The Best of Horace Silver, Vol. 2

Performer: Horace Silver
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: In 1964, responding to producer Alfred Lion's encouragements, Horace Silver ended a five-year run with his quintet and got himself some new players. Volume Two of this best of collection opens with the new quintet's classic "Song for My Father"--a warm, evocative, uniquely Horace Silver-like tune said to be a homage to his Cape Verdean roots. Silver's solo is understated and carries itself with a royal bearing. The new group is also heard on the laid back and minimal "Que Pasa," a one-chord, hypnotic vamp. "Cape Verdean Blues" is one of Silver's best--commercial, sexy, and wrapped around some simple yet outstanding piano playing. On 1966's "Jody Grind," Tyrone Washington capably replaces Joe Henderson on tenor sax and Silver turns in a great solo, exploring melodic ideas that other players might reject because of their straightforwardness. The album ends with 1972's "Gregory is Here." Silver's new quintet includes the young Brecker Brothers on trumpet and sax, in an interesting marriage of the '60s and '70s.

Pianist and composer Horace Silver was, along with Art Blakey, one of the primary instigators of the hard-bop jazz movement of the 1950s. Silver turned a limited piano technique to his advantage, welding simple but memorable phrases to driving, muscular rhythms, molding a style whose influence has only grown stronger with the years.

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