About

“Horace Silver, the influential hard bop/soul jazz pianist, songwriter and bandleader, was riding high in 1965. His “Song for My Father” had become a hit, he had put together a new and brilliant quintet, and he had the opportunity to use the masterful trombonist J.J. Johnson as a guest on his new album for Blue Note Records. One the resulting album, The Cape Verdean Blues, Johnson joins one of Silver’s greatest bands, a group boasting two brilliant new stars..... tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson and the young trumpeter Woody Shaw. Henderson and Shaw push Silver to take some of his most forward looking solos, and the pianist’s compositions in turn push the soloists to think melodically and play with deep soul.

“The Cape Verdean Blues” is a tribute to the West African homeland of Silver’s father. “Pretty Eyes” was Silvers’ first original waltz. “Nutville” is both complex and uniquely catchy. The Cape Verdean Blues is simply one of the most inspired sessions of Horace Silver’s long and outstanding career. Add the superb fidelity of this recording and you have an irresistible addition to the Horace Silver discography.” - Music Matters

“Silver's band in the 1960s was almost as much an incubator of new talent as Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, always featuring first-class up-and-coming musicians. The Cape Verdean Blues pairs trumpeter Woody Shaw with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, a dream-team front line for Silver's bold melodic statements. Everyone gets plenty of room to work out, with Shaw—only 21 at the time—turning in a notable solo on the slow blues, "African Queen," building it slowly, before blowing himself into a pitched, slightly abstracted shout, a harbinger of a sound that would emerge more forcefully later, on his own albums. Trombonist J.J. Johnson guests with the band on three tracks, adding some weighty brass to the melodies and some excellent soloing. Henderson is flawless throughout, and Silver, in addition to composing most of the tracks, always plays an impeccable blues line.” - All About Jazz

Musicians:

• Horace Silver, piano
• Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone
• Woody Shaw, trumpet
• J.J. Johnson, trombone
• Bob Cranshaw, bass
• Roger Humphries, drums

About Horace Silver:

“From the perspective of the early 2000s, it is clear that few jazz musicians have had a greater impact on the contemporary mainstream than Horace Silver. The hard bop style that Silver pioneered in the '50s is now dominant, played not only by holdovers from an earlier generation, but also by fuzzy-cheeked musicians who had yet to be born when the music fell out of critical favor in the '60s and '70s.

Silver's earliest musical influence was the Cape Verdean folk music he heard from his Portuguese-born father. Later, after he had begun playing piano and saxophone as a high schooler, Silver came under the spell of blues singers and boogie-woogie pianists, as well as boppers like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In 1950, Stan Getz played a concert in Hartford, CT, with a pickup rhythm section that included Silver, drummer Walter Bolden, and bassist Joe Calloway. So impressed was Getz, he hired the whole trio. Silver had been saving his money to move to New York anyway; his hiring by Getz sealed the deal.

Silver worked with Getz for a year, then began to freelance around the city with such big-time players as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Oscar Pettiford. In 1952, he recorded with Lou Donaldson for the Blue Note label; this date led him to his first recordings as a leader. In 1953, he joined forces with Art Blakey to form a cooperative under their joint leadership. The band's first album, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, was a milestone in the development of the genre that came to be known as hard bop. Many of the tunes penned by Silver for that record -- "The Preacher," "Doodlin'," "Room 608" -- became jazz classics. By 1956, Silver had left the Messengers to record on his own. The series of Blue Note albums that followed established Silver for all time as one of jazz's major composer/pianists. LPs like Blowin' the Blues Away and Song for My Father (both recorded by an ensemble that included Silver's longtime sidemen Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook) featured Silver's harmonically sophisticated and formally distinctive compositions for small jazz ensemble.

Silver's piano style -- terse, imaginative, and utterly funky -- became a model for subsequent mainstream pianists to emulate. Some of the most influential horn players of the '50s, '60s, and '70s first attained a measure of prominence with Silver -- musicians like Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Benny Golson, and the Brecker Brothers all played in Silver's band at a point early in their careers. Silver has even affected members of the avant-garde; Cecil Taylor confesses a Silver influence, and trumpeter Dave Douglas played briefly in a Silver combo.

Silver recorded exclusively for Blue Note until that label's eclipse in the late '70s, whereupon he started his own label, Silveto. Silver's '80s work was poorly distributed. During that time he began writing lyrics to his compositions; his work began to display a concern with music's metaphysical powers, as exemplified by album titles like Music to Ease Your Disease and Spiritualizing the Senses. In the '90s, Silver abandoned his label venture and began recording for Columbia. With his re-emergence on a major label, Silver is once again receiving a measure of the attention his contribution deserves. Certainly, no one has ever contributed a larger and more vital body of original compositions to the jazz canon. ~ Chris Kelsey” – Blue Note Records

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