Horace Silver Quintet - The Cape Verdean Blues (1983 Japanese Blue Note Vinyl LP)

The Horace Silver Quintet Plus J.J. Johnson - The Cape Verdean Blues | Vinyl LP - 1983 Japanese Blue Note Reissue (K18P-9231, Blue Note Masterpiece series, King Record Co.)

The Cape Verdean Blues catches Horace Silver's mid-sixties quintet at full strength. By 1965 Silver had one of the best working bands in jazz, with a twenty-year-old Woody Shaw on trumpet and Joe Henderson on tenor, and this Blue Note date shows why. Silver wrote catchy, danceable, deeply grooving tunes that sounded simple and were anything but, and five of the six here are his. The title track leans on the Latin feeling that ran through his family's Cape Verdean roots, "Nutville" tears along at a clip, and "Bonita" slips into a soft bossa. For the three tracks on the second side, Silver added J.J. Johnson's trombone, thickening the front line into a sextet and giving the arrangements a fuller, brassier weight. Joe Henderson contributes the one non-Silver tune, the blowing vehicle "Mo' Joe". Alfred Lion produced and Rudy Van Gelder recorded it, and it has the punch and warmth that combination almost always delivered.

Silver had a rare gift among the great composers of the era: his records were serious and fun at the same time. He wrote for the body as much as the head, which is why tunes like the title track and "Nutville" stayed in the repertoire while more complicated music faded. This album also caught two of his sidemen on the way up. Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson would both go on to lead important bands of their own, and you can hear the confidence already here.

This copy is the 1983 Japanese reissue on Blue Note, part of King's Blue Note Masterpiece series, manufactured by King Record Co. and cut from the original master, catalogue number K18P-9231.