BST 84309

Horace Silver - You Gotta Take A Little Love

Released - June 1969

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 10, 1969
Randy Brecker, trumpet, flugelhorn #1,2; Bennie Maupin, tenor sax, flute; Horace Silver, piano; John Williams, bass; Billy Cobham, drums.

3393 tk.7 The Rising Sun
3394 tk.15 You Gotta Take A Little Love
3396 tk.25 Lovely's Daughter

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 17, 1969
Randy Brecker, trumpet, flugelhorn; Bennie Maupin, tenor sax, flute; Horace Silver, piano; John Williams, bass; Billy Cobham, drums.

3397 tk.29 Brain Wave
3398 tk.34 The Belly Danger
3399 tk.36 Down And Out
3395 tk.42 It's Time

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
You Gotta Take a Little Love	Horace Silver	January 10 1969
The Risin' Sun	Horace Silver	January 10 1969
It's Time	Horace Silver	January 10 1969
Lovely's Daughter	Bennie Maupin	January 10 1969
Side Two
Down and Out	Horace Silver	January 10 1969
The Belly Dancer	Horace Silver	January 10 1969
Brain Wave	Horace Silver	January 10 1969

Liner Notes

The theme of this record is BROTHERHOOD. As a small child I often wondered why various groups of people lived in various ghetto areas. Why couldn't everyone live side by side in peace and harmony with each other? Why did one group hate another group? Why couldn't we love one another and live together and help each other and learn from one another? Why couldn't we absorb each other's culture and profit by doing so? Why weren't all men united in brotherhood? It's taken me many years to find out that the link that unites us is the spirit and that all men are spiritually united if we but realize it, and that realization comes from within. It's TIME for that realization, and with it comes the Risin' Sun, or the Brotherhood of Man.

"You Gotta Take a Little Love" is a down to earth, rompin', finger-poppin' type blues. The lyric is meant to remind one that love is still the strongest power in the universe, and that it is always there for the taking, and the taking is mental and is meant to encompass the love of everyone and everything.

You searchin' for it here, you
searchin' for it there, it's
movin' all around you if you make
yourself aware.
You gotta take a little love. You
gotta take a little love.
It's right here for the takin', won't
you go ahead and take a little love.

There's pretty women here, there's
pretty women there, there's
pretty women all around that really
want to care.
You gotta take a little love. You
gotta take a little love.
It's right here for the takin', won't
you go ahead and take a little love.

She may not realize, the love that's
in your eyes, just put
your arms around her and she's
bound to sympathize.
You gotta take a little love. You
gotta take a little love.
It's right here for the takin', won't
you go ahead and take a little love.

And once you come to know, the
magic of your glow, you'll never
be without it 'cause it fills your heart
up so.
You gotta take a little love. You
gotta take a little love.
It's right there for the takin', won't
you go ahead and take a little love.

"The Risin' Sun," refers to the coming of the Brotherhood of Man. We are slowly but surely coming to the realization that all men are spiritual brothers and if we wrong our brother we wrong ourselves, and in helping our brother we help ourselves. The lyrics below I feel explain this in a more clear and concise manner.

When war is done, the world will
see the sun.
It's peace for you and me, together
we will be,
as happy as if we were one.

Stand face to face, in union with
the human race.
Our spirit is our bond, to carry us
beyond, the difficulties
we might face.

Oh yes I know, the guidin' light will
surely show,
that love will rule the world, a new
deal will unfurl,
and hate will have no place to go.

When all are one, the battle that
we fight is done,
so cultivate your soul, for soon you
will behold,
the coming of the risin' sun.

tag
So cultivate your soul, for soon you
will behold,
the coming of the risin' sun.

"It's Time" means it's time for the realization of the spirit within, and its connection with the One and its all encompassing parts. The young people of today, I'm happy to say, are coming to that realization. Those who sincerely participate in love-ins and demonstrations for peace and human rights, and those who practice meditation and study the various sciences that help one to know one's self better, are among the many who are realizing. Those who ask themselves the question Why, and go within for the answer, have found it.

The time has arrived that we all realize who we are.
We'll find a new life flowing through us greater than before.
Brother you and I, side by side, hand in hand, on and on we must go.
That's how it is, shouldn't we know, shouldn't we feel it's so?

The dream that we dream will come true as our faith grows and grows.
Doing our best to help each other inwardly we know, destiny will show
us the way to perform what we must come what may. Leaving our minds
open for thought, nothing can change our will.

"Lovely's Daughter" is a very beautiful ballad written by Bennie Maupin and features Bennie on flute. This was written for Bennie's girl whose mother's last name is Lovely, hence the title "Lovely's Daughter.'

"Down and Out" has a blues feeling but structurally is not a blues. The lyric tells the story of a young man who chooses a wife much too hastily and unwisely, and whose marriage ends abruptly in divorce with unjustly large alimony payments and settlements. A sad story but a true one with our archaic divorce laws as they are today.

What in the world am I goin' to do.
I made a fool of myself over you.
You took my house, you took my dough,
I'm down and out, nowhere to go.
What in the world am I goin' to do.

Where in the world am I goin' to go.
You did me dirty I want you to know.
I send my check, I never fail.
If I miss once, I go to jail.
What in the world am I goin' to do,

A lesson to learn, you're sure to get burned.
If you pick too fast, it hardly ever lasts.
My clothes are raggedy, tattered and torn.
My shoes are terribly, terribly worn.
I work all day, you run and play,
I sweat and slave my life away.
What in the world am I goin' to do.

tag
Now all of you fellows who need some advice.
Check out my story and brother you'll really think twice.

