You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Heart and Soul of Jazz

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

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Hey, Peter. Hey, what's up, man? Today we are listening to a musician who is, in my opinion, the heart and soul of jazz piano. The composer of... All right. Everybody just stop listening. Thanks, Peter. Who did write heart and soul? Who cares? I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music advice coming at you. Coming at you today is sponsored by Open Studio. Hey, if you know who the composer, we could Google it, but why not put it in the comments if you know offhand? Who composed heart and soul? Well, and here's some music advice for you. Yeah.

Don't get that song stuck in your head. My apologies for putting that in. I couldn't resist when you said heart and soul, though. Not a fan of that song. It's not a great song. I mean, it's something that, you know, you learn when you're a kid. And everybody asks for you to, well, you play piano? They used to.

I think it's not a thing anymore. Now they want you to play a Taylor Swift composition, perhaps. See how hip I am? Same core changes. What's happening today? Same core changes. One, six, four, five. Yeah.

That's right. That's right. No, today we're dealing with a musician who is, in my opinion, the heart of the music. He's the soul of the music. He is probably undervalued. Even on this podcast, Peter, we haven't talked about the great horse silver nearly enough, especially for his influence on both of our musicianship.

Love horse silver. Yeah. Love his compositions. Peace, of course. We're going to check out probably his most popular composition today. Yeah. We're going to check out a video. Well, I mean, this is what's so great about.

I'm ashamedly not familiar with, so I'm super excited. I'd never seen this either. But, you know, I picked it because. because I love that, you know, Horace Silver is like proof that you can make incredibly, like, uh, uh, catchy and, uh, like commercially viable music. Right. That is still well within the jazz genre. That still has like a ton of artfulness to it.

Uh, still feels as good as anything. But it's like he is a master of those simple melodies and incredibly like, uh, infectious grooves, you know, like so many. Yeah. I mean, he's one of the kind of originators of like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the groovy, almost like early funk jazz kind of vibe, like kind of aggressive. Totally. 16th, no feel and different. Opus to funk.

He wrote a great tune early on, Opus to Funk. It's such a like a unique player too. Yeah. Like just as from a piano standpoint, like his chord voicing and his touch, so specific and incredible. Yeah. And actually the, um, I'm just thinking like a record I used to listen to a lot and happening in a while. I'm going to make a note to listen to that though is live at Birdland with the Art

Blakey quintet. Because of course, Horace Silver, One of his early gigs was with Art Blakey, when Lou Donaldson, a friend of the pod, well, I'd like to say he's a friend of the pod. How would you say that if you were to say that? Oh, he's a friend of the pod. The great Lou Donaldson is on there. Clifford Brown.

Oh, man. I think, unless I'm not, I think that's right. Yeah. Live at Birdland on Blu, Blue No Records. That was not actually, who was that announcing? It was like a famous announcer. I was like, I was going to say Tiny Tim, but that's somebody else. But live at Birdland, there's like two volumes.

Peewee something? Peewee, Herb? Not Peeley Herman. R-I-P. Okay. But anyway, that's a great record with Horace Silver. A lot of folks don't know that he's on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff.

Let's check out this live video. This is from a concert in, I believe, Copenhagen. Is that correct? Copenhagen. I mean, you can be fancy and call it Copenhagen. Copenhagen. That's probably better. It's a great intro too from Horace Silver speaking.

It's Benny Moppen on Tenor Saxx. phone, Bill Hardman on trumpet, Johnny Williams on the bass, and Billy Cobham on the drums. Interesting lineup, and this is from 1968. They're playing song from my father, which came out in 1964, and let's have a listen.

Peewee Marquette. That was I knew it was a Peewee. Peewee Marquette. Who is not this? This is Horacelliver. Continue right now. With a selection that was in part inspired by our Brazilian trip, We got the Brazilian rhythm for this tune from that trip.

And the melodic line was inspired by some very old Cape Verdean Portuguese folk music. And we put it all together and wrote a little thing that we dedicated to my dad. We call it song for my father. It's amazing how much Horace sounds like the record here. Isn't it crazy? Beautiful Peter here. I'm just going to stop it right at two minutes before. Let's listen to that opening phrase again.

