Horace Silver Quintet - Live New York revisited '2022

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Song For My Father
02. African Queen
03. The Natives Are Restless Tonight
04. Que Pasa
05. African Queen
06. The Tokyo Blues
07. Senor Blues

This fabulous album, recorded during three New York club engagements in 1964,
1965 and 1966, ranks among the finest in the pianist/composer's illustrious
catalogue. There are several things going for it: the quality and shared
intentionality of the two, slightly different, lineups; the choice of material
and its careful sequencing; the vibrancy of the performances, which is enough to
practically raise the dead; and the quality of the CD mastering by the
ezz-thetics label's sonic jedi Michael Brändli, whose work in effect amounts
to full-on audio restoration.

Three of the five tunes (the seven-track album contains two versions apiece of
"Que Pasa" and "African Queen") are from Silver's exalted Song For My Father
(Blue Note, 1964) and are performed by the band which played them on that album:
Silver, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, trumpeter Carmell Jones, bassist Teddy
Smith and drummer Roger Humphries. "Song For My Father," "The Natives Are
Restless Tonight" and "Que Pasa" never sounded finer.

The same can be said for "Señor Blues" from 6 Pieces Of Silver (Blue Note,
1957), the title track from Tokyo Blues (Blue Note, 1962), and "African Queen"
from The Cape Verdean Blues (Blue Note, 1965). The two versions of "African
Queen," datewise the last tracks to have been recorded (at the Half Note on
separate nights in February 1966), have Woody Shaw in place of Jones and Larry
Ridley in place of Smith. The rest of the personnel is unchanged.

Reviewers are not usually given to quoting the words of other writers, much less
giving attribution to them when they do, but on occasion someone else makes an
observation which is worth repeating verbatim. Brian Morton's sleeve note for
Live New York Revisited is spot-on in its analysis of Silver's importance within
the development of jazz. Here is Morton's general thesis: "Long before his death
in 2014, Silver's reputation had become occluded, or tarnished with the notion
that he was a relatively slight figure, more of an entertainer than an
innovator." He goes on to discuss the various ways in which Silver was an
innovatory figure, including this: "His habit of quoting other songs in his
solos, often dismissed as a shallow, crowd-pleasing trick, is a forerunner of
sampling culture and hip-hop. It's also an acknowledgement of [how] profoundly
knowledgeable Silver was about the canon and its evolution. Here's a line of
mine, he might say, and here's where it came from, but also here and here. His
only mistake in this regard was to smile while he was playing.... a challenge to
the really rather recent notion that jazz should be deadly serious and played
with a pained rictus."

All publication of the user fantastik - IsraBox

Related artists