Horace Silver

Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver was born on the second of September 1928 at Norwalk, Connecticut, the son of John Tavares Silver — a Cape Verdean-Portuguese immigrant guitarist from the Cape Verdean Maio Island community — and Gertrude Edmonds Silver, an African-American domestic. He was raised in the principal Norwalk Black community of the principal early-twentieth-century Norwalk Cape Verdean and African American community.

He was instructed in piano from age twelve and tenor saxophone from age fourteen by his father and by the principal Norwalk Black-and-Cape-Verdean jazz community.

He was hired in 1950 by the principal Stan Getz Quartet at Hartford, Connecticut as a junior pianist — and was signed by the principal Blue Note Records founder Alfred Lion at New York in 1952.

He co-founded with the principal drummer Art Blakey the principal Jazz Messengers at New York in 1954 — at the principal post-1954 New York Jazz-Messengers hard-bop foundational period.

He founded the principal Horace Silver Quintet at New York in 1956 — at the principal post-1956 Horace-Silver-Quintet hard-bop foundational period.

He recorded the principal foundational Blue Note Horace Silver Quintet long-playing-records across the principal 1956 to 1980 period — including Six Pieces of Silver of November 1956, Further Explorations of January 1958, Finger Poppin' of February 1959, Blowin' the Blues Away of August 1959, Horace Scope of July 1960, Doin' the Thing of May 1961, The Tokyo Blues of July 1962, Song for My Father of October 1964, The Cape Verdean Blues of October 1965, and The Jody Grind of November 1966.

He composed the principal Horace Silver Quintet signature compositions across the principal post-1954 hard-bop period — including 'Doodlin'' of 1953, 'The Preacher' of 1955, 'Senor Blues' of 1956, 'Sister Sadie' of 1959, 'Filthy McNasty' of 1961, 'Song for My Father' of 1964, and 'The Jody Grind' of 1966.

He held the principal Blue Note Records Horace-Silver commercial-and-compositional residency from 1952 to 1980 — and recorded across the post-1980 period for the principal Silveto Records, Columbia Records, Impulse! Records, and Verve Records.

He led the principal Horace Silver Quintet across approximately ninety long-playing-record sessions and approximately seven thousand commercial performances across the principal 1956 to 1995 Horace-Silver-Quintet commercial period.

He died at New Rochelle, New York on the eighteenth of June 2014 of natural causes, at eighty-five.

He is honored here as the principal hard-bop pianist-composer of the American jazz tradition.