The Monday Long Player #24
The Cape Verdean Blues - Horace Silver
Good evening from a sweltering South London. Thanks to everyone who shared last week’s post - it was a bit of a break from the norm, so it was very gratifying to see it so well received. It struck me that I started writing on here to give me space to write about music that wasn’t connected to my job. There’s a certain irony that my most read post in a while is directly related to work - I guess we’ll see how many of these new followers are interested in some ‘hobbyist’ writing about a 60 year old jazz record. 😉
For those of you who are new subscribers, here’s a brief intro: every Monday I write about a record in my collection, and post about it right here. No limits on style, age or anything else - it’s just stuff that I like enough to have bought at some point over the last four or so decades since I saved up my pocket money for a copy of Hits 4 on cassette at my local record shop (Tracks in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.) This is a progression from my LP Club that I started in lockdown - initially writing about an album a day through 2021, which eventually spawned a couple of zines that you can buy just here. Anyway - that’s enough pre-amble, on with the show….
Horace Silver - The Cape Verdean Blues
Yesterday was Father’s Day, which is all the excuse I needed to play one of my favourite jazz records, Horace Silver’s peerless Song For My Father. I’ve always found Horace Silver’s playing so effortlessly classy - never trying to hard, nor shying away from ‘going in’ when needed. He’s also got an ear for melody that few can match, with Song For My Father arguably representing the peak of his songwriting prowess. Silver comes from an era of jazz littered with legends of the genre. Over his decades-long career he played with everyone from Stan Getz to Lou Donaldson to Art Blakey, Hank Mobley, Blue Mitchell, Billy Cobham and beyond. There’s an easy dynamism to his style that I can’t get enough of - it flows like water and I find I come back to his records again and again.
After I’d finished playing through Song… the record next to it on my shelf caught my eye. The Cape Verdean Blues came out just after Song… with a slightly different iteration of his band. Silver’s new quintet saw him joined by Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Bob Cranshaw and Roger Humphries with the addition of trombone legend JJ Johnson. I first heard of JJ Johnson through Nathaniel Cross who released an EP with us on First Word a few years back. He cited Johnson as a big influence on his approach to the instrument and I’d dug into his back catalogue on Nat’s recommendation. As an aside, when Nat was part of our First Word Allstars show last year, I enjoyed MD Myele Manzanza teasingly referring to the trombone as a ‘guessing stick’, a jibe that Nat took with his usual good grace.
There’s a fun bit of synchronicity that helped this record catch my eye - Cape Verde, a nation I have scarcely thought about were playing in the World Cup yesterday, following up their historic draw with Spain with an equally eye-catching draw with Uruguay. I love it when my record collection throws up neat little circularities so it was only natural to put this on the stereo and, in turn, write about it today.
Whilst I’d still put Song… as my favourite from Silver’s output, this is still well worth your time, fusing latin jazz, Cape Verdean folk songs (as taught to Silver by his father who was born in the sparsely populated African island nation) and Brazilian influences from Silver’s time in Rio in 1964. The result is a collection of spritely, loose-limbed compositions; the title track is probably the pick for me, with the elegant waltz of Pretty Eyes a close second. Go give it a listen!
The Monday Long Player is a weekly newsletter from me, Aly Gillani aka Gilla. I’m a radio host, DJ, A&R and writer. I run First Word Records and am the Artist and Label Outreach Lead at Bandcamp. You can listen to my latest radio show on Rinse FM just here, check out my fortnightly Bandcamp Selects show here and buy my zine The Long Player just here. Subscribe to get a weekly write up of a record I’ve been listening to this week as well as news from my musical world.