PRACTICE PORTAL

“Blue Silver” is from the Horace Silver record JODY GRIND which features Silver on piano along with Woody Shaw on trumpet, tenor saxophonist Tyrone Washington, James Spaulding on alto sax and flute, Larry Ridley playing bass and drummer Roger Humphries. “Blue Silver” opens up with a four measure introductory passage. the three horns, voiced in fourths, are answered by the rhythm section’s unison line. the horns then play pentatonic figures over a moving harmony, following with a bluesy shout answered by rhythm section hits. the mood and feel changes in the next section as the horns play a pretty, very Silverish melodic line that starts in the key of Ab minor then moves on to Eb minor. the horns play another line, shaped similarly, but in the key of G major, which is followed by another line, also shaped like the others, that leads back to the opening passage. Silver plays the song’s only solo, blowing over the whole form of the song in his one- of- a- kind, spare, bluesy style. “Blue Silver” is a great song from a really good record that i wasn’t familiar with until recently. i decided upon hearing it to sketch it out. some of the horn lines are difficult to pick out but i think it’s pretty close. below is a lead sheet and a transcription of the top line of his two chorus solo…

HORACE SILVER- BLUE SILVER (mp3)

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Every jazz musician has a favorite Horace Silver song. for some, it’s a bop head like “No Smoking”, “Room 608″ or “Nutville”. others like his more overtly Caribbean flavored songs like “Que Pasa”, “Cape Verdean Blues” and “Nica’s Dream”. then you have the mid tempo foot tappers like “Strollin’” and “Sister Sadie”. i, for one, have always dug his ballads. “Peace” is a favorite of mine. there’s also “Shirl”, a ballad he featured on Six Pieces Of Silver. Silver is great at conjuring a mood- so much of his music is programmatic. and i’ve always been a sucker for songs dedicated to women. this song evokes an image but a very elusive one. the music has an ambiguous and unfinished quality about it. i’m only guessing, but “Shirl” must have been a very complicated and intriguing woman. the first four measures sound like the opening strains of some forgotten impressionist era piano prelude. the first two 13b9 chords ring out and are then answered by two more of the same transposed up a fourth. following that is a group of 7#9 chords that starts on F and moves down to E, Db, Bb and A before resolving to Ab Maj and then on to a D7#9 chord. a brief progression follows that sounds almost cadential in nature but before a listener has a chance to get to too settled, the progression again gathers a head of tension by utilizing a ii-V progression from G min, moving upward by fourths, to F min with an Ab in the melody, which creates a tension that wants to (eventually) resolve to a G (in an Eb Maj chord) but instead, by way of an Eb7#9 chord, the melody moves to an F#, triggering a progression similar in nature to the previous sequence of 7#9 chords (F, Eb, Bb, A). it feels as if the listener is being sucked into a pit of quicksand. there are shifts in the time signature and pulse that evoke a mood of hesitancy- “slow your roll. don’t say too much, you might get yourself in trouble!” the bridge moves smoothly into a cycle of ii-Vs descending chromatically. finally, there’s a short suspended chord with a moving line in the bass voice, then a restating of the original melody. Horace Silver’s piano solo is buoyant and energetic. juxtaposed against the dark, brooding progression he sounds as if he’s trying to keep the faith, to stay optimistic during a troubled time. like he’s tryng to draw something else out of the progression, throw light on the progression from a different angle. but then the improvisation abruptly moves back to the melody, almost stumbling over itself. trying to read into an artist’s intentions is not something i want to do too much of on this blog, but it’s an amusing way to take up a little space… let’s just say this, it’s a really great piece of music that i can listen to many times over. i’ll call what i did below a “sketch” because i wasn’t able to pick out all the notes in the harmonies that Silver plays. but i did write out the shell of the piece and filled in chord tones as i could hear them. the way i wrote the tune formally- where i put the time signature change- is my best guess at what “Shirl” might look like on paper. oh yeah- when you get a chance, check out Horace Silver’s autobiography, Let’s Get To The Nitty Gritty. a friend of mine lent me the book a while back. it’s a quick read with some nice stories about Silver and the musicians that surrounded him…

HORACE SILVER- “SHIRL” (mp3)

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