The Horace Silver Quintet - The Tokyo Blues (1962/2010) [Hi-Res+SACD]

Following a series of concert dates in Tokyo late in 1961 with his quintet, Horace Silver returned to USA with his head full of the Japanese melodies he had heard during his visit, & using those as a springboard, he wrote 4 new pieces, which he then recorded at sessions held on July 13 & 14, 1962, along with a version of Ronnell Bright’s little known ballad “Cherry Blossom.” One would naturally assume the resulting album would have a Japanese feel, but that really isn’t the case. Using Latin rhythms & the blues as a base, Silver’s Tokyo-influenced compositions fit right in with the subtle cross-cultural, but very American, hard bop he’d been doing all along. Using his usual quintet, with drummer Joe Harris filling in for an ailing Roy Brooks, Silver’s compositions have a light, airy feel, with plenty of space, & no one used that space better at these sessions than Cook, whose tenor sax lines are simply wonderful, adding a sturdy, reliable brightness. The centerpieces are the 2 straight blues, “Sayonara Blues” & “The Tokyo Blues,” both of which have a delightfully natural flow, & the building, patient take on Bright’s “Cherry Blossom,” which Silver takes pains to make sure sounds like a ballad & not a barely restrained minor-key romp. The bottom line is that The Tokyo Blues emerges as a fairly typical Silver set from the era & not as a grandiose fusion experiment welding hard bop to Japanese melodies. That might have been interesting, certainly, but Silver obviously assimilated things down to a deeper level before he wrote these pieces, & they feel like a natural extension of his work rather than an experimental detour.