Tag Archives: Horace Silver

Vinyl Spotlight: Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (Blue Note 1518) West 63rd “No INC/R” Pressing

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  • “Third” pressing circa 1957-1959
  • “47 WEST 63rd NYC” address on both labels without registered trademark “R”
  • Deep groove both sides
  • “RVG” and Plastylite “P” (ear) etched in dead wax

Personnel:

  • Kenny Dorham, trumpet
  • Hank Mobley, tenor saxophone
  • Horace Silver, piano
  • Doug Watkins, bass
  • Art Blakey, drums

Recorded November 13, 1954 and February 6, 1955 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey
Originally released as two 10″ LPs: BLP 5058 (March 1955) and BLP 5062 (September 1955)
BLP 1518 originally released July 1956

1 Room 608
2 Creepin’ In
3 Stop Time
4 To Whom It May Concern
5 Hippy
6 The Preacher
7 Hankerin’
8 Doodlin’

Selection:

“Creepin’ In” (Silver)

Not only is Horace Silver a favorite jazz composer and musician of mine, this is one of my favorite albums of his. If I had to guess, Silver was given the title of leader on this early Jazz Messengers effort since, unlike the Birdland and Bohemia Messenger LPs of the same era, the majority of the selections here (all but one) were written by Silver, who only penned three of the nine original Birdland tracks and nothing on the original Bohemia LPs. But while many jazz newcomers will, as I did, think of this effort as a single body of work encased in the minimal, baby-blue cover we have all come to know through various reissues (a cover that, by the way, sports a horrible photo of Silver with a shadow covering half his face), these sides actually numbered four in total originally, spanning across two 10″ albums both released in 1955 (BLP 5058 and BLP 5062). In some instances I prefer to own the original 10″ pressings of albums that would later resurface in a 12″ configuration — if I can even find the original 10″ LPs — but for this album, it’s so solid start to finish that I actually prefer the 12″ pressing over the two 10″ “originals”. Why not have all the great music on the 10″ LPs in one place? That’s two less times I need to get up to turn the record over!

A Night at Birdland, Vol. 1 (BLP 5037) and The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 1 (BLP 1507)

The sound of this record is characteristic of that coming out of Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack home studio in the mid 1950s: clear, warm mono with shimmering cymbals, a slightly metallic sound to the trumpet, and a touch (less than normal) of Van Gelder’s menacing spring reverb. This is actually my second vintage copy of this LP. The first had “NEW YORK 23” on one side and “West 63rd” on the other and was acquired at an outdoor Brooklyn record fair several years ago. I recall making the decision to sell it in part because there was a tinge of distortion on Kenny Dorham’s loudest notes (which actually improved somewhat after a good cleaning) but I also sold it because I decidedly preferred the mastering of the 1987 Capitol-Manhattan CD reissue. But when this near mint copy with “West 63rd” on both sides appeared at another Brooklyn record fair recently, I simply could not pass it up.

The Horace Silver Quintet, Volumes 1 & 2 (BLP 5058 & BLP 5062)

Above all, the highest of frequencies, usually dominated by cymbals, sound more “accurate” (detailed and present) on the Manhattan CD and hence, I would assume, on the original master tape. After hearing numerous original Van Gelder LP masters from the years of approximately 1955 to 1957, it’s clear that Van Gelder was making the deliberate and regular choice to dampen the high frequencies a bit when mastering for vinyl. This could have been a precaution against mistracking that the young engineer opted for at the time, which could in theory allow the signal-to-noise ratio-obsessed Van Gelder to achieve even greater volume on his LPs. It could have also been a deliberate aesthetic choice, but we hear Van Gelder leaving more high-frequency detail on his records in 1958. I still prefer the sound of the Manhattan CD, but I’ve come to appreciate Rudy Van Gelder’s earliest LPs as an embodiment of a sonic signature representative of the time they were originally released in.

