Horace Silver Silver's Serenade CD

Horace Silver Quintet: Horace Silver (piano); Junior Cook (tenor saxophone); Blue Mitchell (trumpet); Gene Taylor (piano); Roy Brooks (drums).
Producer: Alfred Lion.
Reissue producer: Michael Cuscuna.
Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on May 7 & 8, 1963. Orginally released on Blue Note (84131). Includes liner notes by Joel Dorn.
Digitally remastered using 20-bit technology by Ron McMaster.
Horace Silver's LP Silver's Serenade is a swan song; it was the final recording with his most famous quintet, which included drummer Roy Brooks, bassist Gene Taylor, saxophonist Junior Cook, and trumpeter Blue Mitchell. The band had made five previous recordings for the label, all of them successful. The program here is comprised of Silver compositions. The blowing is a meld of relaxed, soulful, and swinging hard bop, as evidenced in the title track. However, "Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty" has one of those beautiful winding heads, beginning so slowly and then jumping a notch in both tempo and intensity. By the time the tune gets to full steam, though there are short stops, the joint is swinging in blues -- check Mitchell's solo on this tune and how he keeps returning to Silver's theme as the root for his blowing. "Sweetie Sweetie Dee" moves from hard bop to funky bop. The dissonant chords that open "The Dragon Lady" have an Eastern tinge. The tune's head is spacious and breezy within a minute, and the tune begins to swing. Silver returns to those chords again and again as if to keep the players inside the mode he's created, letting them solo for only a bit at a time. The knotty turn-on-a-dime changes in "Nineteen Bars," the final track, are pure instrumental and compositional virtuosity. Cook's blowing on his solo is matched by Silver's comping, moving through octaves and key changes. The tune smokes from start to finish as the album comes to a close. This is another excellent recording by the greatest Silver quintet. The 2006 Rudy Van Gelder Edition features no bonus tracks, but sound fanatics will be pleased by the clarity and separation here. ~ Thom Jurek
This classic Blue Note date finds Horace Silver, the quintessential hard bop pianist, in a straight-ahead, swinging frame of mind. Supported by a quintet that features trumpeter Blue Mitchell and saxophonist Junior Cook on the front line, Silver sachets his way through five finely crafted numbers with the style and grace of, well, fine silver.
From the lightly bouncing title track that opens SERENADE to the barn-burner that closes the album ("Nineteen Bars"), the group shines with tight ensemble work and confident solos. Silver's trademark bluesy piano style shines on the hard swinging "Let's Get To The Nitty Gritty," which also features a tight shuffle groove by drummer Roy Brooks. Of special note is Silver's often-overlooked classic "The Dragon Lady," a complex composition with a personality all its own. In short, this is one disc that should not be left off the true hard bop fan's wish list.Mojo (Publisher) (p.125) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Packed with plenty of finger-snapping grooves."