“Horace put the fun back in the music,” wrote jazz piano great Mike LeDonne, upon Silver’s death in 2014. It was hard to be downcast with Silver’s music playing in the vicinity. He often said that music should bring joy and make people forget their troubles. On a basic level, Silver was a genius with melody. It was also the basis for many subsequent jazz-adjacent musical genres and countless hip-hop samples. Hard bop took the stylistic innovations of bebop and combined them with vernacular styles like blues, gospel, and a wealth of Latin, Brazilian, and West African influences. Among jazz fans, he’s perhaps best known as the founding father of the genre known as hard bop, an exuberant, finger-popping style that was ascendant in the late 50s and early 60s. He’s one of the most influential pianists and composers of his time. “Song for My Father,” however, is just one of many illustrious musical chapters in the long and storied career of Silver. The swirling horn lines toward the end of “Song for My Father,” are replicated in multitracked vocals on Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing,” from his 1973 album Innervisions. One of Silver’s best-known tunes, “Song for My Father,” is built on a catchy two-note bass line that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen famously borrowed for Steely Dan’s highest-charting single, 1974’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” That wasn’t Silver’s only influence on a Billboard top 20 song from that decade, though. The great pianist and composer Horace Silver has been heard by hundreds of millions of music fans who are probably unaware of his presence.
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