In the world of jazz, where happy endings are not assured, it’s the Cinderella story of the year:
A prominent jazz musician disappears from major record labels for more than a decade, then finally records a new CD for Columbia, only to fall deathly ill on the eve of its release.
Unable to tour in support of the new record, the hospitalized musician presumes his comeback record simply will fade into oblivion. Instead, without benefit of promotion, the new CD jets to the top of the Billboard charts, where it recently landed at the No. 2 spot-with a bullet, no less.
As if this weren’t enough, the unexpected success of the record inspires the ailing, 64-year-old musician to a swift recovery, greatly aided, of course, by help from doctors, family and friends.
At this rate, speculates jazz composer-pianist Horace Silver, he could be back on the road by next year.
“I don’t know exactly when next year, but I think sometime during ’94 I’ll be strong enough to go touring again,” says Silver, who’s recovering at his California home from blood clotting and related ailments.
“See, I almost died not long ago in the hospital, but I made it. And I’m so happy I made it because I’ve got so much music to give. I’ve got material that’s oozing to be heard.
“When the record started taking off, it really lifted my spirits, and I’d say it’s been a great help in my recuperating process, because I’m just floating on cloud nine these days.
“When I got out of the hospital, my friends were really worried about me, because I didn’t look too good. I was shaking.
“So now some people are saying it’s like a miracle that I’ve gotten better, and part of it has got to be what happened with this record.”
It’s not difficult to understand why the album, “It’s Got To Be Funky,” hit hard-and it’s not only because of the enduring strength of Silver’s name or the importance of his belated return to a major label. More significantly, it’s the music itself, a joyous, mostly up-tempo collection of original tunes that seems to celebrate life, even if it was released just as Silver was fighting for his own.
But it’s more than just his characteristic dance rhythms and life-affirming message that make “It’s Got To Be Funky” noteworthy. The composer’s sleek arrangements for his Silver Brass Ensemble-which includes three trumpets, trombone, bass trombone and French horn-fairly gleam from first note to last. The meticulous voicing and delicate balances among melody, harmony and rhythm instruments clearly have been painstakingly achieved.
“I can’t actually say why the record has been so successful, but I think it’s possible that it could be because of all the preparation that went into it,” says Silver.
“Now don’t get me wrong-I never go into the studio unprepared. I work out my stuff, prepare everything in advance.
“But I had a lot of extra time to work on this particular music. First I wrote these tunes and did these arrangements, and I was lucky to get guys like Red Holloway to work with me,” adds Silver, pointing to the recording’s other star, whose solos ignite several tracks.
“We’d have these rehearsals, and then I’d listen to the tapes at home and change things that didn’t seem right, work on it some more, then try to rehearse it over again, until I got it the way I wanted to.”
Recordings these days rarely receive as much front-end work, because rehearsal and recording time are too expensive. Without “all the musicians wanting to help me out on this,” says Silver, “this record never could have come out the way it did.”
By the time Columbia executive George Butler, who had signed Silver for the debut album, visited Silver’s home to audition the early demo tapes, “I had 20-odd arrangements to play for him,” says Silver. “So we picked out the 12 strongest and went with those.”
The nagging question, though, is why Silver didn’t release a record like this years ago.
“Actually I had been recording regularly, for my own label, but hardly anybody has heard of it,” says Silver, referring to the Silveto company he established after leaving Blue Note in the late ’70s.
“I’ve recorded five albums on Silveto, which was a label that was dedicated to the spiritual, holistic, self-help elements in music-music with a spiritual principal. But there aren’t too many people interested in that-the world is still afraid of the spiritual side of jazz.
“So then I founded Emerald Records for straight-ahead jazz, but I was struggling so long with it. I’d get ahead, then I’d get knocked back, then I’d get ahead again, and then I’d get knocked back again.
“After 10 years of this, I just had to face reality-the big boys (at the major labels) have it all wrapped up when it comes to distribution, so I just hung it up and signed with Columbia.”
Not that Silver hadn’t paid his dues. In a career launched in earnest in 1950, when he first toured with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, Silver has been an irresistible force in jazz improvisation and composition.
His original works-such as “Song for My Father,” “Opus De Funk,” “Doodlin’ ” and “Sister Sadie”-still rank among the most frequently performed of jazz standards. His writing throughout the ’50s helped open up a whole line of hard-bop composition.
And his experience backing a list of stars as diverse as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey, among others, led Silver to develop an unusually wide-ranging musical language: ’30s swing, ’40s be-bop, ’50s hard bop, it all goes into the mix.
The result is a complex musical language that is as harmonically original as any in jazz, yet one that also manages to be instantly appealing and accessible to the ear.
“I’ve always tried to bring almost everything in my music,” says Silver. “By that I mean classical music, Latin music, black gospel music, African folk music, American Indian folk music, East Indian folk music-there’s always some influences out there that can turn you on.
“See, I always liked music, since I was a small kid. I used to go to the 5 and 10 cents store (in Connecticut) to buy Count Basie records, Duke Elington records, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, and play them on the old-fashioned wind-up phonograph in the basement.
“I remember that my dad took me to an amusement park when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old, and we saw the Jimmie Lunceford Band-and that was it. I said, `That’s for me,’ and I never waivered.”
Profoundly impressed by the roaring big bands of the day, Silver early on began incorporating elements of traditional jazz into even the most contemporary aspects of his own writing, a tack that many of today’s young jazz players are trying, as well.
The ’90s neo-classicists are enjoying considerable commercial and critical success, yet it’s worth noting that Silver was there first.
“I’m really happy about all this jazz renaissance going on now,” says Silver, “but I have one reservation about it.
“Now, I do not mean to knock the young players when I say this, because they’ve got a whole bunch of technique, good knowledge of harmony, and they’re definitely helping keep the music alive.
“But a lot of the players don’t have a style or a sound, they don’t have a tonal quality, like a (Stanley) Turrentine or a Sonny Rolllins.
“They’re excellent musicians, but so few of them have a style like (Thelonious) Monk or (John) Lewis or Ahmad Jamal, who are readily identifiable.
“And I wish some of these young players would develop that, because we need more of it in jazz.”
For his part, Silver already has more than a dozen new tunes ready for a “Got To Be Funky” follow-up that he hopes to record later this year.
And that’s just the beginning, he says.
“About three years ago I wrote this jazz-theater piece called `Rockin’ with Rachmaninoff,’ and I’m hoping to get George Butler (at Columbia) to listen to it,” says Silver.
“The premise of the whole thing is that Rachmaninoff dies and goes to heaven, and when he gets there, he meets Duke Ellington and falls in love with Duke’s music.
“So Duke decides to take him under his wing and to teach him, and that’s when Duke takes Rachmaninoff on a guided tour of heaven, where he meets Satchmo (Louis Armstrong), Coleman Hawkins, Monk, Muddy Waters, for the blues element, Mahalia (Jackson) for the black gospel element.
“See, I have this yearning in me to stretch my music into other media, like theater and movie scores and TV and Broadway, and I’d love to do a big jazz piece with the Chicago Symphony.
“You know, Duke Ellington used to say: `Don’t do just one thing, try some of it all.’
“Well that’s what I’d like to do now that I’m getting my health back-really stretch out.”
