Early Life and Career
His father, who was known as John Tavares Silva, was from the island of Maio in Cape Verde. His mother was born in New Canaan, Connecticut, and was of Irish-African descent.
Silver began his career as a tenor saxophonist but later switched to piano. His tenor saxophone playing was highly influenced by Lester Young, and his piano style by Bud Powell. Silver was discovered in the Sundown Club in Hartford, Connecticut in 1950 by saxophonist Stan Getz. Getz was playing at the club with Silver’s trio backing him up. Getz liked Silver’s band and brought them on the road, eventually recording three of Silver’s compositions. It was with Getz that Silver made his recording debut.
He moved to New York City in 1951, where he worked at the jazz club Birdland on Monday nights, when different musicians would come together and informally jam. During that year he met the executives of the label Blue Note while working as a sideman. He eventually signed with them where he remained until 1980. It was in New York that he formed The Jazz Messengers, a co-operatively run group with Art Blakey.
In 1952 and 1953 he recorded three sessions with his own trio, featuring Blakey on drums and Gene Ramey, Curly Russell and Percy Heath on bass. The drummer-pianist team lasted for four years; during this time, Silver and Blakey recorded at Birdland (A Night at Birdland Vol. 1) with Russell, Clifford Brown and Lou Donaldson, at the Bohemia with Kenny Dorham and Hank Mobley, and also in the studios. He was also a member of the Miles Davis All Stars, recording the influential Walkin' in 1954.
Read more about this topic: Horace Silver
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“I have not read of any Arcadian life which surpasses the actual luxury and serenity of these New England dwellings. For the outward gilding, at least, the age is golden enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)