The Capitol-Manhattan CD reissue of BLP 1518

This is a solid program. Though there are plenty of uptempo tunes with unorthodox melodies written more in the tradition of hard bop’s immediate ancestor, bebop (“Room 608”, “Stop Time”, “Hippy”), Silver penned a jukebox hit with “The Preacher”. Making its debut here (technically on BLP 5062), its corny, gospel-drenched melody is undeniably fun, though I prefer Jimmy Smith’s humorous demolishing of it on Volume 1 of the Club Baby Grand LPs.

Jimmy Smith at Club Baby Grand, Vol. 1 (BLP 1528)

But the real jewels of this album are the quieter tunes. “Doodlin'” is the kind of bluesy jazz you might imagine a 1950s sleuth playing on his car’s AM radio while cruising the streets looking for clues. “Creepin’ In” is perfect for a lazy afternoon indoors sipping tea. Mobley and Dorham set the mood here, and they also set the stage for a story-like solo from Silver. Always a clear and spontaneous communicator of his musical ideas, around the twenty-first measure of his solo, Silver begins a descent toward the middle of the keyboard. He then plays with an idea for a couple measures before unearthing a simple yet highly memorable melody that he plays twice before handing things back over to the band. I also dig how often Silver changes things up from the traditional “AABA” bop writing formula, sometimes throwing in an additional “C” section after all the solos, and the “A” section of “To Whom It May Concern” embodies some of the most original writing by Silver on this great album.

Vinyl Spotlight: Finger Poppin’ with the Horace Silver Quintet (Blue Note 4008) “Earless West 63rd” Mono Pressing

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  • “Earless” Liberty mono pressing ca. 1966
  • “RVG” stamped in dead wax

Personnel:

  • Blue Mitchell, trumpet
  • Junior Cook, tenor saxophone
  • Horace Silver, piano
  • Eugene Taylor, bass
  • Louis Hayes, drums

Recorded January 31, 1959 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey
Originally released February 1959

1 Finger Poppin’
2 Juicy Lucy
3 Swingin’ The Samba
4 Sweet Stuff
5 Cookin’ at the Continental
6 Come on Home
7 You Happened My Way
8 Mellow D

Selection: “You Happened My Way” (Silver)

For those of you who have read my first essay on this site about how I got into vintage jazz record collecting, you may recall that the first Blue Note original I ever owned was a copy of this album. That copy was not in great shape and has since been replaced with the copy being presented here (the first copy I found has sentimental value and I’ve decided to hang on to it regardless). So the story goes, I was in a dusty, creaky New Orleans record store when I found a vintage copy of this album in a horizontally-stacked pile of random LPs. I had no idea what I was doing at that time and accordingly overpaid for it but I was really excited about what I had found. It was pretty beat up though; upon listening, the record got so bad in one spot that it would skip depending on what mood it was in.

After doing a little research, a controversial Music Matters online article led me to the incorrect conclusion that Blue Note albums recorded after Halloween 1958 were intended for stereo release despite their mono counterparts being more valuable. So I found an original stereo copy via eBay Buy It Now (this was one of the earliest Blue Note stereo albums with the rectangular gold “STEREO” sticker). This copy was overpriced, over-graded, and didn’t sound much better than my mono copy.

A couple years went by without my giving much thought to vintage jazz records when I decided to give the hobby another go. Around this time I got lucky winning an auction that ended on a weekday morning for a very fair price, and that record is being presented here. It has its fair share of pops and ticks but it’s managed to remain in my collection because it’s wear-free, it’s a first pressing, and the cover and labels are both in great shape.

Shortly after acquiring this copy through the mail, I debated on whether I preferred the stereo or mono version of this album. I remember liking how I could hear all of the nuances of Louis Hayes’ drum kit on the stereo copy, but I also didn’t like the way Horace Silver was crammed in the left-hand corner of the mix along with the trumpet. Both mixes had their pluses and minuses, but after doing a lot of research I came to the conclusion that this album was meant to be heard in mono so I sold my stereo copy largely on principle. (Someday I might buy another original stereo copy, though. The spread was super-wide and it was a real treat to hear Louis Hayes’ drumming in such isolation.)

