While the sounds on this 2 disc set by piano legend Horace Silver may sound like mainstream jazz to our 21st Century ears, at the time they were groundbreaking affairs. The heat seeking missile of bebop separated the men from the boys, as well as the music fans from the dance floor as jazz became either too fast or too slow for lindyhoppers to cut a rug. Horace Silver teamed up with drummer Art Blakey to puree the new sounds into something a bit more palatable, with a detectable backbeat and toe tapping rhythm. Here we have the nascent sounds of hard bop, as Silver, Blakey and a rotating team of bassists including Curley Russell, Gene Ramey and Percy Heath start creating a new canon of songs and sounds.
Silver’s pared down piano style in the trio settings create accessible melodies with deep cut grooves, as on “Horace-Scope,” “Opus De Funk” and “Ecaroh,” all of which would later show up in quintet settings in future albums. The original Horace Silver Quintet (which would later become The Jazz Messengers) had Silver with Kenny Dorham/tp, Hank Mobley/ts, Doug Watkins/b and Blakey, and they created a whole new style of jazz that added gospel beats for the classic and highly influential pieces “Doodlin’” and “The Preacher.” These tunes still pack a wallop and have not lost a bit of sheen. Later incarnations with trumpeter Joe Gordon and drummer Kenny Clarke include a tight “Shoutin’ Out” and with trumpeter Donald Byrd and drummer Art Taylor, Silver starts digging into the minor moods n a sleek “Silver Blue.” These 31 tunes are the perfect preface to Silver’s book of jazz.