Why no Horace Silver Blue Note box?

[tranemonk]

I was driving home listening to WRTI and Senor Blues came on. It got me thinking. Given the significant number of recordings he made, why has Mosaic never put out a Horace Silver box set? They must have a bunch of unreleased stuff in the vaults. I would guess there's some unreleased live material as I think he only had a few live sets produced...

Especially given how long he recorded for them, they could organize it in several ways or eras. Does anyone know why there hasn't been one?

[jazzbo]

They did put out a retrospective box.

https://www.discogs.com/release/4833614-Horace-Silver-Retrospective

And I differ in that I do not think there is much unissued to release.

Edited April 3 by jazzbo

[Ken Dryden]

1 hour ago, tranemonk said:

I was driving home listening to WRTI and Senor Blues came on. It got me thinking. Given the significant number of recordings he made, why has Mosaic never put out a Horace Silver box set? They must have a bunch of unreleased stuff in the vaults. I would guess there's some unreleased live material as I think he only had a few live sets produced...

Especially given how long he recorded for them, they could organize it in several ways or eras. Does anyone know why there hasn't been one?

I agree that takes seem to have been rejected outright or incomplete after thumbing through Blue Note Discography. When a track has been bypassed when the rest of the session is reissued on CD, that's a sign it was either substandard, incomplete or lost.

[mhatta]

Several live recordings from the 1960s remain unreleased (such as the August 15, 1964 Pep's show, w/ Joe Henderson). I heard Horace hated live recordings, but I wonder if they will ever be released to the public.

[JSngry]

About 30 years ago I wrote a letter to Cuscuna with some suggestions about possible sets. One was for a complete Buddy Rich PJ set. His response was simple - no way that was going to happen because there was too much money to be made selling the individual albums. 

All that's left is the 70s stuff:

And the Silveto catalog.

Good luck on any of that. Maybe BGP or somebody like that can get something happening. But Mosaic today? Nah...

No way it's all "WOW!!!" but some of it is. So...Horace Silver as serious artist or Horace Silver as market commodity? Remember all those hits? 

Silver's going to be another one of those guys with a "conventional narrative" that is going to be incomplete unless and until it becomes convenient for somebody to make some money by completing it.

Proceed accordingly. 

 

[tranemonk]

10 hours ago, mhatta said:

Several live recordings from the 1960s remain unreleased (such as the August 15, 1964 Pep's show, w/ Joe Henderson). I heard Horace hated live recordings, but I wonder if they will ever be released to the public.

What's wrong with his live recordings? I can't remember which one Filthy McNasty is on but I love that record.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

10 hours ago, mhatta said:

Several live recordings from the 1960s remain unreleased (such as the August 15, 1964 Pep's show, w/ Joe Henderson). I heard Horace hated live recordings, but I wonder if they will ever be released to the public.

According to Michael Cuscuna, the Pep's tapes were destroyed at Silver's request.

[T.D.]

14 minutes ago, tranemonk said:

What's wrong with his live recordings? I can't remember which one Filthy McNasty is on but I love that record.

Doin' The Thing. That's the only live recording he released on Blue Note.

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, T.D. said:

Doin' The Thing. That's the only live recording he released on Blue Note.

https://www.discogs.com/master/431899-Horace-Silver-Live-At-Newport-58

 

11 hours ago, mhatta said:

I heard Horace hated live recordings, but I wonder if they will ever be released to the public.

Yet he put out one on his own Silveto label.

 

https://www.discogs.com/release/2679867-Horace-Silver-Live-1964

[Milestones]

It is rather strange that there are just a few Horace Silver live recordings.   I think he is best represented during the time he co-led the Messengers with Blakey; I think it was actually called the Art Blakey Quintet then.  Maybe Horace hated live albums (as has been claimed on this board), but that's kind of odd given that Blakey seemed to love them.  

In his prime years, at least, Horace seemed to be on the road as much as Blakey.

 

 

 

[T.D.]

29 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

https://www.discogs.com/master/431899-Horace-Silver-Live-At-Newport-58

 

Good point. I forgot about that one but relied on the Blue Note website. 🤣

https://store.bluenote.com/products/horace-silver-doin-the-thing-lp-blue-note-classic-vinyl-edition

“We’d like for you all to help us get in the groove, let your hair down, and come on and get in the music with us,” says Horace Silver in the spoken introduction to Doin’ The Thing, the only live album the great pianist made during his remarkable 3-decade tenure on Blue Note Records.

[Dan Gould]

Shouldn't forget there is also Paris Blues that somehow came out on the Pablo label in the CD era.  Never understood how that happened considering that I understood him to be under contract with BN all the way to the very end.

[gmonahan]

3 hours ago, T.D. said:

Doin' The Thing. That's the only live recording he released on Blue Note.

