''Live at Newport '58'' is a live album by

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

pianist

Horace Silver Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver (September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, particularly in the hard bop style that he helped pioneer in the 1950s. After playing tenor saxophone and piano at sch ...

. The album was recorded on July 6, 1958 at the

Newport Jazz Festival The Newport Jazz Festival is an annual American multi-day jazz music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard established the festival in 1954, and she and husband Louis Lorillard financed it for many years. They hire ...

Blue Note Records Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Capitol Music Group. Established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis, it derived its name from the blue notes of jazz and the blues. Or ...

released the album in 2008. It is one of the few officially released live albums with Silver as bandleader. Producer

Michael Cuscuna Michael Cuscuna (born September 20, 1949 in Stamford, Connecticut, United States) is an American jazz record producer and writer. He is the co-founder of Mosaic Records and a discographer of Blue Note Records. Cuscuna played drums, saxophone and ...

discovered Silver's Newport performance while auditioning tapes at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

. He was able to locate a three-track master recording in

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

' archives, as Columbia producer

George Avakian George Mesrop Avakian (; russian: Геворк Авакян; March 15, 1919 – November 22, 2017) was an American record producer, artist manager, writer, educator and executive. Best known for his work from 1939 to the early 1960s at Decca Re ...

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 Herman "Junior" Cook (July 22, 1934 – February 3, 1992) was an American hard bop tenor saxophone player. Biography Cook was born in Pensacola, Florida. After playing with Dizzy Gillespie in 1958, Cook was a member of the Horace Silver Quin ...

and

Louis Hayes Louis Hayes (born May 31, 1937) is an American jazz drummer and band leader. He was with McCoy Tyner's trio for more than three years. Since 1989 he has led his own band, and together with Vincent Herring formed the Cannonball Legacy Band. He i ...

were the only two

sidemen A sideman is a musician who performs live with a band of which they are not a permanent member. Sideman or Sidemen may also refer to: * Sidemen, Bali, a district in the Karangasem Regency of Bali * Sideman (bishop), a 10th-century Bishop of Cred ...

remaining from the previous edition of the Quintet. Trumpeter Louis Smith, who replaced

Donald Byrd Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter and vocalist. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was one of the few hard bop m ...

, was with the group for only a short time before

Blue Mitchell Richard Allen "Blue" Mitchell (March 13, 1930 – May 21, 1979) was an American trumpeter and composer who worked in jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock and funk. He recorded albums as leader and sideman for Riverside, Mainstream Records, and Blu ...

replaced him, and this album presents Smith's only full performance with the group. However, critic

Jeff Tamarkin Jeff Tamarkin is an American editor, author and historian specializing in music and popular culture. Career For 15 years Tamarkin was editor of '' Goldmine'', a magazine for record and CD collectors. Prior to that, he served as the first editor ...

writes that " mith'splaying on this date is monstrous", and ''

The Penguin Guide to Jazz ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine editions were compiled by ...

'' 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 Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospe ...

Track listing

Personnel

* Louis Smith –

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

–

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

–

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

* Gene Taylor – bass *

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

References

{{Authority control Horace Silver albums Live hard bop albums Albums recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival Blue Note Records live albums Albums produced by Michael Cuscuna 1958 in Rhode Island