And listen to what he does with that opening phrase. It's a real lesson here in how to start your solo, how to build a phrase from nothing. He plays something, he repeats it with a little bit of variety. And a little bit, here's the key, a little bit of syncopation. So he doesn't end in the same way twice. Check it out. That bum-bampabba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

So nice. It's the same shape. It's the same phrase taken down. And then the rhythm, the syncopation of the rhythm is different. And it makes all the difference. And he's already kind of stretching. and pulling at them in terms of like the phrase length, it's going down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. It takes a fragment of the phrase and takes it down further. Some real sideburns going on. Pause for a second. Roman Roy. You know, I've been finally watching Succession. Oh, there we go. Is he been Horace Silver, the actor who plays Roman Roy?

With very pronounced sideburns, yeah. Right, with the hair. Okay. Ah, these clean trims and trills. His melodic content is so grooving. Yeah. It sounds like, He's making up a tune with every improvisation, essentially.

I'm going to say, Ramsey, Lewis, Joe sample, definitely by Horsilver. But this style of improvisation where there's no, not a lot of long, sweeping, technical lines, but there are a series of heavily grooving, super swinging phrases that happen. And Horsilver is not afraid to kind of go section by section with his improvisational ideas, you know. Oh. Like he's introducing it each of the. A and B section is kind of a little bit of a new thing. But then connecting with that left hand.

He's never done a single phrase just one time. He's played something and then spun it in some way. Locked in on this temple and this group. You know what's key to this is like his whole posture and confidence and vibe as he's doing this is out of this world. Oh yeah. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Do you hear that? Woof.

Let me back that up just a second. Hop and skip. We'll hop and skip down. So those are all set of chords. All up and down. He keeps crushing this. Double stops. Where is it?

Yeah, this thing. I think he's up on the... Is he up there? I think it was both. There's like a real sort of casual intensity, too, the way this is all unfolding. I think I saw Billy Cobham at a fish store in Charlotte for 400. $475.

You know what this is a great example of two? Ah, that's that's a second. It's like a lot of communication going on but none of it is visual. Yeah. Billy Collin and Morris Silver. Between really any of them as far as I can tell, like he's looking down, but there's a lot of like listening and collaborative play in terms of like the ebb and flow of the solo and the orchestration of him.

Communicating through how he's playing, right? There you look. That's so good. Or so, it plays on top of the beat, for sure. Dang, it's good though, man. It feels great. It goes to show you you don't have to be right in the center all the time to feel good. It's Bill Hardman.

I don't wish I could play the trumpet. It would be really fun, wouldn't it? Yeah. It's all my free time, take up the trumpet. It seems like it's easy. It seems like a pretty easy instrument. Once you get the sound, the rest of the finger is easy. Oh, yeah, once you get the sound.

Yeah, yeah, of course. This is so expressive, man. Billy Cotton here is just like, masterful yeah like he's giving everybody so many different looks so many different textures so many different ideas you know

a great drummer like this it can truly like mold and I was just reminded seeing Billy Cobb on this big influence on Brian Blades for all you drummers out there that are like you know Brian Blade fans you're always thinking Elvin you're thinking Tony

Merlin Riley Johnny Dodgitch but Billy Cobbin for sure I know for a fact you can see it Oh, well this is fun. So this is a Benny Mopin. Benny Mopin pre-Hurby. Yeah. Bennie Mopin. Already bringing the vibes. That's a man who knows a lot about textures. I want to transcribe some of these block chords that Horace Silver is playing in.

Hanging out of there on the 11. Oh, my pinky. Oh, the pinky's up. Pinkies up. Some flayedishness happened. Wow, I never noticed that, man. Yeah, why we're talking about finding influences an unexpected place? I'm like, oh, did you hear this record with Billy Coffield?

And such and such in 1960. I was like, no. And by the way, can we just say how great it is that this is a live recording and it's everybody's stretching out on this? Exactly. Killing. The quality is so good. For us, Silver even has like melodic themes on all of his comic.

Yeah. It's creating these vibe-be melodies. Oh, man. It was great, man. So good. before it's silver. Yeah. For being such a master.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that in, man. Yeah, that's what's up. That was fun. We should make this a feature segment. We, like, laid back Thursday or... It's been a feature for a while now, Pete.

Oh, sorry. We've been watching... We've got to name it. We've got to name it. Do we have to name everything? That's a great question. And that's a question for another episode. Until then, you'll hear it.

Do we have to name it?