Horace Silver — Paris Blues (1962)
EAC | FLAC+CUE+LOG+Full Artwork -> 212 Mb
© 2002 Pablo PACD-5316-2
Hard-Bop
Many thanks to De_Metrio
Descripstion
This is the classic Horace Silver Quintet. It existed and recorded here while Miles was between his two great quintets, just before Art Blakey recorded Caravan with Curtis Fuller and Wayne Shorter, and while John Coltrane was assembling his classic quartet. This concert takes place almost half way between Finger Poppin' With the Horace Silver Quintet and Song for My Father. In essence, this is hard bop reaching perfection, neither al dente nor over-cooked. All of the songs are lengthy Silver compositions.
With all cuts clocking in over ten minutes ("Sayonara Blues" stretches out to sixteen minutes), all of the musicians have ample time to say what must be said. Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook are in top form, blowing their potent mixture of smoky blues and pungent funk. Tart as a lemon and strong as a Manhattan, Mitchell proves himself more than a minor prophet in the scripture of hard bop. The same can be said of Cook, whose full-throated tone melds perfectly with Silver and Mitchell on this fall night in the City of Lights. Silver is brilliant in his leadership and performance, as is his rhythm support in Gene Taylor and Roy Brooks .
When previously asked to define hard bop, I would have steered the query toward Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' Moanin'. Now I will suggest Paris Blues.
The Horace Silver Quintet - The Tokyo Blues (1962)
EAC | WAVPack+CUE+LOG+Full Artwork -> 229 Mb
© 2010 Analogue Productions CBNJ 84110 SA
Hard Bop | Soul Jazz | Piano Jazz
Many thanks to Djubei
Descripstion
Following a series of concert dates in Tokyo late in 1961 with his quintet, Horace Silver returned to the U.S. with his head full of the Japanese melodies he had heard during his visit, and using those as a springboard, he wrote four new pieces, which he then recorded at sessions held on July 13 and 14, 1962, along with a version of Ronnell Bright's little known ballad "Cherry Blossom." One would naturally assume the resulting LP would have a Japanese feel, but that really isn't the case. Using Latin rhythms and the blues as a base, Silver's Tokyo-influenced compositions fit right in with the subtle cross-cultural but very American hard bop he'd been doing all along. Using his usual quintet (Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Junior Cook on tenor sax, Gene Taylor on bass) with drummer Joe Harris (he is listed as John Harris, Jr. for this set) filling in for an ailing Roy Brooks), Silver's compositions have a light, airy feel, with plenty of space, and no one used that space better at these sessions than Cook, whose tenor sax lines are simply wonderful, adding a sturdy, reliable brightness. The centerpieces are the two straight blues, "Sayonara Blues" and "The Tokyo Blues," both of which have a delightfully natural flow, and the building, patient take on Bright's "Cherry Blossom," which Silver takes pains to make sure sounds like a ballad and not a barely restrained minor-key romp. The bottom line is that The Tokyo Blues emerges as a fairly typical Silver set from the era and not as a grandiose fusion experiment welding hard bop to Japanese melodies. That might have been interesting, certainly, but Silver obviously assimilated things down to a deeper level before he wrote these pieces, and they feel like a natural extension of his work rather than an experimental detour.
