Jazz piano giant Horace Silver dies aged 85

Silver had been away from the scene for a number of years and in 2008 Keith Shadwick, one of Jazzwise’s senior writers, who himself sadly died in 2008, wrote a superb appreciation of Silver’s life and work, highlights of which we bring you here:

Silver was one of the most influential pianists in jazz and the very personification and creator of what has been called soul jazz, composing what are now standards such as ‘Sister Sadie’ and ‘Señor Blues’ and piloting a distinctive direction the Blue Note records sound would take. Initially making an impact with Art Blakey, who “borrowed” the name of Silver’s group to form The Jazz Messengers, Silver went on produce a series of classic albums for Blue Note in the 1960s, including the timeless ‘Song For My Father’ with the infectious bossa style of its much sampled title track and Silver’s own inimitable sense of the Cape Verdean blues.

The Connecticut-born Silver served a high-class apprenticeship in the jazz world, starting abruptly at the age of 23 in 1950 when his accompanying trio for a local Stan Getz gig made such an impression on the saxophonist that he hired them full-time and subsequently recorded early Silver compositions, including in January 1951 ‘Split Kick’. The pianist stayed with Getz through to April 1952, when he was part of a Getz quintet featuring Charles Mingus and Connie Kay playing New York’s Birdland. When Getz moved on Silver stayed in town. By the summer of 1952 he was making contacts with other younger players such as Lou Donaldson, whom he’d met (along with Art Blakey) at a rehearsal studio on 116th Street: he appeared on a Lou Donaldson session for Blue Note in June that revealed a player who had learned from Bud Powell and Dodo Marmarosa but who was already evolving his own concise and powerful improvisatory patterns and rhythms.

Silver played at Birdland with Coleman Hawkins’s Quintet over the early autumn of 1952, backing the great man as he swapped his front line trumpet support between Howard McGhee and Roy Eldridge. At one point Art Blakey took the drum chair in the band and the following month, October, saw Silver front his first trio sessions with Blakey on drums, when he recorded brilliant versions of ‘Horoscope’ and ‘Ecaroh’.

The pianist remained very active on the New York freelance scene during the following year, playing live and recording widely, including his last batch of trio sessions for Blue Note in November 1953 when ‘Opus de Funk’ was recorded. Three months later at Birdland once more the Art Blakey Quintet was taped by Alfred Lion. This band, the prototype for all subsequent Blakey bands, was stacked with talent from top to bottom: Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson and Curly Russell joined Silver and Blakey to make for a memorable evening’s recording. However, this was not to remain as a working band, with Brown soon off to match up with Max Roach and Donaldson to run his own units. Silver continued to freelance, working intensively during 1954 with a galaxy of modern jazz stars including Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Gigi Gryce, Bob Brookmeyer, Milt Jackson and Clark Terry across a number of record labels including Prestige, EmArcy and MGM. Silver made four dates with Miles that year, including the famous Bags’ Groove session for Prestige that included Sonny Rollins and Kenny Clarke.

In the years between 1960 and 1964 Silver continued to develop his remarkable group in many directions (with Roy Brooks taking over on drums from Louis Hayes), making an unfailingly excellent series of albums for Blue Note such as Horace-Scope, Doin’ The Thing At The Village Gate, The Tokyo Blues and Silver’s Serenade. Of these, Doin’ The Thing stands out as Silver’s first ‘live’ date for Alfred Lion, delivering ‘Filthy McNasty’ into the world, while The Tokyo Blues impresses as one of Silver’s finest achievements, its many beauties, including its variety, subtlety and sensitivity being remarkable even in a career such as the pianist’s. By the time of the next album, however, Silver was ready for a change, although he wasn’t even aware of it himself. He had already attempted something different in April 1963 when he recorded Silver’s Serenade with a tentet, only to reject the results and use the Quintet a month later to successfully re-do the entire set.

Then, as Michael Cuscuna relates, things fell apart. “When Horace and I were reviewing all his unissued material in the studio in the mid '70s, we came across the four-tune October '63 session and the three-tune January '64 session. Horace was unhappy with the results at the time and after the January session, Alfred said to him, ‘maybe it's time for a change in terms of your band’. Horace thought about it and realized it was. That band had run its course. So he disbanded and started auditions that spring for the new group.”

In his post-Blue Note years, Silver also recorded for the Silverto Records/Emerald Records, Columbia and Impulse! labels in the 1980s and 90s, while he was also honoured in 2005 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) who gave him its President's Merit Award. He may have been away from the limelight later in life, but his music and in particular his timeless compositions, continued to inspire a new generation of players both as performers and composers. See the August issue of Jazzwise for a retrospective look at his life and work.