More Horace Silver

More Albums on Blue Note

• Stunning sound throughout this original Blue Note Stereo pressing, with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
• A Must Own from Horace Silver, with the kind of sound that only the best vintage pressings can offer
• If you don’t know his music, this is a good place to start
• Another triumph for engineering maestro Rudy Van Gelder – he refined a “live-in-the-studio” jazz sound that still sounds fresh to this day, even after 65 years
• 4 1/2 stars: “Blowin’ The Blues Away is one of Horace Silver’s all-time Blue Note classics, only upping the ante established on Finger Poppin’ for tightly constructed, joyfully infectious hard bop… one of Silver’s finest albums, and it’s virtually impossible to dislike.”
• If you’re a fan of Silver’s, this 1959 album belongs in your collection, along with quite a few others, if only we could fine them
• The complete list of titles from 1959 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

The really good RVG pressings (often on the later labels) sound shockingly close to live music — uncompressed, present, full of energy, with the instruments clearly located on a wide and often deep soundstage, surrounded by the natural space and cool air of his New Jersey studio. As our stereo has improved, and we’ve found better pressings and learned how to clean them better, his “you-are-there” live jazz sound has come to impress us more and more. (more…)