Track Listing

1. Room 608
2. Creepin' In
3. Stop Time
4. To Whom It May Concern
5. Hippy
6. Preacher
7. Hankerin'
8. Doodlin'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15396 in Music
• Released on: 2005-03-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Album Description
This is the seminal album that gave birth to the Blue Note Sound, to Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers and to the Horace Silver Quintet. Shifting be-bop into an earthier, more blues-gospel orbit connected with audiences and forged the direction that hard bop would take for years to come. Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Silver, Doug Watkins and Blakey deliver Horace's compositions with panache and solo with heart-felt invention. A classic.

KENNY DORHAM, trumpet; HANK MOBLEY, tenor sax; HORACE SILVER, piano; DOUG WATKINS, bass; ART BLAKEY, drums

Recorded on November 13, 1954 (#1, 2, 3, 8) and February 6, 1955 (all others) at the Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey

Customer Reviews

Best Silver, Best Blakey
The Preacher and Creepin In are insanely snappy, making this my favorite Silver recording. Early in the LP era here, this album always had good sound, now made even better with this reissue. The tunes are very soulful; this is not reminiscent of the pedal-to-the-metal Blakey/Silver albums with Clifford Brown @ Birdland. HS and the JM is much more of a hard-bop/bluesy album, the likes of which Silver seemingly effortlessly produced over the following 15 years after this was released.

Hardbop Masterpiece
This is the first Jazz Messengers album which soon would go under the tutelage of Art Blakey. From there (read the book Hardbop Academy) the group would go through many line up changes and launch the careers of musicians from inspired (Wayne Shorter) to derivative (Wynton Marsalis) and many in between. This has to be my favorite Jazz Messengers album because most of the pieces on it would become jazz standards. Adding elements of soul and later funk to bebop to create the sub-genre known as hardbop does not sound like much today but it was an act to take away the idea of jazz as music for purely intellectuals and return it to its roots but still keeping it advancing in a new direction. Ever jazz musician with any degree of awareness would name check this album. But forgot the hyperbole. If you are a fan of classic hardbop, sooner or later you will run into this album and when you do, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

"Horace Silver & the Jazz Messengers" is Pure Gold
"Horace Silver & the Jazz Messengers" drifted briefly out-of-print over the past couple of years, but now makes a permanent return to the Blue Note catalog with this remastered RVG reissue. For those confused by the title and thinking -- "Isn't it supposed to be Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers?" -- don't be alarmed. The Messengers began as a collective group and this album actually pre-dates the JM albums under Blakey's leadership. Regardless, this classic jazz album was recorded over two sessions -- December 13, 1954 and February 6, 1955. The lineup is the same that would reappear in a few short months on the "Cafe Bohemia" recordings (see my review of Vol. 2) -- Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Doug Watkins and of course Silver and Blakey. The eight original Silver compositions are classic hard bop, and many of them are regarded as standards today, "The Preacher" and "Doodlin'" foremost among them. Simply put, this Silver is pure gold.