Horace Silver

Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver (September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, particularly in the hard bop style that he helped pioneer in the 1950s.

After playing tenor saxophone and piano at school in Connecticut, Silver got his break on piano when his trio was recruited by Stan Getz in 1950. Silver soon moved to New York City, where he developed a reputation as a composer and for his bluesy playing. Frequent sideman recordings in the mid-1950s helped further, but it was his work with the Jazz Messengers, co-led by Art Blakey, that brought both his writing and playing most attention. Their '' Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers'' album contained Silver's first hit, " The Preacher". After leaving Blakey in 1956, Silver formed his own quintet, with what became the standard small group line-up of tenor saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums. Their public performances and frequent recordings for Blue Note Records increased Silver's popularity, even through changes of personnel. His most successful album was ''Song for My Father'', made with two iterations of the quintet in 1963 and 1964.

Several changes occurred in the early 1970s: Silver disbanded his group to spend more time with his wife and to concentrate on composing; he included lyrics in his recordings; and his interest in spiritualism developed. The last two of these were often combined, resulting in commercially unsuccessful releases such as '' The United States of Mind'' series. Silver left Blue Note after 28 years, founded his own record label, and scaled back his touring in the 1980s, relying in part on royalties from his compositions for income. In 1993, he returned to major record labels, releasing five albums before gradually withdrawing from public view because of health problems.

As a player, Silver transitioned from bebop to hard bop by stressing melody rather than complex harmony, and combined clean and often humorous right-hand lines with darker notes and chords in a near-perpetual left-hand rumble. His compositions similarly emphasized catchy melodies, but often also contained dissonant harmonies. Many of his varied repertoire of songs, including " Doodlin'", "Peace", and "Sister Sadie", became jazz standards that are still widely played. His considerable legacy encompasses his influence on other pianists and composers, and the development of young jazz talents who appeared in his bands over the course of four decades.

Early life

Silver was born on September 2, 1928, in Norwalk, Connecticut. His mother, Gertrude, was from Connecticut; his father, John Tavares Silver, was born on the island of Maio, Cape Verde, and emigrated to the United States as a young man. She was a maid and sang in a church choir; he worked for a tire company. Horace had a much older half-brother, Eugene Fletcher, from his mother's first marriage, and was the third child for his parents, after John, who lived to 6 months, and Maria, who was stillborn.

Silver began playing the piano in his childhood and had classical music lessons. His father taught him the folk music of Cape Verde. At the age of 11 Silver became interested in becoming a musician, after hearing the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra. His early piano influences included the styles of boogie-woogie and the blues, the pianists Nat King Cole, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Teddy Wilson, as well as some jazz horn players.

Silver graduated from St. Mary's Grammar School in 1943. From ninth grade he played Lester Young-influenced tenor saxophone in the Norwalk High School band and orchestra. Silver played gigs locally on both piano and tenor saxophone while still at school. He was rejected for military service by a draft board examination that concluded that he had an excessively curved spine, which also interfered with his saxophone playing. Around 1946 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to take up a regular job as pianist in a nightclub.

Later life and career

1950–55

Silver's break came in 1950, when his trio backed saxophonist Stan Getz at a club in Hartford: Getz liked Silver's band and recruited them to tour with him. The saxophonist also gave Silver his recording debut, in December 1950, for a quartet date. After about a year, Silver was replaced as pianist in Getz's band and he moved to New York City. There, working as a freelance, he quickly built a reputation, based on his compositions and bluesy playing. He worked for short periods with tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, before meeting altoist Lou Donaldson, with whom he developed his bebop understanding. Donaldson made his first recording on Blue Note Records in 1952, with Silver on piano, Gene Ramey on bass and Art Taylor on drums. Later that year, another Blue Note quartet session was booked for Donaldson, with Art Blakey replacing Taylor, but the saxophonist withdrew and producer–owner Alfred Lion offered Silver the studio time for a trio recording. Most of the tracks recorded at it were Silver originals, and he went on to stay with Blue Note as a leader for the following 28 years.

Silver was also busy recording as a sideman. In 1953, he was pianist on sessions led by Sonny Stitt, Howard McGhee, and Al Cohn, and, the following year, he played on albums by Art Farmer, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson and others. Silver won the '' Down Beat'' critics' new star award for piano players in 1954, and appeared at the first Newport Jazz Festival, substituting for John Lewis in the Modern Jazz Quartet. Silver's early 1950s recordings demonstrate that Powell was a major pianistic influence, but this had waned by the middle of the decade.

In New York, Silver and Blakey co-founded the Jazz Messengers, a cooperatively-run group that initially recorded under various leaders and names. Their first two studio recordings, with Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Kenny Dorham on trumpet, and Doug Watkins on bass, were made in late 1954 and early 1955 and were released as two 10-inch albums under Silver's name, then soon thereafter as the 12-inch '' Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers''. This album contained Silver's first hit, " The Preacher". Unusually in Silver's career, recordings of concert performances were also released at this time, involving quintets at Birdland (1954) and the Café Bohemia (1955). This set of studio and concert recordings was pivotal in the development and defining of hard bop, which combined elements of blues, gospel, and R&B, with bebop-based harmony and rhythm. The new, funky hard bop was commercially popular, and helped to establish Blue Note as a successful business.

1956–69

Silver's final recordings with the Jazz Messengers were in May 1956. Later that year, he left Blakey after one and a half years, in part because of the heroin use prevalent in the band, which Silver did not want to be involved in. Soon after leaving, Silver formed his own long-term quintet, after receiving offers of work from club owners who had heard his albums. The first line-up was Mobley (tenor saxophone), Farmer (trumpet), Watkins (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums). The quintet, with various line-ups, continued to record, helping Silver to build his reputation. He wrote almost all of the material the band played; one of these, " Señor Blues", "officially put Horace Silver on the map", in the view of critic Scott Yanow. In concert, Silver "won over the crowds through his affable personality and all-action approach. He crouched over the piano as the sweat poured out, with his forelock brushing the keys and his feet pounding."

After more than a dozen sideman recording sessions in 1955 and a similar number in 1956–57, Silver's appearance on ''Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2'' in April 1957 was his last for another leader, as he opted to concentrate on his own band. For several years from the late 1950s, this contained Junior Cook (tenor saxophone), Blue Mitchell (trumpet), Gene Taylor (bass), and either Hayes or Roy Brooks (drums). Their first album was ''Finger Poppin'

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