The Horace Silver Quintet
Song For My Father

THE REVIEW

In 1965, the year of the release of “Song For My Father”, the world of Jazz had already seen such revolutions that left one astonished. Like splinters gone mad from a bullet shattering in a thousand divergent directions, free jazz, post-bop, modal, third stream, and much more had burst forth, opening up a range of options, possibilities, chances, opportunities. It was the last golden age in Jazz, an unrepeatable epic that lasted the span of a decade, maybe two, in a flare-up of talents, geniuses, and charlatans.

Away from any revolutionary fringe, yet rooted in his Cape Verdean roots and the type of Jazz he had strongly helped develop (in the Jazz Messengers), Horace Silver pulls out of the hat a masterpiece of good old Hard Bop to drool over created between 1963 and 1964 partly with the band he was disbanding and partly with the one he was forming (which included Joe Henderson and Carmell Jones). The entire album stands out for its excellent compositional quality, a result of the exquisitely fertile vein of its author, and for its magnificent executing quality thanks to solos rich in melodic inventiveness by the extraordinary Junior Cook and Blue Mitchell on one side and Joe Henderson and Carmell Jones on the other, making it an indispensable piece for every lover of excellent Blue note-branded Jazz.

Horace Silver has a clear, dense, and brilliant touch, emanating dazzling blues illuminations, clusters of full-bodied, intense notes; a funky touch like no other in the Jazz world. Among the tracks, the stunning “The Kicker” is remembered, a masterpiece interpreted in a marvelous and tremendously inspired version, with a Joe Henderson in splendid shape gifting one of the most accomplished solos of his career. Remarkable is the tropical rhythm of “Que Pasa?” with a Latin aftertaste and the bossa nova of “Song For My Father”, a great standard, a famous theme quoted many times in the years to come, even expressly copied (Steely Dan). Amidst so much divine goodness, Silver also manages to slip in the perfect ballad: “Lonely Woman” is an extraordinary piece, a blues reminiscent of Bud Powell’s lesson, a rain of delightful notes alternating between sighs and silences, descending chords and pauses, counterpointed by barely hinted double bass and drums. “Calcutta Cutie” another masterpiece with its double time and sudden brakes, is perhaps Silver's best performance, highly inspired and damn catchy.

“Song For My Father” is an album to have if one doesn’t, to listen again to if it's there, maybe already for a while, gathering dust. To put back on again if one has listened to the last note just a minute ago. It is a record of wonderful Mainstream Jazz, to which time has already given the greatest gift: immortality.