The Horace Silver Quintet - Song For My Father (1977 Japanese Blue Note Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: NM
Sleeve: EX
Obi: None

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The Horace Silver Quintet - Song For My Father (Cantiga Para Meu Pai) | Vinyl LP - 1977 Japanese Blue Note Reissue (GXF-3017)

• Horace Silver's signature Blue Note album, built around the Cape Verdean and bossa nova-inflected title composition that became one of the most sampled melodic lines in jazz and the direct source for Steely Dan's 1974 hit "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"
• Two separate quintet sessions a year apart, the October 1964 tracks introducing a new band with Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone and Carmell Jones on trumpet, the October 1963 tracks the farewell appearance of Silver's veteran quintet with Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook
• Six Silver originals plus Joe Henderson's "The Kicker", produced by Alfred Lion and engineered by Rudy Van Gelder at Englewood Cliffs
• 1977 Japanese Blue Note pressing (GXF-3017) manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd., with insert dated June 3, 1977

Horace Silver's father, John Tavares Silva, was born on the island of Maio in the Cape Verde Islands and came to the United States as part of the Portuguese diaspora that settled in Connecticut, where Silver grew up. For years his father had suggested he adapt Cape Verdean folk melodies into jazz. Silver was uninterested until a visit to Brazil with pianist Sergio Mendes during Carnival planted the bossa nova rhythm in his ear. Sitting at the piano after returning home, he found that the Brazilian rhythmic pattern he was working with produced a melody that sounded not Brazilian but Cape Verdean, something from his father's music. He titled it "Song for My Father" and recorded it on October 26, 1964 at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs with the quintet he had just assembled: Carmell Jones on trumpet, Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone, Teddy Smith on bass and Roger Humphries on drums. The composition is in F minor with a 24-bar AAB structure, bossa nova rhythm and four-chord harmonic sequence, and has a bass ostinato that Steely Dan borrowed directly for "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" in 1974. Four of the album's six tracks came from this session: the title track, "The Natives Are Restless Tonight", "Que Pasa" and Henderson's own "The Kicker", the lone non-Silver composition, whose stuttering phrases and intricate rhythms have made it a standard in its own right. Henderson had arrived at the date fresh from recording with Andrew Hill, Lee Morgan and Grant Green in the same period and is heard throughout at the height of his early powers.

The remaining two tracks, "Calcutta Cutie" and "Lonely Woman", come from a session in October 1963 with Silver's previous quintet: Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Junior Cook on tenor saxophone, Gene Taylor on bass and Roy Brooks on drums. This group had been together for five years. "Lonely Woman" is Silver's own ballad, unrelated to Ornette Coleman's famous composition of the same name from 1959. The album was released in 1965 as Blue Note BST 84185, Alfred Lion producing and Van Gelder engineering as on all Silver's Blue Note records. Its subtitle, Cantiga Para Meu Pai, is the Portuguese translation of the title, a dedication made explicit by the cover portrait of Silver's father. This Japanese pressing on GXF-3017 was released in 1977, manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd., and includes a Japanese insert with notes dated June 3, 1977.