. He was 85. Horace Silver was the defining
pianist of the hard bop movement of the 1950s. During his long
association with Blue Note Records, from 1952 to 1979, he produced a
string of 27 critically acclaimed and financially successful albums. He
is known for such compositions as “Opus de Funk,” “The
Preacher,” “Doodlin',” “Senor Blues,” and his masterpiece,
“Song For My Father,” simple, catchy tunes that you find yourself humming
days after hearing them.
Horace Silver was born in Norwalk, CT
on September 2, 1928. His father, John Tavares Silva, was an immigrant from
the Cape Verde Islands, an archipelago off the West coast of Africa.
He changed the family name to Silver and worked in a rubber factory.
His mother, Gertrude, was a maid who sang in a church choir. As a
child, he studied piano, and was exposed to Afro-Portuguese folk
music as well as gospel.
After he developed a reputation as a
jazz pianist in Hartford, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz heard him and
hired him as a member of his quartet in 1949. He moved to New York
in 1951, and became the house pianist at Birdland. In the '50s, bebop music gradually
split into two rival, but overlapping, genres: cool jazz, which was
predominately West Coast and white, and hard bop, which was mostly
East Coast and black. Stan Getz was a leading exemplar of cool jazz.
Hard bop introduced elements of blues, gospel and Latin music into
bebop, and was ultimately more successful.
Horace Silver first recorded for Blue
Note in 1952 with a trio consisting of drummer Art Blakey and various
bassists.
In 1953, he and Blakey co-founded the
Jazz Messengers, the prototypical hard bop quintet. Their first
recording, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers,
featured Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor sax, and Doug
Watkins on bass.
Silver made seven other LPs with the group under
the name of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, including the
3-volume set, A Night at Birdland,
with Clifford Brown and Lou Donaldson. He also served as a sideman
at sessions by Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Jackson and others. In
1956, he left to form his own group, beginning his series of hit
albums with Six Pieces of Silver.
Like his friend Blakey, Silver was known for discovering and
developing young talent, including trumpeters Art Farmer, Blue
Mitchell, Woody Shaw, Charles Tolliver, Tom Harrell and Dave Douglas
and saxophonists Benny Golson, Junior Cook, Joe Henderson, Bernie
Maupin and Michael Brecker.
Horace
Silver hit his creative peak in 1964 with Song For My
Father, and its followup, Cape
Verdean Blues. (By coincidence,
I posted a live version of “Song For My Father” on Father's Day.)
In the
late '60s, he flirted with success on the pop charts with funky
classics like The Jody Grind
and Serenade to a Soul Sister.
In the
1970s, Silver embarked on somewhat of a spiritual quest and began
recording songs with preachy lyrics that reflected his interests in
Eastern philosophy and New Age politics. They were not well
received. He formed his own record label, Silveto, in 1980, without
much success. In the 1990s, he returned to his roots with comeback
albums for Columbia (featuring vocalist Andy Bey) and Impulse.
Horace
Silver was recognized as a Jazz Master by the National endowment for
the Arts in 1995 and inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in
1996. He retired in the late '90s.
You may also be interested in:
Video of the Week #69 ("Song For My Father")
Video of the Week #25 (Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers)
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