At the height of his powers with an incredibly prime band, Horace Silver put on a string of memorable shows at The Penthouse jazz club in Seattle, Washington.
Culled from never-before-released recordings from tapes by a local radio host/engineer for radio broadcasts and only recently mastered under the supervision of producer Zev Feldman, Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse, was recently released by Blue Note Records, the same label responsible for putting out there all of Silver’s classic discs.
At the time of the August, 1965 recordings, Silver was leading a truly loaded quintet, one that wouldn’t last long. Tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson had been on board since the prior year and was beginning to make a name for himself since his 1963 debut album. And then there’s a twenty year old Woody Shaw, a prodigious trumpet player who raised his profile when he returned to the States from Paris and joined Silver’s band in that year. Joining these two virtuosos was the very capable rhythm section manned by bassist Teddy Smith and drummer Roger Humphries.
The medium-swing number “Sayonara Blues” — originally appearing on Silver’s 1962 offering Tokyo Blues — had been an ideal tune to play live because Silver leaves plenty of space for long solos and kicks up the rhythmic drive during those solos. Thus, the twelve-minute studio version extends out to eighteen minutes at The Penthouse, and Humphries’ crisp and discreet pulses plays a critical part on making it work. Shaw goes first and he takes full advantage of the time allotted to build a forward-moving narrative with his trumpet feature. On his turn, Henderson is full of ideas, keeping the flow fresh and fluid. And Silver’s right-handed single lines are so effortlessly catchy and funky.
It’s a given that Silver was going to play the song that has given him his greatest fame — “Song For My Father”– especially while the album of the same name was still freshly out. Silver was hands down the funkiest pianist in jazz and he shows off that special trait of his here, even when he’s comping.
Henderson’s hard bop pearl “The Kicker” is the other track from the Song For My Father LP getting a nod here and the perfect platform for a blowing session where the peculiar musical personalities of each — including Smith and Humphries — come out in full glory.
Concertgoers got a forward glimpse of another classic Silver tune “The Cape Verdean Blues,” which would be recorded in the studio two months later and become the title cut for his Song For My Father follow-up released in early 1966. Here, Silver is once again expanding jazz by introducing other music forms into it, this time the coladeira music of his father’s native Cape Verde islands off the western coast of Africa. It’s influence is clearly heard in the festive, joyful, syncopated rhythmic feel and major key brightness. Soloing is kept to a minimum (Shaw doesn’t solo at all), as it’s a song more suited for swaying and dancing to than for taking in the chops.
The punchy “No Smokin'” is the only selection pulled from Silver’s 50s era, and — not that it needed it — gets a jolt for Shaw’s acrobatic trumpet work.
Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse isn’t going to get slotted as the three or four most essential Horace Silver releases but it’s a very enjoyable snapshot of an important artist in the middle of a lengthy period backed by major jazz big guns in their own right. If one wanted to pick a time for hearing a Silver band perform live, the middle of 1965 would be tough to beat.
Get your vinyl copy here or CD format here.
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