Song For My Father, Again
I’ve told this story in broader strokes, but I have these very etched and very early memories of sitting in the living room of our very small garden apartment in Bayside, Queens, where we literally had plastic wrap covering the sofa and chairs, and hearing the sounds of Horace Silver coming from my father’s Fisher hi-fi console. My father was a big jazz fan and Silver was probably his favorite musician. He would play the Blue Note albums Blowin’ the Blues Away and Song For My Father constantly, and in my head I can still clearly picture him tapping his feet and taking a drag on his cigarette and taking a hearty sip of whatever alcoholic beverage he had concocted for himself. So when I got into jazz, the music of Horace Silver was already familiar to me and, like my dad, I loved it as well. There was an infectious joy in Horace Silver’s music and it always seemed as if he and all of the musicians were having a blast, loving what they were doing, and inspiring one another to higher levels of creativity. I also realized later on that Horace Silver was not just a great bandleader and composer, he was also a great pianist, one of the true greats of the post-bop era.