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Horace Silver | National Endowment for the Arts National Endowment for the Arts =============================== Grants for Arts Projects Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network NEA Art Works Podcast National Endowment for the Arts Blog National Medal of Arts National Endowment for the Arts on COVID-19 Horace Silver was the heart of the hard bop era, helping to form the influential Jazz Messengers and composing many blues and gospel-flavored songs that have become part of the jazz canon, including "Lonely Woman," "Song For My Father," "Señor Blues," "The Preacher," "Nica's Dream," and "Peace." His piano playing was heavily rhythmic, driving his musical colleagues to greater heights in their solos. Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, Blue Note, 1954

Hard bopper Horace Silver was central to the evolution of modern jazz In the 1940s, Charlie Parker (with whom Silver played on a number of occasions) and Dizzy Gillespie, and many others besides, had forged a new highly virtuosic style of jazz called bebop. So when Horace Silver moved to New York in 1951, it was into the maelstrom of a period when the seeds modern jazz had been planted and were beginning to bear their first shoots. Silver’s signing to Blue Note Records and his association with Art Blakey, with whom he co-led The Jazz Messengers, set about the development of possibly the most popular style of modern jazz – the early hard bop recordings.

Famous for his contribution to the hard bop style of jazz which electrified the music scene in the 1950s, pianist Horace Silver played a central role in the rise to dominance of Blue Note records Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1954-56) Whilst the Jazz Messengers’ name is more commonly attributed to groups led by the drummer Art Blakey, the first appearance of it actually appeared as the title of Horace Silver’s Blue Note album recorded in November 1954. Titled simply Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers it features a definitive hard bop quintet of Horace Silver, Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Kenny Dorham on trumpet, bassist Doug Watkins and Art Blakey at the drums.