The Stylings of Silver

By 1957 Horace Silver's tunes were already being played by other bands. "Doolin'," "The Preacher" and "Opus de Funk" had come out on Blue Note, and 6 Pieces of Silver had given him his first piece in 6/8, "Señor Blues." He had led his own quintet since August 1956. Art Farmer on trumpet and Hank Mobley on tenor had been with him from the start. Teddy Kotick on bass and Louis Hayes on drums came a little later.

The date was Wednesday, May 8, 1957, at Van Gelder's in Hackensack, with Alfred Lion producing. It was a working band, not a pickup group, and Silver wrote five of the six tunes. Nat Hentoff, in the original notes, lets him talk about how they arrive.

Usually the ideas come when I don't expect them.

Horace Silver, in Nat Hentoff's original liner notes

He also told Hentoff he did not set out to be different for its own sake; he reworked tunes over time, as he did with "Home Cookin'."

Side one opens with "No Smokin'," a fast tune in a minor key. Silver explains that to smoke, in the slang of the day, meant to cook, to wail. "The Back Beat" gets its name from the rhythm section playing a back-beat figure against the melody. "Soulville" is a minor blues, and Silver says he took its form from Lester Young's "D.B. Blues."

Side two opens with "Home Cookin'," another blues, which ends with Kotick walking alone. "Metamorphosis" starts in broken pieces before the band settles into tempo, with a bridge in a beguine rhythm. The only standard is "My One and Only Love." Silver had once arranged it for the Dutch singer Rita Reys; here Farmer, Mobley and Silver solo.

Four of the six tunes also went out on two 45s. Billboard picked "The Back Beat" as the track to play. Dom Cerulli gave the record five stars in Down Beat, and Whitney Balliett, in The New Yorker, found Farmer strained on "No Smokin'." Scott Yanow, at AllMusic, put it in context:

All of Silver's Blue Note quintet recordings are consistently superb and swinging

Scott Yanow, AllMusic, quoted on Wikipedia

The sleeve was designed by Reid Miles, with a photograph by Francis Wolff.

The band did not last in this form. The notes on the back of the record add that Mobley soon left to join Max Roach, and Clifford Jordan, who had replaced Sonny Rollins with Roach, came over to Silver. Within eight months Silver was back at Van Gelder's for Further Explorations, with Farmer, Kotick and Hayes still beside him.