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Horace Silver: The Cape Verdean Blues
by Greg Simmons
Any review of an XRCD extended resolution CD reissue of hard bop pianist Horace Silver's The Cape Verdean Blues is going to be as much about the success of the format as it is about the music.The music on old recordings, re-released in expensive high-tech format by specialist Elusive Disc (in it's series of Blue Note album transfers from the original master tapes) is presumed to have artistic value, otherwise no one would bother with such an expensive, ...
Continue ReadingHorace Silver: Finger Poppin'
by Samuel Chell
Finger Poppin' (1959) followed Silver's most under-appreciated (and perhaps most ambitious) Blue Note date, Further Explorations (1958). The cast is different (though the fiery Louis Hayes remains on drums), but the compositions and arrangements by Silver are no less artful and the soloists as inspired as the frontline of Art Farmer and Clifford Jordan from the preceding album. This time it's Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook negotiating the fast tempo and tricky stop-and-go melodies with precision and ease, with Mitchell ...
Continue ReadingHorace Silver: Live at Newport '58
by Stuart Broomer
From his first recordings with the Jazz Messengers in 1954, Horace Silver's values as pianist, bandleader and composer have been clearly evident: buoyant swing propelled by strong riffs and ensemble drive, along with expressive, edited-in-advance solos. There's a kind of controlled enthusiasm at the center of Silver's music, a slightly formal celebration that owes much to gospel music and the classic Basie band of the '30s. Live recordings of the Silver Quintet at its peak in the ...
Continue ReadingHorace Silver: Live at Newport '58
by J Hunter
The John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk Quartet earth-shaker At Carnegie Hall (Blue Note, 2005) set a pretty high watermark, and other historical recordings inevitably have a lot to live up to. Pianist Horace Silver's Live at Newport '58 is very good, and is certainly historically significant, but is it Carnegie Hall good? Perhaps not quite.
Silver had brought a new group to headline the Sunday afternoon session at the Newport Jazz Festival. That group would turn ...
Continue ReadingBlue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz
by C. Michael Bailey
Blue Note: A Story of Modern JazzDirector: Julian Benedikt EuroArts 2007 Blue Note was not the only jazz label recording America's indigenous music from the '30s through the 1960s, but it may be the only one that mattered. The title Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz is not an idle boast. In the 1950s and '60s, Blue Note provided urban America its soundtrack--a gritty, organic, humid music, the love child of bebop ...
Continue ReadingHorace Silver: Live At Newport '58
by Chris May
Fifty years on, and previously unreleased, this boisterous festival performance by pianist Horace Silver's quintet is 40 minutes of hard swinging, compositionally distinguished, primo hard bop. It's also the only known recording by a band in the process of morphing from the line-up which recorded Further Explorations (Blue Note, 1958) to the one which cut Finger Poppin' (Blue Note, 1959).
The four tracks also include two outstanding but neglected pieces from the Silver canon, and the performance itself ...
Continue ReadingHorace Silver: Live at Newport '58
by Greg Camphire
Blue Note continues to bless fans with hidden gems from deep in its vaults with Live at Newport '58, a previously unreleased set catching Horace Silver in the midst of his ascent as a major creative force. Featuring a transitional line-up of the pianist's revolving quintet as they headline the famed festival, the band can be heard drawing the hard bop blueprint that would be emulated for generations after.
The four extended tunes are all Silver originals: an unusually structured ...
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