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HORACE SILVER Four Classic Albums: Second Set
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AVID AMSC1287 [68:30 + 79:38]
CD1
New Faces New Sounds
Horace Silver (piano): Curley Russell (bass): Gene Ramey (bass): Art Blakey (drums) recorded October 1952
Safari
Ecaroh
Prelude To A Kiss
Thou Swell
Quicksilver
Horoscope
Yeah
Knowledge
Horace Silver and The Jazz Messengers
Horace Silver (piano): Kenny Dorham (trumpet): Hank Mobley (tenor sax): Doug Watkins (bass): Art Blakey (drums) recorded November 1954 and February 1955
Room 608
Creepin' In
Stop Time
To Whom It May Concern
Hippy
The Preacher
Hankerin'
Doodlin'
CD2
Horace-Scope
Horace Silver (piano): Blue Mitchell (trumpet): Junior Cook (tenor sax): Gene Taylor (bass): Roy Brooks (drums) recorded July 1960
Strollin'
Where You At
Without You
Horace-Scope
Yeah!
Me And My Baby
Nica's Dream
The Tokyo Blues
Horace Silver (piano): Blue Mitchell (trumpet): Junior Cook (tenor sax): Gene Taylor (bass): John Harris Jr (drums) recorded July 1962
Too Much Sake
Sayonara Blues
The Tokyo Blues
Cherry Blossom
Ah So
This is Avid’s second twofer devoted to Horace Silver and it charts a decade’s worth of productivity from 1952 to 1962. The earliest sides were recorded in the WOR Studios in New York, the remaining ones by Rudy Van Gelder. All sound good in these transfers from the LPs. It’s doubtless a commonplace of Silver Studies but the level of achievement remains consistently high throughout the course of his discography. There’s hardly any falling off from the high standards enshrined in these early albums whether with his trio, in New Faces, New Sounds, or with a two-man front line in the remaining three LPs.
The first album serves up eight tracks, three quarters of them Silver originals, with Art Blakey in place and either Curly Russell or Gene Ramey on bass, as the sessions took place over two dates in October 1952. These taut, crisp readings are full of fine detail and naughty quotations, such as the It Don’t Mean a Thing business in Safari and the constructive dissonance imbedded in Silver’s Ecaroh (read the title backwards). Silver turns the already romantic tracery of Ellington’s Prelude to a Kiss into an even more intense reverie but is bluffly crisp in Thou Swell. His composition Horoscope was one that recurred later, as he sought to improve on it, drawing out even more freighted harmonies – listen to Horace-Scope on the second CD, which revisits the piece with a vengeance.
Teaming up with the Jazz Messengers – Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Doug Watkins, Blakey - produced an eight-track album stuffed with classics and apostrophes. All bar Mobley’s Hankerin’ (a very Silver-like title) came from the pen of the pianist. There’s the loping feel of Creepin’ In and the punchy trades on Stop Time to savour as well as the elegance of Silver’s superb To Whom It May Concern. As if this weren’t enough this album houses the classic The Preacher and that roots-drenched masterpiece Doodlin’. The second disc sees a change of personnel; the front line is now Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook. Cook’s lyrical tenor playing is roughed by the occasional strategic honk on Strollin’, Without You is one of those gorgeous ballad performances that sound just right, in terms both of tempo and mood, and there’s a finger-clicker in the shape of Me and My Baby, a downhome rootsville number with Gene Taylor’s resonant bass work to the fore. Nica’s Dream is a kind of Down by the Riverside but transformed into a time-travelling opus by virtue of Silver’s stylistic upgrade.
The Tokyo Blues followed in 1962. With the exception of John Harris Jr taking over the drum chair from Roy Brooks, the band remained as it had for Horace-Scope and the album allowed rather more space to stretch out. Sayonara Blues runs twelve minutes, for instance (during which Silver naughtily quotes Spencer Williams’ old-timeI’ve Found a New Baby) and by comparison nothing in the New Faces LP breaches the four-minute mark. There’s some Japanoisserie in the title track and Cherry Blossom offers the date’s ballad. Cook sounds fresh as a daisy, the unisons are tight and tasty, and Blue Mitchell is fluency itself.
As usual the original liner notes are reprinted – the authors are Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, Barbara J Gardner and Atsuhiko Kawabata. Personnel details are clear, reproduction fine. Nothing not to like about this life-enhancing twofer.
Jonathan Woolf