1955 - February 6

Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers – February 6 1955 

 

Richard Cook - Blue Note Records – Secker and Warburg 2001 

Aside from Mobley's blues line 'Hankerin", made at the second [Jazz Messengers] date, all the compositions were by Silver. Each of them seems cut from the same cloth: rocking beats, nothing too quick but nothing that dawdled; sashaying minor melodies, voiced in clean unison by tenor and trumpet With riffing interjections from the piano; gospel and the blues seeming to soak into every eight-bar passage, Compared to the careening tempos and linear charge of 'true' bebop. this music might have seemed almost too simple, a reduction rather than a development. But Silver's group opened up possibilities in other ways. His themes had a melodious side to them. which the slash-and-burn tactics of bop had little time for. It was listening music, but it opened the door to backbeats, a grooving motion which audiences tired of abstraction were ready to welcome. In the new black popular music - typified by the kind of output which Atlantic...was making money from - bebop had no real place. But maybe this blend of funky sophistications could take a seat at the table.  

Even [Alfred] Lion was sceptical at first He OK'd 'Doodlin", the key tune on the first date, a slinky twelve-bar blues with a deliciously catlike beat. But when he heard the first run-through of The Preacher, from the rehearsals for the second session, Alfred was dismayed. Why did Horace want to record such a cornball piece? It sounded like a clip-cloppy nursery rhyme. Home', an after-hours anthem for juiceheads everywhere). Couldn't Horace just fill in with a straight blues instead? Blakey overheard, and advised the pianist to stick with the tune. But Silver knew Lion well enough by now to know what to do. He told Alfred that, all right, he could come up with another tune - but that would mean more writing, and more rehearsal. and they would have to delay the date. Lion might have guessed that he was being hoodwinked, but he let them go ahead anyway. Many years later, he told Michael Cuscuna: “I still think it's corny." 

Ira Gitler – Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers Liner Notes: BLP 1518 

The open letter, To Whom It May Concern. has scriveners Silver, Mobley and Dorham spreading the word to one and all on the merits of getting to the heart of the matter and what it is all about. 

Art Blakey knocks on the door and everyone fails in: Kenny Dorham and his pungent, “running style” trumpet, Hank Mobley's sinuous. sinewy tenor, the constantly building ideas of Horace’s piano and Art Blakey's talking drums. Enough to satisfy any Hippy. 

Once when Horace was being interviewed in reference to the group he said, “We can reach way back and get that old time gutbucket barroom feeling with just a taste of the back-beat.” He was referring, of course, to The Preacher, an earthy swinger somewhat reminiscent of I've Been Working On The Railroad in its melody line. In keeping with the title, everyone “preaches” in their solos. First Kenny exhorts and then Honk follows with o bluesy sermon. Rev. Silver gives the benediction and the congregation answers him. Another version of this tune can be heard as played by organist Jimmy Smith on Blue Note 1512. 

Hank Mobley shines on his original Hankerin with a pace-setting opening solo that Kenny picks up beautifully before handing to over to the “Silver fingered orator” to expound on. Art has a characteristically telling solo before the close. 

Photo by Francis Wolff

Down Beat 28 December 1955 Volume 22 Issue 26 

Although called here the Horace Silver quintet, this is actually the co-op Jazz Messengers with Horace on piano; Art Blakey, drums; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor, and Doug Watkins, bass. For this kind of jazz, the Messengers are one of the most consistently exciting present-day units. They wail with a collective power and open-hearted heat that is often tremendously stimulating. Individually, Blakey is, as always, a source of great strength and in this unit, all the soloists are also strong enough not to be overwhelmed by him, as has sometimes happened with others in the past. 

The bright, crackling horn of Dorham never has sounded as good as in this stage of his career. Mobley has a lot of drive and a hard, full tone and his ideas, while not particularly fresh very often, are rarely banal, and he fits well here. Horace is firstrate, whether punching out his angular, percussive solos or fusing with the rhythm section. 

Three of the blues-based originals are by Silver while Hankerin’ is by Mobiey. I was most struck by the loping, hortatory lines of The Preacher and the directly declarative To Whom It May Concern. Excellent recording quality. (Blue Nete LP 5062) 

The Record Changer January 1957 Volume 14 No. 10 

Martin T. Williams – Horace Silver Quintet 

This LP is actually by the original “Jazz Messengers,” now split into at least three apparently inferior groups. They certainly gave very lively and engaging performances and very obviously enjoyed doing it. Silver, whose so-called “funky” style has caused a minor revolution among “modern” pianists, plays, says a wag friend of mine, “like a cross between Bud Powell and Speckled Red” - —perhaps more accurately like a cross between Monk and Sammy Price. And the group somehow managed to sound (even in its beat) like a cross between a Gillespie quintet and the Harlem Hamfats—with perhaps a dose of the Goodman sextet. Hank Mobley does not usually sustain his solo lines, but within the time honored idiom of "blowing" over chords Kenny Dorham and Silver do. I agree with those who say that, on the whole, this is their best set; now it has been combined with several other numbers on a twelve-inch LP (Blue Note (Blue Note 1518) - probably a better buy. (Blue Note 5062). 

Billboard 10 December 1955 

Silver's Quintet— made up of Art Blakey, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham, Doug Watkins and himself — is gaining a considerable following in New York jazz spots as “The Jazz Messengers." Silver at piano is featured in three of his compositions: “To Whom It May Concern," "Hippy" and “The Preacher," and in a Hank Mobley original, "Hankerin'." The warmth, pulsating beat and stylishly modern ideas of other LPs put out by the group are very much in evidence here, too. This is an interesting and swinging group that modern collectors are following with enthusiasm. 

Session Information 

Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Horace Silver, piano; Doug Watkins, bass; Art Blakey, drums. 

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, February 6, 1955 

tk.3, Hippy, Blue Note BLP 5062, BLP 1518 

tk.5, To Whom It May Concern, Blue Note BLP 5062, BLP 1518 

tk.9, Hankerin', Blue Note BLP 5062, BLP 1518 

tk.13, The Preacher, Blue Note 45-1630, BLP 5062, BLP 1518, BST 84325