It’s fun to reminisce about the early days of my collecting, back when it was all so new and fresh to me, back when I had as much first-hand experience with mono Blue Note originals as I had with unicorns, back when I would marvel at the value of mono Blue Note originals in the Goldmine price guide. It’s crazy to think about how far removed I am from that place today both in terms of knowledge and experience. I’m a wiser collector with the collection to prove it but I do miss that sense of wonder.

This isn’t one of my favorite Horace Silver albums but it does include some of my favorite songs. I played the title track over and over again when I was auditioning my various copies of this album and it stuck with me. To this day, the opener’s frantic bebop is an exhilarating listen and has ultimately served as my introduction to the legendary, bold mono sound of original Blue Note pressings. “Sweet Stuff” is in the Silver tradition of syrupy ballads like “Shirl” and “Lonely Woman”, though that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable of a listen. And despite it not standing out initially, “You Happened My Way” is a beautiful melancholy number that has since become a favorite Silver composition.

Someday I’d love to own a clean first pressing of this album, which in all likelihood wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg. Luckily, Silver was a very popular artist in his day so I reckon that the chances of this happening are pretty good.

Vinyl Spotlight: The Horace Silver Quintet, Song for My Father (Blue Note 4185) Original Mono Pressing

  • Original 1964 mono pressing
  • “NEW YORK USA” on both labels
  • Plastylite “P” etched and “VAN GELDER” stamped in dead wax
  • Deep groove on side 1
  • “43 West 61st St., New York 23” address on jacket without “Printed in U.S.A.”

Personnel:

All but “Calcutta Cutie”, “Lonely Woman”:

  • Carmell Jones, trumpet
  • Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone
  • Horace Silver, piano
  • Teddy Smith, bass
  • Roger Humphries, drums

“Calcutta Cutie”, “Lonely Woman” only:

  • Blue Mitchell, trumpet (“Calcutta Cutie” only)
  • Junior Cook, tenor saxophone (“Calcutta Cutie” only)
  • Horace Silver, piano
  • Gene Taylor, bass
  • Roy Brooks, drums

“Calcutta Cutie” and “Lonely Woman” recorded October 31, 1963
All other tracks recorded October 26, 1964
All selections recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Originally released December 1964

1 Song for My Father
2 The Natives are Restless Tonight
3 Calcutta Cutie
4 Que Pasa
5 The Kicker
6 Lonely Woman

Selection: “Lonely Woman” (Silver)

It makes sense that Song for My Father is part of many peoples’ introduction to the jazz genre. It is not only an essential part of the classic jazz canon, it is also a very accessible album. The minimalist structure of “Calcutta Cutie” and “Que Pasa” should cause just about anyone’s ears to perk up and listen. The album has everything: accessible tunes, a radio-friendly title track, two cooking sessions, and a gorgeous ballad. It certainly was one of the first albums I sought out. I first had the Rudy Van Gelder Edition CD, but when I started collecting jazz vinyl, this album was definitely near the top of my wish list.

The first time I came across an original pressing was at the Jazz Record Center in New York City. It was pretty exciting: I had just recently begun collecting and they had both original mono and stereo copies; I went for the mono. Though the record looked pretty darn clean when I bought it, to my dismay I later discovered that it suffered from audible groove wear. I bought another original mono copy on eBay with the same result before I got this copy via Buy It Now from a German seller. Although its visual condition is really only VG+, this copy is one of those rare instances where a vintage jazz record is scuffed up but free from groove wear and thus plays better than it looks.

My favorite song on this record is perhaps my favorite ballad of all time, “Lonely Woman”. It’s the last song on side 2, and because it’s the last song on the side I was faced with a particular dilemma. The phenomenon of inner groove distortion makes the innermost tracks on each side of a record more susceptible to groove wear, and this is exactly why my first two copies ended up for sale on eBay. Piano is an instrument especially prone to causing mistracing in the presence of groove wear, and on a ballad like this, that distortion is going to be easier to notice if it’s there. If you can find a Rudy Van Gelder-mastered original that’s free from groove wear like this one, the plus side to the engineer’s aggressive mastering techniques is that the music usually overpowers surface marks even in the most excessive of instances; listen above to hear the results.

