For more than a quarter century Horace Silver has led his own quintets in an extroverted, driving, and blues-based modern jazz style that historians refer to as hard bop. Silver's music is thought of as East Coast because most of the musicians who played it lived and worked there. East Coast jazz had qualities that seem to contrast with the more disciplined West Coast and cool styles. … Silver's influence began to be felt in the mid-1950's, when he played in a group with Art Blakey that later became the Jazz Messengers.
In 1956 Silver formed his own band with Art Farmer on trumpet and Hank Mobley on tenor sax. Subsequent editions of the Horace Silver Quintet were famous for their exciting trumpet/sax front lines, such as Blue Mitchell/ Junior Cook, Freddie Hubbard/Wayne Shorter, Woody Shaw/Joe Henderson, Randy Brecker/Michael
Brecker, and Tom Harrell/Bob Berg. Horace himself was celebrated for his catchy, singable compositions like "Senor Blues," "Sister 'Sadie," "Blowin' the Blues Away," and "Song for My Father." Silver's ability to ignite other soloists with staccato, rhythmic accompanying chords is legendary. His bluesy and melodic solos revealed, at a time when the long, tortuous improvised line prevailed, the power of simplicity. To a greater extent than his peers, Silver's improvisations have the economy of expression and balance of composed melodies.
