LP: Horace Silver and The Jazz Messengers

Side A: Room 608

           Creepin' In

           Stop Time

           To Whom It May Concern

Side B: Hippy

           The Preacher

           Hankerin'

           Doodlin'

''The Jazz Messengers, who made a fervent, high-energy bebop under drummer Art Blakey's leadership for 35 years and talent-spotted emerging stars all the way from Wayne Shorter to Wynton Marsalis, was originally a cooperative specialising in a bop repertoire largely written by proto-funk pianist Horace Silver. Blakey is the drummer on this famous November 1954 session, all the material is by Silver. The opener is a fast, convoluted bop theme with a bright and graceful solo by trumpeter Kenny Dorham followed by Silver's own stream of pithy epithets from the piano. Creepin' In is a delicious insinuating slow and soulful blues with Silver's piano answering the lazy horn theme, and the deliciously weary-sounding tenor sax of Hank Mobley taking the main solo. But the classic Silver tracks here indicate Silver's key role in the soul-jazz movement that came shortly afterwards (with jazz-funk its subsequent offspring), in the mix of early-jazz and gospel in The Preacher, and on Doodlin'.
The live Messengers sessions at Birdland and the Cafe Bohemia that soon followed were more exciting, but this disc - reissued in the remastered RVG Editions series celebrating producer Rudy Van Gelder - is the delightful first step.'' The Guardian