Hardbop Grandpop Sockhop: Horace Silver 90

It's Sunday, and time for the kickoff to the September postings, beginning with a milestone birthday of another heavyweight.

This time we're back in the Jazzy firmament with a couple of swinging broadcasts from one of the true legendary figures of the music of our lifetimes.

Beginning when the trio he was leading was tabbed by Stan Getz to back him way back in 1950, today's birthday guy was in the mix all the way up to his death in 2014.

In the intervening six decades plus, our hero made some of the most beloved recordings in all of American music, both in the company of bands like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and on his own.

One of the original Jazz Messengers, when he went solo in the 1960s he became one of the leading figures in taking the music back to the danceable strains with which it had originated.

All told he led or played on over 100 records in his lifetime. Some of them are among the most jammin' LPs in the pantheon, especially my personal favorites like the United States of Mind series and the progression of "Silver 'N'" records he made in the second half of the 1970s.

Which so happens to be the period today's shares come from. These two mind-shattering FM tapes date from 1976 and 1979, the latter of which is remastered by me in honor of what would have been the 90th birthday of the great Horace Silver.

Horace Silver Quintet

Antibes 1976 + Kampen 1979

i.

Festival de Jazz d'Antibes

Juan-les-Pins, France

7.22.1976

01 In Pursuit of the 27th Man

02 Slow Down

03 Song for My Father

04 Keep On Gettin' Up

Total time: 48:03

Horace Silver - piano

Tom Harrell - trumpet

Bob Berg - tenor saxophone

Steve Beskrone - bass

Eddie Gladden - drums

digital capture of a 2017 France Musique rebroadcast

ii.

Stadsgehoorzaal

Kampen, The Netherlands 

3.8.1979

01 introduction

02 Sun God of the Masai

03 The Aztec Sun God

04 The Mohican and the Great Spirit

05 Togetherness

06 band introductions

07 Nica's Dream

Total time: 56:56

Horace Silver - piano

Larry Schneider - tenor saxophone

John McNeil - trumpet, flugelhorn

Todd Coolman - bass

Harold White - drums

EN remaster of a master FM cassette of the original TROS Radio "Sesjun" broadcast

both shows zipped together

627 MB FLAC/September 2018 archive link

I worked on the 1979 tape to rescue it from the oceanic volumes of hiss in which it found itself submerged, hopefully without noise reducing the juice out of it.

Of course I have all sorts of superbo stuff to share for September, but let's start things off on the good foot by paying utmost homage to Horace Silver, born this day in 1928 and never venturing far from our turntables since his first platter in 1952!--J.

9.2.1928 - 6.18.2014