Horace Silver

Horace Silver is a pianist of major importance within the movement that developed a new jazz language in the early 1950s on the East Coast of the United States: hard bop. He helped create this style alongside other great musicians (such as Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins etc.), reworking the earlier bebop that had revolutionized the history of jazz in the second half of the 1940s.

The basic structure of hard bop rests on engaging, melodic themes that frame the improvisations developed in succession by the various musicians. Born out of a desire to give soloists more time to stretch out, to slightly slow down the frantic pace kept by be bop, and to take advantage of the new technological possibility of pressing longer vinyl records, hard bop quickly established itself as the dominant jazz style for at least a decade, right up through the first half of the '60s. It's a type of jazz that favours far greater freedom than be bop, both in the construction of the tunes and in the use of individual instruments (during solos and in the accompaniment of those solos).

Despite possessing exemplary technique, Horace Silver became a spokesman for this new musical realm by emphasising its qualities of immediacy, the better to reach listeners. Within the framework of this new jazz idiom, he spent six electrifying years (1952-'57) working at the highest level, both as a leader (backed by the finest musicians of the era) and as a founding member of the hugely important Jazz Messengers. The following year he formed his own quintet (The Horace Silver Quintet), continuing down the hard bop road and recording a substantial run of celebrated LPs that would prove highly influential on a long line of musicians, both his contemporaries and those who came after him.

By 1958, Silver's well-established reputation meant his new group was immediately given the green light for a string of recordings with the prestigious Blue Note label. The third studio outing from this line-up was titled "Blowin' The Blues Away" (a hard bop classic), cut to tape between August and September 1959 and released that November.

The band assembled for these sessions featured, alongside the leader on piano, Louis Hayes (drums), Eugene Taylor (bass), Junior Cook (tenor sax) and Blue Mitchell (trumpet). All young musicians of considerable talent, they found in this quintet their first steady gig within a high-level artistic setting. With the exception of the drummer, they would remain in the lineup until 1963, making their names on the American jazz scene precisely through the work done alongside Horace Silver.

The album comprises seven tracks, all written by Silver, adding up to a total running time of thirty-nine minutes, in keeping with the average length of hard bop records of the period. They are brilliantly arranged by the Connecticut-born pianist, who acts as the group's musical guide with a firm and authoritative hand, occupying a central role within the album while still skilfully bringing out the talents of the other members.

The approach to the arrangements favours two main factors. The first is not wasting a single bar, always getting straight to the point and avoiding any unnecessary digression or flourish. A partial exception to this way of writing can be found in the somewhat excessive repetition of the opening and closing themes on "Peace" and "Melancholy Mood", though these remain interesting and enjoyable nonetheless. The second device shaping the seven compositions is the extreme care given to sonic detail, from the unison passages down to the individual instruments, so as to make them as clear and meaningful as possible.

The musical moods we encounter along the grooves of this record are for the most part propulsive and buoyant, lit up by Hayes's shimmering ride cymbal and by breezily witty themes. The listener's imagination is stimulated by the themes and the pleasingly original sonic settings found on this LP. They season this band's hard bop with refined and unusual flavours: gospel on "Sister Sadie", a delightful parody of a Middle Eastern motif on "Baghdad Blues", a nod to the wild themes of be bop on "Break City" and "Blowin' The Blues Away", and a tribute to '30s standards on "Peace" and "Melancholy Mood".

All of this is delivered through the hard bop paradigm, that is, with a straightforward naturalness and relatively extended space in which solos can unfold. In this way, reason and emotion are perfectly balanced, in an inviting musical cocktail that on the one hand doesn't overwhelm the senses and on the other never risks sounding bland. The ability to craft an accessible group sound with genuine appeal, while still staying within the bounds of the finest jazz tradition, would even allow Silver to turn up on American jukeboxes (a feat rarely achieved by jazz artists).

Two of the album's seven tracks are given a stripped-down instrumentation. The quintet becomes a trio (piano, bass and drums) on "The St. Vitus Dance", with its lively, concise solo, and on "Melancholy Mood", melancholic and intimate but never predictable, like gazing at the photo of a loved one. These two songs deliberately leave out the horns in order to spotlight Silver's expressive piano and his infectious solo skills.

In particular, it's "Melancholy Mood" that highlights a defining feature of Silver's pianistic style: the rhythmic, irregular and slightly ironic lyricism he draws from Thelonious Monk. That musical influence is also clearly recognisable on this LP in "Peace", a track glowing with expansive serenity and animated by the pleasingly unpredictable path the piano charts through its solo excursion. "Melancholy Mood" and "Peace" are, incidentally, the only two tracks on the record with a slow, unhurried tempo.

