Billboard : 01/19/1957
Score of 77

Re-issue of material previously available on Blue Note 10-inch LPs Nos BLP 5018 and BLP 5034. The silver trio sides represent the beginning of the pianists recording career and date from 1952 and 1953 (the pre-Jazz Messengers days). Among them is his famous Opus de Funk. Art Blakey, who was the drummer on all the Silver trio recordings, is heard along in Nothing But the Soul and duos with Sabú, the conga drum virtuoso, on Message From Kenya. An important “East Coast modern” package that will be worthwhile inventory for some time to come.

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Cash Box : 02/02/1957

These two issues from Blue note feature Horace Silver (piano), his trio and quintet. The trio is heard on #1520 which includes 12 Silver efforts going back to 1952 and 1953 with drummer Art Blakey. Blakey is heard most effectively on the “primitive” selections (i.e. Safari, Message From Kenya) while Silver’s strong, but expressive keyboard attack, takes the kudos on the ballads (i.e. Day In Day Out and I Remember You. Silver’s newly formed Silver Quintet takes over on #1539 by delving into 6 Silver originals and 1 standard (For Heaven’s Sake) with wit and vitality. Sold tenor sax work from Hank Mobley. Powerful jazz performances. Silver is one of the top names in jazz today. Sales should be strong on both entries.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler and Leonard Feather

Most inquiring jazz fans became aware of Horace Silver when he was first with the Stan Getz quartet in 1950. It is a tribute to Stan’s taste and musical foresight that he picked Horace from a small nightclub in Hartford, Connecticut. Talent will always shine if someone will only open the curtain. Stan and other leaders like Terry Gibbs, Lester Young and Art Blakey helped to open that curtain on Horace and once it was opened the audience didn’t want it closed. It wasn’t a huge audience but it was an enthusiastic one. There was one more ingredient needed to make Horace’s performances more widely known and this was illumination. At this point Blue Note entered and Alfred Lion, a master with “flood lights, footlights, spotlights and color wheel,” shed so much light on the Silver piano that the whole country saw and heard him. In fact, the light carried overseas too, for Horace won the new star award in the Down Beat International Critics’ Poll in 1954.

This LP represents the beginning of Horace’s recording career as a leader and contains the best trio sides from 1952 and 1953. His later recordings which led to the formation of the Jazz Messengers can be heard on Blue Note BLP 1518.

In his original compositions Horace espouses the philosophy of “funk.” During his North African Safari he quotes Duke Ellington‘s “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing” and goes on to practice that doctrine throughout, especially in his summing up – Opus De Funk. The earthy feeling of the blues idiom which permeates his writing and playing is bottled here as a full strength solution. Opus De Funk has also been re­corded by Milt Jackson and Woody Herman‘s band.

There are many other rewardingly individual originals. Ecaroh has two different themes, one at the opening and the other making an effective peak at the close. The “can’t get it out of your head” Horoscope is as fresh to me now as when l used to wake up to it every morning of a Florida vacation in the winter of 1953. The typical affirmative reaction to the name of Horace Silver is explained by the contents and represented in the title of Yeah and the 1953 Horacio sterling that is put on display in the Silverware deportment is both highly polished and utilitarian.

Horace does not neglect the ballad standards either. He swings How About You and Day In Day Out just as he swings day in, day out. Ellington’s Prelude To A Kiss, with Curly Russell‘s sonorous bowing, and I Remember You, show the sensitive, searching side of Silver.

Not only is Horace a soloist in this LP but also an integral part of a trio, sometimes with Russell, or Gene Ramey, or Percy Heath and the omnipresent, omnipotent Art Blakey. The way Art punctuates and underlines is masterful. His solo on Safari where the drums literally talk is but a sample of his two feature numbers in the set. – Ira Gitler

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Message From Kenya teams Art with Sabú Martinez, the 24-year-old conga drum virtuoso who came here some nine years ago from Puerto Rico. He has been featured with Josephine Premice, played in Tito Rodríguez‘ mambo orchestra and was prominent in the last big band of Dizzy Gillespie, in which he took over the role originally filled by the late and great Chano Pozo.

The story of Message From Kenya, Art tells us, was first told to him by Moses Mann, a Nigerian drummer who worked in this country with Pearl Primus. The evocation, voiced dramatically in a mixture of Spanish and Swahili, tells of a hunter whose cries celebrate the news that he has captured more game than any other hunter in the village, in order to convince the girl he loves of his prowess. The ritual comes vividly to life as Sabú and Blakey develop a study in rhythmic variety and dynamics with exciting crescendos and diminuendos.

On the other drum number, Nothing But The Soul, Art is alone. Despite the temptation to use this opportunity by wan­dering off in a variety of pyrotechnical displays with all kinds of tempo and mood changes, Art has chosen to limit himself mainly to the development and maintenance of the beat, in a dazzling assortment of interpretations.

While there is nothing in this performance calculated to amaze the drum schools, there is much that will intrigue the average listener in Art’s demonstration of rhythmic patterns,­ in the dramatic suspension during a long roll, in the dexterity with which he handles the sticks and snares. Art won the Down Beat critics poll in 1953 and the public has followed suit by acclaiming him no less enthusiastically. – Leonard Feather