Song for My Father

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Song for My Father
Studio album by Horace Silver

Publication
(s)

1964 (recorded 1963–1964)

Label (s) Blue note

Format (s)

album

Genre (s)

Jazz, hard bop

Title (number)

6 (10)

running time

Republishing: 62:26

production

Alfred Lion

Studio (s)

Van Gelder Studio , Englewood Cliffs , NJ

chronology
Silver's Serenade
(1963) 		Song for My Father The Cape Verdean Blues
(1965)

Song for My Father ( Cantiga para Meu Pai ) is a jazz album by the Horace Silver Quintet that was recorded in three sessions from October 1963 to October 1964 and released on the Blue Note label in1964.

The music of the album

It is a lively, contagious hardbo album . Only Silver's album Blowin 'the Blues Away still has the same closedness of the pieces. The three recording dates, only two for the original LP, with different line-ups, stem from the fact that Silver broke up his quintet at this time and put together a new one, which did not detract from the unity. Silver mixes different, infectious rhythms with refined harmonies and melodies. On this album he knows best how to combine an earthiness with a light spirituality. There are always the interjections of the wind instruments that are typical for Silver. Silver's precise and driving comping (accompaniment) certainly also plays a role in the special quality of the solos.

After a stay in Brazil, where he lived with Flora Purim , Silver wanted to write a piece in the bossa nova style, which he enthusiastically received.

“I started trying to write a piece with this rhythmic concept. I sat down at the piano for a few hours and I managed a piece that used the bossa nova rhythm. Still, the melody didn't sound Brazilian to me. It sounded more like one of the old Cape Verdean melodies my father had played. My father kept asking me to take one of the old Cape Verdean songs and turn it into a jazz adaptation. I didn't like the idea, but when I realized that I had written a piece with a Brazilian rhythm concept and a Cape Verdean melody concept, I immediately thought of dedicating it to my father. That's what I called it Song for My Father . We left him as a model for the cover of the LP for the photo. "

Horace Silver (1978 in Keystone Korner)

The jazz standard Song for My Father appears on the album in its original form. It is a bossa nova in AAB form in F minor . At the head of the piece, the trumpet and saxophone play together. Piano and saxophone solo follow. The piece had a notable impact on pop music. The introductory bass notes (the fifth fc in bossa rhythm) of the piano were used by Steely Dan for their song Rikki Don't Lose That Number , while Stevie Wonder used the brass riff at the beginning. The piece is also arranged on the albums Shades of Blue by Madlib and Hand on the Torch by Us3 . According to Horace Silver, the album sold well. Silver begins with a well-designed, exciting piano solo. Henderson's copied saxophone solo remains one and a half A-shaped parts close to the melody and only then breaks out playfully and finally in the B-part with hardly imaginable force, only to fade away after the third chorus when the transition to the theme is reached .

The very fast The Natives Are Restless Tonight is a minor blues and the only typical hard bop piece on the album. It contains beautiful solos, with sensitive collaboration between Humphries and Jones, an "idle" of the bassist, he only plays unaccompanied walking bass , and Humphries short solo.

The piece Calcutta Cutie has a light Eastern Indian flair with meditative phases in the improvisations.

Que pasa? (What is happening here?), As the title reveals, has a mood from the music of Spanish-speaking Central America with dotted rhythm, solemn, lingering, thoughtful melody and partly dabbed piano, and repeatedly falls into rhythmically driving parts. The piece has a consistently continuous bass, above which seventh chords alternate, and is very similar to the title track with its much quieter mood. Henderson sounds like a deep humming mosquito at the beginning of his solo.

The rhythmically difficult yet catchy The Kicker by Joe Henderson has also become standard - Henderson also plays it on his 1967 album of the same name by Milestone. Driving solos come from Henderson and Jones.

Lonely Woman is a slow, lyrical piano ballad in a trio.

The overall impression of the album is warm and inviting, which is unusual for a hardbop album.

On the follow-up album The Cape Verdean Blues , the successful collaboration, especially between Henderson and Humphries, is continued with other pieces of this kind from Silvers, which are generally quieter.

Title sequence

page A
  1. Song for My Father - 7:15
  2. The Natives Are Restless Tonight - 6:08
  3. Calcutta Cutie - 8:28
Side B
  1. Que Pasa - 7:45
  2. The Kicker - 5:24
  3. Lonely Woman - 7:03
CD bonus tracks
  1. Sanctimonious Sam - 3:52
  2. Que Pasa (trio version) - 5:35
  3. Sighin 'and Cryin' - 5:23
  4. Silver Treads Among My Soul - 3:50

All compositions are by Horace Silver except 5th by Joe Henderson, 7th by Musa Kaleem. Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: 3, 6, 7, 8 - October 31, 1963; 9, 10-28 January 1964; 1, 2, 4, 5 - October 26, 1964.

