To Whom It May Concern

Hank Mobley (tenor sax), Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Horace Silver (piano), Doug Watkins (bass) and Art Blakey (drums). From the album Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1956).

Horace Silver was an American jazz pianist and composer who played especially in the hard bop style. In his childhood he listened to the popular music of Cape Verde “Fortunate Isles” played by his father, of Portuguese origin. He began studying saxophone and piano influenced by blues singers and boogie-woogie and bebop pianists, like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell.

Today it is clear that few musicians have made as much impact on jazz as he has. The hard bop style that began in the 1950s is not only played by musicians from the past, but also by those who were not yet born when this style declined in the 1960s and 1970s. For over fifty years, Silver has written some of the most enduring themes of jazz performing them in a distinctive and personal style.

The group begins to play the main tune of the theme and then they change rhythm on the bridge. After a drumroll Silver enters to do his solo with courage and determination. Next Mobley comes in playing well articulated phrases, accelerating some passages and then returning to his normal path. Then Dorham enters by playing his solo on the high register and Mobley joins him to play a new melody together, which changes again giving way to the re-exposure of the main theme.