"The Belly Dancer" is based on an old Jewish scale. The mood of the composition is sometimes Yiddish and sometimes Egyptian, which to me pinpoints the fact that music can and does help spiritually to unite us. The melody brings to my mind visions of the Far East and a harem of beautiful dancing girls, dancing all around you as you recline on a big soft pillow with all types of gourmet foods at your finger tips, water pipe at your side, etc.

"Brain Wave" is so titled because of the way the melody is written. When played it seems to go out into space as if one is throwing a boomerang into space, and at the very end of the melody it seems to turn around and come back to you as a boomerang would do, or as thoughts leave the mind and transcend into space only to return as things.

Randy Brecker (Philadelphia), for a young man, has had quite a bit of valuable experience. He has worked and recorded with the big bands of Duke Pearson, Thad Jones—Mel Lewis, and Clark Terry. He has also worked and recorded with Blood, Sweat, and Tears, a well known rock group, and has had experience in studio and television work. Randy plays trumpet and flugelhorn, and is a very well-rounded musician.

Bennie Maupin (Detroit) has worked with the Roy Haynes Quartet and recorded with such jazz notables as Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Owens, and Marion Brown. Bennie plays tenor sax and flute with a broad musical conception that encompasses whatever idiom that may be called for at the moment. An extremely capable young man.

John Williams (New York) has worked with the Horace Parlan Trio and the Walter Bishop Trio previously, and has a very happy and loose rhythmic conception. He plays upright bass cad electric bass, and plays them both equally well, and is to whatever bag you might put him in.

Bill Cobham (Panama) was born in Panama but raised from a small child in New York City. He formally worked with the Billy Taylor Trio and the New York Jazz Sextet. He's a fine drum soloist as well as a swinger, and can perform at ease in all idioms; whatever idiom he's performing in you'll always find a happy beat there.

These are the capable young musicians in the current Horace Silver Quintet. We have worked feverishly to prepare a musical cuisine seasoned with the finest musical spices and herbs palatable to the musical gourmet. May your ears savor the sounds and your lips taste of the theme of this record — Brotherhood.

— Horace Silver

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT YOU GOTTA TAKE A LITTLE LOVE

Bortherhood is a concept that Horace Silver was as prepared to embrace as any of his musical contemporaries, He had been incorporating what we would today call "world music" touches in his writing from the inception of his working group (see "Senor Blues," "Swjngjn' the Samba," "Baghdad Blues," and "The Tokyo Blues" for some notable examples), With the success of Song for My Father, his own Cape Verdean heritage also began to gain more prominent display in his music, As a result, touches such as the hint of Japanese music in "The Risin' Sun" and the Yiddish/Egyptjan merger of "The Belly Dancer" (which, pace Silver's notes, sounds more Near than Far Eastern) fit naturally into what Silver the composer had always been doing.

The thematic nature of You Gotta Take a Little Love, and the inclusion of lyrics for four of the six Silver originals, was a newer strain, though one anticipated by his previous album Serenade to a Soul Sister, As he stated in the notes to that set, Silver had become enamored by what was happening in the youth culture, and embraced its spirit here through both the cover photo and the proselytizing nature of most of his lyrics, ("Down and Out," the exception, sounds like a rare example of complaining on his part, born of personal experience,) There were still no vocals on this album, though they would appear with a vengeance on the subsequent United States of Mind trilogy.

For anyone who auditioned the music before reading the original liner notes, this was simply another strong set by the Horace Silver Quintet, There was blues, in the title track, and compositions with blues connotations; Latin and Middle Eastern inflections ("It's Time" and "The Belly Dancer," respectively) and Silver's growing interest in triple meter ("Down and Out" and "Brain Wave"), There was a new color in Randy Brecker's use of flugelhorn (on "It's Time" and "Brain Wave") and, in Bennie Maupin's flute work on "Lovely's Daughter" and "The Belly Dancer," a return to a sound that James Spaulding had introduced to Silver's music on The Jody Grind, The inclusion of a tune by someone other than Silver also recalled the period when Joe Henderson both played in and wrote for the band.

Most of the sidemen were familiar as well, since all save Brecker had participated in the Soul Sister sessions. The trumpeter had recorded his debut as a leader, Score, shortly before this album; but this is where much of the jazz world first heard Randy Brecker in a small-group setting, and they had to be impressed with his playing. The mix of lyricism with harmonic curiosity in Brecker's work here, sort of Blue Mitchell meets Woody Shaw via Freddie Hubbard, made him ideal for Silver's music. Maupin, already known for working the freer end of the post-bop spectrum, proved to be a good fit as well, despite Silver's more mainstream ethos (the coda on "Brain Wave" was as out as the Quintet's music ever got), and the subsequent histories of John Williams and Billy Cobham confirmed the talents that were first revealed in this band. As always, Horace Silver knew how to put together a first-rate ensemble; and as usual, it worked with great efficiency in Rudy Van Gelder's studio, attempting the first four titles at the January 10 session, then taking a second pass at "It's Time" as well as the three final tracks a week later. The January 17 version of "It's Time" was selected as the master take.

Hindsight tells us what Silver himself probably could not have predicted — that this was the last Blue Note album by a working Horace Silver Quintet. Live jazz was struggling at the end of the '60s, thanks in part to the rock explosion, and Silver's ongoing problems with arthritis also limited his touring. Silver himself was gearing up for bigger studio projects with expanded ensembles where he would either mix and match his core unit (as on the United States of Mind albums) or pair first-call rhythm players with his working hornmen (the Silvern' series that produced five volumes between 1975 and '78). While a pure and simple, five-piece Horace Silver unit did appear again, on half of 1972's In Pursuit of the 27th Man, You Gotta Take a Little Love truly marks the end of an era.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2006