Monk's legacy is thus embraced enthusiastically by Silver, who translates it in an innovative, modern way and extends it across every track on the LP. It is filtered through the pianist's distinctive sensibility for devising, with astonishing consistency and frequency, imaginative melodic figures within his improvisations. It's an unbroken sequence of inventive ideas, conjured up with apparent ease and capable of giving the piano solos tremendous appeal. The brief, gripping melodic motifs sketched out by the piano come across as so evocative, entertaining and persuasive that they could potentially serve as the main themes for just as many new compositions. This is a hallmark ability of Silver's, all the more remarkable when applied to medium- and up-tempo pieces (as happens on "The St. Vitus Dance", "Sister Sadie" and "Break City").

The stimulating communicative charm achieved in this way also paves the way for soul jazz, which in the first half of the 1960s would become a fairly widespread variant of hard bop (Bobby Timmons, Lou Donaldson, Cannonball Adderley etc.). Most of the tracks on this record contain, in embryonic form, certain elements linked to soul jazz, such as spacious, bright arrangements or solo passages marked by an overall sense of great fluidity.

That said, the touches recalling soul jazz soften, without ever oversimplifying, the tightly woven yet flowing music the quintet offers on this LP. This is true too of the conception of the solos, at once intricate, concise and direct, with which Junior Cook's tenor sax and Blue Mitchell's trumpet guide us through the record.

Stylistically, the saxophonist follows the "school" of Hank Mobley, marked by a slightly rounded tone and a smooth, rhythmically assured flow in his improvisations. In these sessions, Cook's most striking solo turn comes in the fast-flowing "Break City", where his notes rush excitedly through the tenor's upper register without ever losing their easy composure (listen from 0:26 to 1:19).

Mitchell's trumpet, meanwhile, picks up the tradition of musicians like Clifford Brown, though he rounds out the sound of his instrument with a warm tone and a linear, melodic approach to soloing. On this album his clean, steady solo work is captured, perhaps not as effectively as elsewhere but still with real impact, placing every note exactly where it belongs while still stirring genuine feeling (as, for instance, on "Baghdad Blues" and "Blowin' The Blues Away").

The rhythm section is built on the solid double bass of Eugene Taylor, a rock-solid point of reference for the band's sonic evolutions. The undercurrent formed by his notes flows through the overall sound with great discretion, yet conveying the certainty that every track, slow or fast, quintet or trio, is firmly anchored. Taylor isn't given room to carve out solo spots, in line with the supporting role he's called on to play throughout this LP — a role he fulfills by dispensing a wisely measured touch on the double bass strings.

Alongside Taylor, keeping time is Louis Hayes on drums, delivering an overall praiseworthy performance, even if it doesn't quite match the dynamism rich with implicit meaning that often characterized him between the late '50s and the first half of the '60s. This is attributable, at least in part, to the prominent control Silver exerts over the arrangement of this album, which partly narrows the drums' range of action. Even so, the drummer doesn't let the chance slip to display his characteristic executional agility, showcased in impeccable rhythmic work on both the slow and fast tracks.

Rounding out the rhythm section is the leader's own piano. It moves beneath the horn solos, clearing their path with decisive touches, vivid in color and almost percussive in intensity, so much so that it grabs the listener's attention even when, as here, it limits itself to accompaniment (for example, in "Blowin' The Blues Away" and "Sister Sadie").

From the rhythm section just mentioned through to the horns, the five musicians display excellent unity of purpose as well as a perfect mutual fit. These qualities greatly benefit the listening experience and, under Silver's attentive, farsighted supervision, translate into an enviable artistic and musical cohesion. The tight sonic connection forged among the members of the Horace Silver Quintet on "Blowin' The Blues Away" (as, indeed, on the other LPs they recorded) is comparable to that achieved by other great jazz groups, such as, for example, the first quintet of Miles Davis (1955-'56).

The 1999 CD reissue also included an outtake from the album's recording sessions, one that would never be used on any other record and should therefore be regarded as an extension and completion of this LP: "How Did It Happen". It's a composition by Don Newey (an obscure jazz pianist contemporary to Silver and held in high esteem by him), interpreted here superbly and with flowing savoir-faire. Worth noting is the piano solo, which nonchalantly lets colorful blues inflections flow over the dynamic carpet laid out with lively readiness by the bass-and-drums rhythm section.

Finally, it's impossible not to mention that the sound engineer for this session, as for countless others of the period, is the legendary Rudy Van Gelder, able as no one else to capture the unrepeatable sound of jazz's golden age (1952-'65).

"Blowin' The Blues Away" is an archetype of the best hard bop jazz, extremely pleasurable to listen to, flawlessly played, accessible and satisfying at the same time — perhaps the best point from which to start getting to know the music of this great jazz musician.

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30/03/2026