Horace Silver - Song for My Father (1978 Japanese Blue Note GXK 8047 LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: EX
Obi: None

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The Horace Silver Quintet - Song for My Father | Vinyl LP - 1978 Japanese Blue Note Reissue (GXK 8047, Blue Note Masterpiece Selection 150, King Record Co. Ltd.)

Horace Silver had been leading Blue Note quintets since the mid-1950s, cycling through personnel but keeping the same essential character: hard-swinging, blues-rooted, melodically direct. By October 1964, when he recorded the four tracks that anchor this album, the band had changed. Carmell Jones was on trumpet, Joe Henderson on tenor, Teddy Smith on bass, Roger Humphries on drums. Henderson was twenty-seven and had recorded his own Blue Note debut the previous year; Jones was a capable, underrated trumpeter whose work on the title track and "The Natives Are Restless Tonight" is some of the finest on the record.

"Song for My Father" opens with a vamp that has become one of the most immediately recognisable figures in jazz. The melody is unhurried; Silver builds his composition around the kind of Cape Verdean and Brazilian influences that came from his father's musical background and from the music he had heard on a recent trip to Brazil. John Tavares Silver, the man on the cover, was a musician from Cape Verde who had settled in Connecticut. The dedication and the music's character are inseparable. A decade later, Steely Dan used the opening bass line almost directly for "Rikki Don't Lose That Number."

"The Natives Are Restless Tonight" and "Que Pasa" come from the same session. "The Kicker" is the album's one non-Silver composition, written by Joe Henderson. "Calcutta Cutie" and "Lonely Woman" come from an October 1963 session with Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook, Gene Taylor and Roy Brooks. "Calcutta Cutie" uses the quintet on the head before Silver takes the piece as a trio feature. "Lonely Woman" is a slow Silver ballad played as a trio throughout, no horns.

This is the 1978 Japanese Blue Note Masterpiece Selection 150 reissue (GXK 8047), manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd.