In line with Horace Silver, “Dad played the violin, guitar, and mandolin, strictly by ear. He loved the folk music of Cape Verde…Occasionally, they would give a dance party in our kitchen on a Saturday night. They pushed the kitchen table into the corner of the room to make way for dancing, and Dad and his friends provided the music, playing and singing all the old Cape Verdean songs.” And all that is what would result in Music For My Father, Silver’s excellent album launched in early 1964 on Blue Observe Information.
The LP was put down over three classes, the primary on October 31, 1963, the final on October 26, 1964, all at Rudy Van Gelder’s Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. On the October 1964 session, the album’s title observe was recorded, and from its oh-so-funky title observe, you get a way of how a lot everybody loved these social gathering nights on the Silver’s residence in Connecticut. Hundreds of miles away from the tiny group of Portuguese islands off the coast of West Africa, they got here collectively to have a good time the music of their homeland.
But there may be extra to this observe than jazz fused with Portuguese rhythms: Silver had been to Brazil in early 1964, and you may simply catch the spirit of the bossa nova beat. It’s additionally there in “Que Pasa?,” which appears to echo the opener.
A few years later, Silver stated, “I’ve always tried to write the kind of music that would stand the test of time. Always, in the back of my mind, I would be thinking, ‘Will this stand up 20, 30 years from now?’ I’ve tried to write songs that would be easy to listen to, and easy to play. It’s a difficult task. It’s easy to write something simple but dumb, or something that has depth but is too complex. But simplicity with depth, that’s the hardest thing for me to do.”
Silver’s intention is carried via the album from the onerous bop of “The Natives Are Restless Tonight” to “The Kicker,” a rollicking Joe Henderson tune. The one observe on the album not written by Silver, it incorporates a livid drum solo from Roger Humphries, who was simply 20 on the time of its recording. The closing observe, “Lonely Woman,” recorded in October 1963, is completely titled; Silver delicately conveys the idea with a fantastic melody whereas holding again on the notes to most impact.
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