While on the subject of rhythm... Here's a man who was one of the first to get the funk into jazz. His 'Opus de Funk' came out in 1953, so he knew what he was about from the start. Horace Silver is celebrated as a leading precursor of a type of small-group soul-jazz that would prove really popular in the mid-to-late Fifties and on into the Sixties, embracing the likes of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Cannonball Adderley, the Jazztet, the Jazz Crusaders and Lee Morgan, whose smash, 'The Sidewinder', was the genre's commercial apogee. The keynote was simplicity: an emphasis on melody and rhythm allied to improvisations on (mainly) sax, trumpet and piano anchored to a catchy theme. Little room for the kind of contemporary experimentations of, say, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk.
Young Horace learnt both piano and tenor sax, which possibly contributed to a piano style that was rhythmic and uncluttered. His father, who handed Horace one of his middle names, Tavares, was originally from the Cape Verde Isles and you can detect the influence of the islands' unique indigenous music on Silver's version of jazz: a kind of joie de vivre tinged with a darker, melancholic edge. (That's the pianist's old man in a straw hat, puffing on a big fat cigar on the cover of Silver's most famous of his many, many albums for Blue Note, Song For My Father.)
His mother sang with a gospel choir, and the influence of gospel is clearly there, too, in his music's soulful simplicity. Before he ceded the enduring ensemble to Art Blakey, Horace Silver's Jazz Messengers had a hit with 'The Preacher'. Other titles he chose, like 'Sister Sadie', 'Juicy Lucy', 'The Jody Grind', 'Doodlin'', 'Finger Poppin'' and 'That Healin' Feelin'', give strong clues to Silver's house style. It must have had an effect on the young Ramsey Lewis, among others, whose piano trio would strike gold for the Chess label in the Sixties with the gospel staple, 'Wade In The Water'.
For once, it didn't take me long to find this video. As soon as I watched it, I knew I'd need look no further. It was one of those videos that bring copious tears to the eye, for some inexplicable reason known only to my innermost psyche. Perhaps it was the sight of Horace in a floral shirt, with his normally slicked-back hair falling chaotically over his eyes. Maybe it was the balmy Umbrian setting. Anyway, it's perfect in almost every respect: the setting, the number itself, the sound quality, the sharpness of image, the featured musicians, the ensemble and solo playing. 'Almost' because Bob Berg's otherwise splendid tenor sax solo maybe goes on about a minute too long and lapses into a bit of showboating: the squawking and over-blowing of a Coltrane, Sanders or Archie Shepp never seem to suit the intrinsically unfussy nature of soul-jazz. Still, it's otherwise a very fine solo, and unlike so many fellow jazzers of the time, Berg stuck religiously to a post-bop format rather than adopt a trendy, contemporary electro-jazz fusion – although he would go on to play for three years the following decade with the godfather of electrified jazz, Miles Davis.
The band is made up of Steve Beskrone, who does a solid job on electric bass; drummer Eddie Gladden, who was latterly most closely associated with Dexter Gordon; and Tom Harrell, one of the most cultivated and lyrical of modern trumpeters, who spent four years with Horace Silver and six the following decade with alto saxophonist, Phil Woods. He also had the distinction of playing with pianist Vince Guaraldi on some of the Charlie Brown TV specials. My first introduction to a favourite trumpeter – had I but known. It may not have been Horace Silver's classic quintet that spanned the late Fifties and early Sixties and included Junior Cook on tenor and the ever-splendid Blue Mitchell on trumpet (which you can catch in a superb recording of 'Señor Blues' from 1959 live in Paris, featuring a rather more neatly attired and coiffed pianist), but this was a band every bit as distinguished as Bob Berg's straw hat.
The pianist kicks things off with that famous riff that was borrowed by Donald Fagen for Steely Dan's 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number', the memorable opener of Pretzel Logic. The band joins in, as tight as a pair of support stockings, before Horace Silver takes the first solo, demonstrating his percussive, crab-like technique on the eighty-eights. Note the way he ups the tempo at around the three-and-a-half minute mark and then observe how first Tom Harrell and then Bob Berg mirror this idea in their solos. This was a well rehearsed band. After another statement of theme, Silver rounds things off with a nice coda that echoes his first, longer solo. Stunning.
By the time of this performance, Silver was touring only six months per year in order to spend more time at home with his family. His 28-year tenure with Blue Note would end with the Seventies, and the following decade he reduced his schedule still further. An increasing interest in matters spiritual led him to write lyrics for some of his compositions and by the time I saw him, at the Brighton Dome in 1987, he had added a vocalist to his group of the time: Andy Bey, whose fruity baritone was as disconcerting as Johnny Hartman's or Billy Eckstine's. Still, one shouldn't spurn nor regret the chance to see a legend in concert.
After dabbling in multi-media productions and running a not very successful record label, Silver signed for first Columbia and then Impulse! before fading from the scene as he gradually succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. Even so, he made it to 85, a great age for a jazz musician. Significantly, he entitled his first release for Columbia It's Got To Be Funky. Horace Silver was a man with a credo.
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