That's my favorite Silver album. I've always figured Mosaic didn't do one because most of them are easy to get and have remained in print and because there are a LOT of them.

 

[tranemonk]

5 hours ago, gmonahan said:

That's my favorite Silver album. I've always figured Mosaic didn't do one because most of them are easy to get and have remained in print and because there are a LOT of them.

 

That's part of my confusion. They could slice it up and frame it in whichever way Mosaic wanted. Even though a lot of them are still in print so are the Joe Hendersons, Freddie Hubbard and Sonny Clarks. Horace's presence seems to kinda have disappeared a bit from public discussion. I just wish he'd get more recognition today. Maybe it's just me.

[jazzbo]

2 hours ago, tranemonk said:

That's part of my confusion. They could slice it up and frame it in whichever way Mosaic wanted. Even though a lot of them are still in print so are the Joe Hendersons, Freddie Hubbard and Sonny Clarks. Horace's presence seems to kinda have disappeared a bit from public discussion. I just wish he'd get more recognition today. Maybe it's just me.

Actually I believe that though the cds may be available used, the Silver, Henderson, Hubbard and Clark cds are not in print in the States. Look at the Blue Note store--Lps, yes, cds, nope.

Edited April 5 by jazzbo

[mikeweil]

I think Blue Note expected better sales by re-issuing single CDs of all albums than by licensing them. Or it might have been Horace's preference. Cuscuna always consulted him about unreleased material.

Edited April 4 by mikeweil

[JSngry]

No way that today's Mosaic is putting this out, but serious silver-philes would benefit from at least knowing about it. Hell, they might even enjoy it a little!!!!!!!!!!!

[jazzbo]

That series of 'N releases has been out recently enough from Japan on cd.

[clifford_thornton]

10 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Shouldn't forget there is also Paris Blues that somehow came out on the Pablo label in the CD era.  Never understood how that happened considering that I understood him to be under contract with BN all the way to the very end.

Verve/Impulse at the end.

interesting the Pep's material was tossed. Maybe the band wasn't on top of its game that night.

[felser]

28 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

Verve/Impulse at the end.

interesting the Pep's material was tossed. Maybe the band wasn't on top of its game that night.

And Columbia and Silveto before that.  My memory is reading that Silver asked Lion to toss the Pep's tapes.

[JSngry]

This one got a lot of play on the AM jazz radio back in the day. Irresistible! 

[Rooster_Ties]

34 minutes ago, felser said:

And Columbia and Silveto before that.  My memory is reading that Silver asked Lion to toss the Pep's tapes.

That’s my memory too, except I thought I’d heard he had Lion give him the tapes so Horace could toss (more likely destroy?) the tapes himself.  Or maybe that was just speculation I’d read — but I’d definitely heard/read that more than once.

[Dan Gould]

@clifford_thornton @felser

I figured it was obvious in context I was referring to Horace as the last contracted artist on BN until the end of the first incarnation of the label, and that therefore a live recording in 1964 would be BN property and that how it came to Pablo was an unresolved mystery, not that he was a Blue Note artist thru his entire recorded output. I am forgetful, not ignorant.

[Gheorghe]

I still have quite a few Horace Silver Albums.

One that has "No Smokin´" on it, than the one with the Jazz Messengers, than those Further Explorations , and the one with "Strollin´", mostly because it´s tunes I perform. 

I think, as the 60´s went on, I lost the trace, Cap Verdean Blues or what it is, is nice. 

I think there is also a live album "Village Gate" with some great tunes......

[Kevin Bresnahan]

11 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

Verve/Impulse at the end.

interesting the Pep's material was tossed. Maybe the band wasn't on top of its game that night.

From: https://digscholarship.unco.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1380&context=dissertations

" Carmell [Jones] was from L.A., and everybody’s nice in L.A., and friendly and sunny and everybody owns cars and has a parking space and all that stuff. He just wasn’t used to the East Coast. That week we’re at Pep’s. It was a Sunday afternoon, [and] we were going to do a matinee. Rudy Van Gelder was setting up, and Carmell was on the bandstand, which is in front of the bar. You know the way guys in Philly are. So these two guys . . . say “You’re the new guy, you’re the guy from sunny California. You better be able to play, man, after what Blue Mitchell played.” And they’re just ragging on him.

Any New Yorker, Philly or D.C. guy would just take that in stride and maybe come back at them. It crushed Carmell so badly that he just imploded for that whole day of recording. That’s what took the whole band down. He was just so sensitive and not used to the whole East Coast aggressive style . . . . It’s an aggressive style, but it’s mostly just people kidding each other. He crashed and burned and that took the whole thing down with him."

And further:

" Years later, Silver and Cuscuna spent an afternoon in a recording studio listening back to the recording. It was, in fact, so unissuable that Cuscuna relinquished the master tapes to Silver, who destroyed them."