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Horace Silver for this Sunday – in concert at the Chelsea College of Science and Technology in London, October 11, 1966 and preserved for posterity by the BBC.
On hand for this gig are: Woody Shaw, trumpet – Tyrone Washington, tenor sax – Larry Ridley, bass and Rex Humphries, drums.
The Guardian ran this piece as a tribute on the occasion of his death in June of 2014:
Bebop crashed into prominence during the 1940s, and over the next decade evolved as two sharply contrasting forms – the quietly intricate and relaxed style known as cool jazz and an earthier and more explicitly African-rooted approach. The pianist and composer Horace Silver, who has died aged 85, took the genre in the latter direction, and pioneered “hard bop” in the 1950s and 60s.
A supreme craftsman, Silver was a member of the Jazz Messengers and formed a succession of quintets whose music appealed to audiences beyond jazz. Tunes entitled Opus de Funk, Doodlin’, The Preacher, Home Cookin’ and Soulville reflected this new departure, though his mercurial approach transcended any rigid stylistic limits.
Mostly self-taught, Horace doubled as a saxophonist as a teenager before concentrating on the piano and emulating the bebop great Bud Powell’s intricate right-hand phrases and blunt, propulsive touch.
Realising that Powell’s virtuoso technique was out of reach for him, Horace Silver modified the style through chords, crafty use of space and oddball quotes from other melodies. Underpinned by pounding left-hand figures, these imparted a special kind of bonhomie, while the lack of bombast made Silver exceptionally convincing as a blues pianist. For many years, he played with his right wrist arched high over the keys, useless for fast fingering but effective for making each note ring out. Whereas frontline soloists expected pianists to feed them appropriate chords, Silver laid down more intrusive patterns, closer to riffs from a swing band.
Horace Silver had occasionally put words to melodies (Señor Blues, Peace, Psychedelic Sally), but during the 1970s his espousal of “self-help holistic metaphysics” inspired such titles as Moving Forward With Confidence, My Soul Is My Computer and Old Mother Nature Calls, with lyrics sometimes reminiscent of William McGonagall. The music itself barely altered but this didacticism contributed to him starting his own label, Silveto, after more than 20 years at Blue Note; some of his subsequent albums featured the brilliant saxophonist Eddie Harris.
Based in California since the 1970s, Horace Silver was granted various honours by the US state and, in 2005, received a President’s Merit award at the Grammy Salute to Jazz ceremony. He also set up the Horace Silver Foundation to give scholarships to aspiring jazz musicians. His autobiography, Let’s Get to the Nitty Gritty, was published in 2005.
Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver, pianist and composer, born 2 September 1928; died 18 June 2014
Press Play and enjoy the rest of Sunday – (Thank you, Guardian!)
