Customer Reviews

Horace Silver - The Art of Small Jazz Combo Playing (Artist Transcriptions)

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This small text by one of the founders of Hard Bop, should be required reading for jazz composition students! In it Horace demonstrates how to master the techniques he's used effectively for the small combo, most notably the quintet (tenor sax, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums).

A musician will understand jazz as mental, spiritual and physical after reading this book. With a little practice and patience a jazz composer is bound to improve.

Horace Silver is to small-group composing what Duke Ellington is to the large ensemble. But his work approaches genius only on the recordings before, not after, "Song For My Father." Unfortunately, the latter elemental tune became such a big hit that it led to listeners (who should have known better) disregarding his prolific and ceaselessly inventive work throughout the 1950s and slightly beyond.

On "The Jazz Messengers" session on Columbia rather than Blue Note, as well as on his recently reissued session on Epic ("Silver's Blue"), not only is Silver's piano recorded in natural, lustrous, resonant tones but his composing talents are fully exposed as unparalleled when it comes to charts quintets and sextets. "Ecarole" sounds like an ensemble three times larger than its quintet size, and "Nica's Dream" casts a spell while swinging harder than its later Blue Note version.

On these albums Silver received the kind of support that a composer-leader can only dream of--Blakey (or Louis Hayes), Donald Byrd, Joe Gordon, Doug Watkins, and Hank Mobley (sorry Coltrane and Rollins, but there never has been a more lyrical, purely melodic, naturally soulful, bel canto singing tenor man than Mobley, who delivered flawless solos for any occasion until 1965, when the influence of rock and the demand to produce another Lee Morgan "Sidewinder" eventually messed with his brain and creative sensibilities--though unlike Rollins he was unable to shake off the frightening shadow of Trane and the dismissive treatment from Miles, who had settled on him briefly before dumping him in favor of Shorter).

But Silver continued to come up with luminous, sparkling gems for Lion, Wolf, and Van Gelder on recording after recording--"Further Explorations of H. S." with "Moon Rays" and "The Outlaw"; "Señor Blues" ("Six Pieces of Silver"); along with "Silver's Serenade" and "Room 68"; and of course the album with Kenny Dorham ("Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers") that introduced "The Preacher" and "Doodlin'." On these recordings the man was a perpetual fount of musical wisdom, ingenuity and inventiveness.

I guess "Song for My Father" had to be written if only to make his music accessible to neophyte players and high school music instructors. The aspiring writer for small groups would be well advised to pick up every Silver recording before "Dad's Tune," including recordings where Blakey, not he, is listed as leader, and simply transcribe that unforgettable music from the recordings.