BLP 5018

Horace Silver - New Faces - New Sounds

Released - 1952

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, October 9, 1952
Horace Silver, piano; Gene Ramey, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN448 tk.1 Horoscope
BN449-1 tk.5 Safari
BN450-6 tk.15 Thou Swell

WOR Studios, NYC, October 20, 1952
Horace Silver, piano; Curly Russell, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN452-1 tk.2 Quicksilver
BN453-2 tk.6 Ecaroh
BN454-0 tk.7 Yeah!
BN455-3 tk.11 Knowledge Box
BN456-3 tk.15 Prelude To A Kiss

See Also: BLP 1520

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Safari	Horace Silver	October 9 1952
Ecorah	Horace Silver	October 20 1952
Prelude To A Kiss	Duke Ellington	October 20 1952
Thou Swell	Rodgers/Hart	October 9 1952
Side Two
Quicksilver	Horace Silver	October 20 1952
Horoscope	Horace Silver	October 9 1952
Yeah	Horace Silver	October 20 1952
Knowledge Box	Horace Silver	October 20 1952

Liner Notes

Notes By LEONARD FEATHER
(Associate Editor, Down Beat)

Horace Silver is one of the youngest and most original of the bright new stars on the jazz piano scene. A couple of years ago he was an unknown, playing gigs in and around his native Norwalk, Conn. and in Westchester County. Today, at 24, he is well on his way toward the acquisition of a national following.

Credit for discovering Horace goes to a young artist who already enjoys such a following — Stan Getz. Horace was working in Hartford with his own trio at a club where Stan was to be featured one night as guest star. Al Haig had just left Getz, who was so impressed by Silver's work that he promptly hired the trio intact.

Coincidentally, Horace had been well known locally as a performer on Stan Getz's instrument, the tenor sax, as well as on piano. He had taken piano and saxophone lessons while in high school, and had studied with a church organist in Norwalk. Gradually he found himself taking more jobs at the keyboard and fewer engagements as a tenor man.

Horace's job with Getz, his first big-time professional break, lasted almost a year, after which he remained in New York to get his local union card. Since then he has been a familiar and popular figure around such Manhattan focal points as Birdland, Le Downbeat and the resuscitated Minton's Playhouse, working with the combos of Terry Gibbs, Coleman Hawkins, Oscar Pettiford, back with Stan Getz, and with Bill Harris.

On this LP record Horace Silver's dual talents as composer and soloist are fully represented for the first time. Six of the eight tunes are his own, ranging from the misterioso charm of Safari and the intriguing dissonance of Ecaroh to the puckish quotation-studded Quicksilver and the Thelonious Monkish Horoscope. Perhaps the most fascinating of all is Yeah, in which the two main phrases — the first ascending, the second descending — are a happy combination of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic originality.

The record is rightly credited to the Horace Silver Trio, for although these are essentially piano solos, the sensitive collaboration of Horace's team-mates is an important factor in their success. Art Blakey, whose drumming underlines the Silver treatment of Rodgers and Hart's Thou Swell so effectively, is the percussionist on all eight numbers. The bass work is divided between Gene Ramey and Curly Russell. The latter's bowing provides a fine foundation for the charming handling of Duke Ellington's Prelude To A Kiss.

Jazz piano today calls not only for inspiration and feeling, but also for ever more facile fingers with which to interpret the ideas communicated by a sensitive and original mind. With these performances Horace Silver shows he has the required attributes to a degree shared by few cone contemporary keyboard artists.