Live at Newport '58 explained

Live at Newport '58
Type:live
Artist:Horace Silver
Cover:HSilver Newport58 cover001.jpg
Released:February 5, 2008
Recorded:July 6, 1958
Genre:Hard bop
Length:44:44
Label:Blue Note
Producer:Michael Cuscuna
Prev Title:Rockin' with Rachmaninoff
Prev Year:2003

Live at Newport '58 is a live album by jazz pianist Horace Silver. The album was recorded on July 6, 1958 at the Newport Jazz Festival. Blue Note Records released the album in 2008. It is one of the few officially released live albums with Silver as bandleader.

Producer Michael Cuscuna discovered Silver's Newport performance while auditioning tapes at the Library of Congress. He was able to locate a three-track master recording in Columbia Records' archives, as Columbia producer George Avakian had supervised the recording of the entire 1958 Newport Festival.

Performance and reception

The personnel lineup that appears on this album was relatively short-lived. Junior Cook and Louis Hayes were the only two sidemen remaining from the previous edition of the Quintet. Trumpeter Louis Smith, who replaced Donald Byrd, was with the group for only a short time before Blue Mitchell replaced him, and this album presents Smith's only full performance with the group. However, critic Jeff Tamarkin writes that "[Smith's] playing on this date is monstrous", and The Penguin Guide to Jazz notes that "any thought that Smith was a stop-gap is blown away at once." On the final track, "'Senor Blues', he pushes the leader into one of his best, and most forceful, recorded solos

The Penguin Guide to Jazz noted that "a lot of archive rediscoveries are just ticks in collectors' boxes. This one has real musical value and high excitement: iconic hard bop."

Personnel