Tracks 7 to 10 are not included on the original LP and have been added to various CD re-releases.

History of origin

Silver's most successful Blue Note album falls out of the ordinary for him, who was known for his efficient, well-thought-out recording sessions, as the recordings come from two lineups over a period of one year. It was originally intended as an album for his old longstanding quintet line-up with Mitchell and Cook. Numbers (3) and (6) to (8) come from the first session in October 1963, of which Blue Note boss Alfred Lion and Silver later only adopted (3) and (6) in the original album. The trio version of "Que Pasa" (8) and "Sanctimonious Sam" (7) were only released in 1979 on Sterling Silver .

In a recording session with Rudy Van Gelder three months later, in January 1964, the remaining pieces were to be recorded; But Silver was dissatisfied with the work. From this are (9) (also published on Sterling Silver ) and (10) (only published in 1989 in the reissue of Song for My Father ) According to Silver's own information to Michael Cuscuna , with whom he later combed the Blue Note archives for material that could be published, Alfred Lion suggested to him after this session to put together a new, fresher band. With the new quintet formed in the spring of 1964 around Henderson and Carmel Jones, Silver then wanted to record new material live - they were planning a longer engagement at Pep's in Philadelphia in August - and thus complement the album. A session in the spring of 1964 failed after Silver in part because Carmell Jones first had to get used to Silver's quintet. In a session with Rudy Van Gelder in October 1964, the pieces (2), (4), (5) that had already been planned for the live recordings and the newly composed by Silver (1) were brought in. Lion didn't want to wait any longer for a new silver album - he also sensed a hit in “Song for My Father” - and then put together the long-playing record from the first session and the last. The title track was released as a single from the successful album.

occupation

Title 1, 2, 4, 5
Title 3, 6-10

Impact history

Down Beat praised the album in its review in February 1965: “Obviously, in Silver's piano playing, the love for basic melodies is combined with the clever implementation of ideas and an emphatic rhythmic swing where it is needed.” Ralf Dombrowski , the Song for My Father selected for one of the records of his “Basis-Diskothek Jazz”, additionally pointed out that “precisely the art of the right balance of dynamic and song-dramaturgical means of expression” ensures that the work appears “round and calm” and ultimately “ to Silver's most famous album “.

BBC listeners voted the album 71st in a poll for The Top 100 Jazz Albums in the 1990s . Richard Cook and Brian Morton counted The Penguin Guide to Jazz Song for My Father and Silver's Blue Note album from 1966, The Jody Grind among Silver's best albums and rated both albums with the highest rating of four stars. Especially with the first albums they praise "the brilliant teamwork between Joe Henderson and Carmell Jones". Brian Priestley mentions that it contains Silver's most successful tracks, but also includes tracks influenced by modal jazz like Que Pasa .

The album, along with Lee Morgan's 1964 The Sidewinder - also with Joe Henderson - was such a great success for Blue Note that, paradoxically, they sold the label to Liberty Records soon (1965) in order to get enough capital for expansion . The album was also a breakthrough for Joe Henderson, who had recently signed with Blue Note.

The music magazine Jazzwise added the album to The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World list ; Keith Shadwick wrote:

“ During the five years that he held the Junior Cook-Blue Mitchell quintet together, Silver had the perfect combination of his high-quality pieces and a band that had a magical interpretive touch. They all played together in a way that made the ensemble one of the greatest of the 1960s. "

literature

Web links

swell

  1. ^ A b Horace Silver, Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty , autobiography
  2. ^ Liner Notes by Leonard Feather
  3. ↑ This title is mistakenly listed on the album with the wrong musicians. However, it is correct in the liner notes.
  4. ↑ In the following, the genesis of Bob Blumenthal's Liner Notes (1999) of the "Rudy van Gelder" edition of the album is given
  5. ↑ A third recording didn't make it to the “master take”.
  6. ↑ a b Ralf Dombrowski : Basis-Diskothek Jazz (= Reclams Universal-Bibliothek. No. 18372). Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-018372-3 , pp. 189f.
  7. ^ Richard Cook Blue Note , Argon Verlag, p. 228ff
  8. ^ In the original: " For the five years he held his Junior Cook-Blue Mitchell quintet together, Silver had the perfect combination of his high-quality tunes and a band that had a magic interpretive touch. They all played for each other to such an extent that the group became one of the true 1960s greats. ".
  9. ^ The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World