Horace Silver

Horace Silver was an influential jazz musician whose eclectic musical compositions were instrumental in pioneering the jazz sub-genre known as Hard Bop. Born in Connecticut in 1928, Silver was first introduced to music at a very young age by his father, a native of the African nation of Cape Verde. Silver's father taught his young son how to play Cape Verde's distinctive folk music, which would heavily influence Silver throughout the entirety of his professional music career. Having shown early signs that he was a gifted musician, Silver's first big break came when jazz legend Stan Getz asked the young piano player to join his band. The experience proved influential enough for Silver to pack his bags and head to New York City, where more opportunities in the music business awaited him. He arrived in 1951 and soon after signed with the iconic jazz label Blue Note, which would release his albums until 1980. In 1955 Silver released one of his most seminal works, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, which became influential in distinguishing Hard Bop as its own distinctive sub-genre of Jazz. With Blue Note as his label, Silver went on to release some of the most important modern jazz albums of the '50s and '60s, the most famous of which, 1965's Song for My Father, influenced everyone from Stevie Wonder to Earth Wind & Fire. Silver continued recording and performing as an influential force in the jazz world. In 2005, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences awarded Silver the President's Merit Award to honor his various contributions to jazz. Horace Silver died on June 18, 2014 at the age of 85.