BLP 5058

Horace Silver Quintet - Volume 3

Released - 1954

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, November 13, 1954
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Horace Silver, piano; Doug Watkins, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.3 Room 608
tk.6 Creepin' In
tk.8 Doodlin'
tk.10 Stop Time

See Also: BLP 1518

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Room 608	Horace Silver	November 13 1954
Creepin' In	Horace Silver	November 13 1954
Side Two
Doodlin'	Horace Silver	November 13 1954
Stop Time	Horace Silver	November 13 1954

Liner Notes

HORACE WARD MARTIN TAVARES SILVER has enjoyed the many fruits of fame-without-fortune since his name first appeared on a Blue Note LP a couple of years ago. He has been hailed as a new star on the air, in magazines and in newspapers (but never yet, to my knowledge, between bound covers). He had been seen in theatres and at the Newport Jazz Festival and in many night clubs (but never yet at a five-figure weekly salary). He has even won, through the courtesy of Down Beat, a critics' poll — but in the other kind of poll, the people's poll, he hasn't yet even made the top ten. Let us be brave and recall that Gillespie, Parker, Dameron and Milt Jackson all won a critics' poll (in Esquire) years before the public began to observe them.

Horace Silver, then, is a succes d'estime, which sometimes means that one is on one's way to becoming a succes d'argent. Of course, all the cards are stacked against him. Horace was not born in any of the correct areas for a Jazzman: he is not from New Orleans or Kansas City or ever from some exotic land like England or Canada. Moreover, he has never keeled over in a smoky dive; there is a long history of sanity in his family; and he comes from Norwalk, Connecticut. As you know, a great jazz star just doesn't come from Norwalk, Connecticut. Most unglamorous.

Despite all these handicaps, a hard and hardy core of followers has been perceptive enough to realize that Horace Silver is as fine a modern jazz pianist as will be found around. In particular, those who have observed him on such LPs as Blue Note 5018 and 5034 with his own trio, 5021 with Lou Donaldson, 5024 with Howard McGhee, 5040 with Miles Davis and 5037, 5038, 5039 at Birdland, have by now probably succeeding in amassing their biblical Thirty Pieces of Silver (Matthew XXVI 15).

Here, then, are four more Pieces of Silver, this time in his first quintet date under his own name. Everybody present agreed that this was one of the most relaxed sessions in years, and, as befits a relaxed session, the cats stretched their limbs and their lines and Alfred Lion threw the stop-watch out the window.

The lines, actually, are all Silver originals, and all in a basic groove that reminds us how effectively modern musicians, if their artistry is of a genuine jazz nature, can keep faith with the real is a word that might well be roots of this kind of music. "Funky" applied to the products of this date.

Kenny Dorham, Horace's trumpeter for the occasion, will be familiar to Blue Note collectors who have already heard him on sessions with Thelonious Monk and Lou Donaldson. Hank Mobley, the tenor man, is new to Blue Note but familiar to fans who have followed his activities with Dizzy Gillespie and other small combos around the East. Doug Watkins, the bassist, is fresh on the scene, a Detroiter and a protégé of Art Blakey. Art himself, by now an almost inseparable session-mate of Horace's, again lends his authoritative percussive presence in both rhythm and solo contributions.

The session starts with a fast unison theme, Room 608 named for Horace's hotel room (Horace is hewing to the correct jazz line here, for hotel rooms have made jazz tune titles ever since Benny Goodman cut Room 1411 in 1928). The ensemble is followed by two choruses of trumpet that will serve to convince you of Kenny Dorham's true ability. Seldom has he played with such fluency and assurance, in a style that seems to blend the best elements of both Gillespie and Davis. After two typically well-constructed choruses by Horace there is a series of cute unison breaks and piano fill-ins before Mobley takes over for a swinging solo. A rousing drum chorus precedes the return to the theme.

Creepin' In sets a wonderful minor mood—slow, slinky and funky. It is better listened to than described. Listen to it.

Doodlin' is a 12-bar blues in which the tenor creeps below the trumpet at whole-tone intervals in the first 8 bars. Note, too, the humorous use of staccato notes in bars 8 and 9. Note more particularly Horace's superb comping behind the Dorham and Mobley solos, in which he sometimes gets a 12-to-the-bar feel.

Stop Time contains only 16 bars of fast unison theme and gives everybody a chance to accomplish what seems to me to be their best work on the entire session: Dorham, Mobley, Silver and Blakey all sit in the spotlight successively and successfully.

Listening to this session, with its beautiful reflection of the relaxed mood that produced it, I found myself wishing that I were a millionaire, or at least a tax-free foundation. If I were either, I would hire Horace Silver on a year-round basis to play for nobody but me and a few selected house guests.

On second thought, I think I would have Horace as a house guest, and any time he didn't feel like playing we would both sit around and listen to Bud Powell. Either way, it would be a pleasant life.

—LEONARD FEATHER
(author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by JOHN HERMANSADER