Whereas my copy of this album has a deep groove on side 1 only, Fred Cohen’s Blue Note guide indicates that copies exist with deep grooves on both sides. But note that Cohen is very clear on page 77 of his guide when he explains the significance of deep grooves when evaluating the vintage of a Blue Note record:

“After a certain point, it can never truly be known whether similar pressings for the same record, whose only difference is the presence or absence of a deep-groove on one, both, or neither labels, is actually the original FIRST pressing. But since collectors have a natural bias for any detail that suggests an early or original issue, the presence of a deep-groove has been treated in this guide as an indication of an original, but ONLY an indication.”

Each of us is free to agree or disagree with him (I happen to think his scientific approach to the issue is exactly right) but I discourage the interpretation of the deep groove data in his guide as a definitive end-all-be-all as to what constitutes a first pressing for Blue Note albums released after the appearance of the first non-deep groove copies in 1961. There is no hard evidence suggesting that either deep groove or non-deep groove pressings of these albums always came first. For someone like myself, this means that in the event that all the other appropriate indicators are there, both deep groove and non-deep groove pressings should be considered first pressings. So if you have a copy of this album with the Van Gelder stamp and the “P” but no deep grooves, my advice is to consider it a first pressing.

The sound of this album is characteristic of Rudy Van Gelder’s work in the mid-1960s. As early as 1963 (see Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder), one can hear Van Gelder pushing his compressors harder than ever, resulting in a saturated, thick sound. Horns meld together like glue, piano notes come thundering down like hammers, and drums have an in-your-face presence where each and every nuance is amplified to cut through the mix. Of the sides presented here, “Song for My Father” embodies this sound the most.

This album is a bonafide classic. It is yet another Blue Note staple filled with brilliant music, an album that beckons to be listened to from start to finish every time.

Vinyl Spotlight: The Horace Silver Quintet, The Tokyo Blues (Blue Note 4110) Original Mono Pressing

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  • Original 1962 mono pressing
  • “NEW YORK USA” on both labels
  • Plastylite “P” etched and “VAN GELDER” stamped in dead wax
  • “43 West 61st St., New York 23” address on jacket without “Printed in U.S.A.”

Personnel:

  • Blue Mitchell, trumpet
  • Junior Cook, tenor saxophone
  • Horace Silver, piano
  • Gene Taylor, bass
  • John Harris, Jr., drums

Recorded July 13-14, 1962 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Originally released November 1962

1 Too Much Sake
2 Sayonara Blues
3 The Tokyo Blues
4 Cherry Blossom
5 Ah! So

Selection: “Sayonara Blues” (Silver)

This record is one of the finest examples of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s original mono mastering work in my entire collection. Granted, I only own a handful of these, but I’ve had dozens more pass through my hands over the years and this is definitely one of the good ones. What makes it one of the best? Condition. Since so many original Blue Notes seem to have suffered groove damage at the hands of primitive playback equipment, I have found that the key ingredient in a stellar-sounding original is the extent to which past usage has left its mark on the record. Not only does this record look amazing 55 years after it would have been taken home from the store, the sound is still fresh and vivid — the way you might expect it to have sounded back in 1962.

It’s possible that bandleader Horace Silver’s choice of a Far Eastern theme influenced drummer John Harris Jr.’s choice of a more minimal, sparse style of playing throughout, which gives each instrument plenty of room to breathe and cut through. (Less percussive energy also provides less of a challenge when getting the music onto tape and into the grooves of the wax.) The standout moment here is Silver’s four-and-a-half-minute romp on the keys in “Sayonara Blues”, a solo with trance-like qualities reinforced by a two-chord, left-hand mantra.