1. 1. Yeah! (Silver) Listen
2. 2. Tokyo Blues (Silver) Listen
3. 3. Baghdad Blues (Silver) Listen
4. 4. Lonely Woman (Silver) Listen
5. 5. Cape Verdean Blues (Silver) Listen
6. 6. Opus de Funk (Silver) Listen
7. 7. Horascope (Silver) Listen
8. 8. Peace (Silver) Listen
9. 9. Juicy Lucy (Silver) Listen
10. 10. Señor Blues (Silver) Listen
11. 11. Finger Poppin' (Silver) Listen

Details

As the title might suggest to the music logically minded, it's a collection of tunes by the legendary Horace Silver, which were originally recorded in Blue Note's golden period of the mid to late 50s. Alan's quintet (consisting of Dave Green, bass; Steve Waterman, trumpet; John Donaldson, piano and Steve Brown, drums) rips into these classic themes with aplomb, playing the hell out of the bop heads and soloing with complete authority. It's the kind of record you can use to warm up your house on a cold day.

Reviews

Do you need this tribute album by a group of British bop enthusiasts rather than the Horace Silver originals it's devoted to? After all, Blue Note records' retrospective multi-disc set offers plenty of the same music with the bonus of illustrious sidemen including Joe Henderson, Art Farmer, JJ Johnson and the Breckers.

The answer is that it depends on where you're hearing it from. If you're a Horace Silver obsessive (and since the Connecticut-born piano legend virtually invented jazz-funk in the 1950s, there's pretty good reason to be) without much interest in the current UK jazz scene, those old Blue Notes are probably all the pieces of Silver you need. And from the angle of the non-specialised, contemporary-music listener, this set doesn't represent a radical deconstruction or reappraisal of famous themes either, of the kind of ambitious sweep Uri Caine or Don Byron might make.

But if British sax virtuoso Alan Barnes has offered Horace Silver's work a simpler tribute, he has in the process unerringly caught the most infectious qualities of the originals - spirited good humour, earthy bluesiness and occasionally exquisite romantic delicacy. Silver was a key architect of that unsentimentally soulful offspring of 1940s modern jazz known in the following decade as hard bop - a brisk splicing of bebop's convoluted, linear, jazz-baroque phrasing and gospel music's rhythms and vocalised sounds, which rescued the music from an audience of inner-sanctum buffs and widened its appeal. Alan Barnes, with a fine band including trumpeter Steve Waterman and pianist John Donaldson (who transcribed all the tunes from the original discs), has clearly understood the secrets of that process remarkably well.

The title track here is also the opener and a typical piece of fizzing Horace Silver vivacity - a snaking bebop line with a variety of quizzical and effusive melodic asides. Steve Waterman plays a raw and brassy solo on it, followed by Barnes in Charlie Parker mode on alto sax, squirming through the chords at high speed, constantly pitching bold new melodic motifs to redirect the improvisation. Here and all through the set, Donaldson pays his respects to Silver's clanging, chord-vamping piano style without caricature, and Dave Green and Steve Brown make the ideal quietly assertive bass and drums partnership for the idiom. Tokyo Blues is a minimalist blues lick with a gruff resolving phrase turning into a mid-tempo Latin groove, and Barnes' handling of two ballads - Lonely Woman and the celebrated Peace - is absolutely exquisite, his sax-sound becoming almost indistinguishable from the tremor of a clarinet. Cape Verdean Blues is a raucous rhumba, the famous bop-blues Opus de Funk gets a smoothly unfolding, Cool School alto solo from Barnes (perhaps his most ingenious on the set) against Green's warm bass sound, and Se–or Blues displays the appropriately bright and brassy horn sound for its punchy melody. Horace Silver fans will appreciate such an expertly devoted tribute, and Alan Barnes' many admirers might well regard this as one of the best recorded displays of his faultless virtuosity.

John Fordham Guardian

Alan Barnes is usually tagged with the rather unglamorous term 'mainstream'. True, you're unlikely to find him hanging out with Norwegian experimentalists, string quartets or DJs, issuing an album of Radiohead cover versions or rediscovering the joys of punk rock, but there's plenty of other people doing that kind of thing these days...

Like Peter King, Barnes is steeped in the language of bop, but is such a consummate stylist that his playing tends to buck any argument that his musical approac his conservative or out of step with the times. Whether on alto, baritone or tenor, Barnes' melodic sense bypasses the usual scale-running cliches that pepper the playing of lesser bop disciples.

Here Barnes pays tribute to hard bop pianist/composer Horace Silver. Pianist John Donaldson has transcribed all the pieces, which are mainly taken from the classic Blue Note quintet recordings of the early 60s. Donaldson's crisply funky playing is a neat fit with Silver's soulful, airy tunes, but his occasional Tyner-esque splashes take the energy level up a notch. Trumpeter Steve Waterman (an eclectic, technically assured player)takes the Blue Mitchell role with relish. Fat-toned, precise and fiery, he's a perfect foil for the leader.

While there are only two ballads here, they provide Barnes' best moments. Donaldson's lucid, Bill Evans-esque chording inspires a sweetly poignant reading of "Lonely Woman", while the opening of "Peace" features a meltingly gorgeous statement on alto, accompanied only by Dave Green's ever thoughtful bass. One of my favourite musical moments of the year so far, I reckon.

Not that the uptempo numbers are in any way shabby; the band kick up some serious dust at times and of course Barnes enjoys working at speed - check the furious solo on "Finger Poppin'" for details. This is assured,beautifully played jazz. It won't change the world, perhaps, but who cares.

Peter Marsh BBC Jazz Review

Latest News