Song for My Father. [View all]

[Kind of Blue]

It's not too late from where I am to wish Happy Father's Day to all the dad's here and our dads still with us and those who've passed on.

Recorded live in Copenhagen, Denmark, April 1968. Song for My Father was recorded in October 1964 and released on the Blue Note label. The album was inspired by a trip that Silver had made to Brazil. The cover artwork features a photograph of Silver's father, John Tavares Silva, to whom the title song was dedicated. "My mother was of Irish and Negro descent, my father of Portuguese origin", Silver recalls in the liner notes, "He was born on the island of Maio, one of the Cape Verde Islands." The album line-up differs from the Copenhagen musicians here.

One of the most indelible tunes in the jazz canon, Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” recorded 50 years ago on October 26, 1964 for the album that bears the same name, could have become an AM Top 40 radio hit had the powers to be back then bothered to delve deeper beyond the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Motown to find rich sources of beguiling song. In fact, a decade later, the pop group Steely Dan lifted the catchy bass lines from “Song for My Father” for its own song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” (from its 1974 album Pretzel Logic), which reached the upper echelon of the pop singles chart—testament to Silver’s brilliance as a songwriter whose appealing tunes over the course of his career have been fully recognized as lyrical, whimsical gems.

While Song for My Father as a whole perfectly captured the Silver aura of his Blue Note days, the title melody made jazz history. With Silver’s bluesy, swinging piano flavored both by the Cape Verdean folk music of his father and Brazilian bossa nova, “Song for My Father” proved to be both an enthralling dance for the day and a timeless piece of music. http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/horace-silver-song-for-my-father-turns-50-yea