Drummer Louis Hayes pays tribute to Horace Silver
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Over the course of his six-decade career, drummer Louis Hayes has played with some of the best of the best in jazz — George Benson, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Oscar Peterson and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, to name a few.
But the drummer, who brings his quintet to the New Hazlett Theater on the North Side on Saturday, has always been grateful to the one man who gave him his start in the music business: the late pianist and composer Horace Silver, who is the subject of his most recent album, “Serenade for Horace.”
The 80-year-old Detroit native was reared in a musical environment where both parents played piano and his father also played drums. “Most of the kids in the neighborhood played an instrument ... and [eventually] I was playing with my peers in the neighborhood, playing dances. I was playing sports, but I left sports alone by the time I got to the age of 15 or 16,” he says.
One of those neighborhood musicians was bassist Doug Watkins, who apparently recommended Mr. Hayes to Mr. Silver when he was putting together his first group. The bassist “had to be the only one to say something about me,” the drummer notes, but he was the only one he knew. Just out of his teens, he jumped at the chance because “my dream was to come to New York.” And he hasn’t looked back. “It couldn’t have been any better to get a call from Horace Silver,” Mr. Hayes says. “For me, he was the perfect person — we got along right from the beginning. He gave me freedom to interpret his music.” He stayed in Silver’s group for six years, after which he went with Adderley, Peterson and more.
“Everything was a wonderful experience,” the drummer says. “I was appearing and making history with giants of jazz here in New York.”
So, perhaps it made sense that Mr. Hayes would do a tribute to one of his mentors — and on his original label. “I’m glad that it was on Blue Note,” Mr. Hayes says, “because when I came to New York that was the label that Horace was on” for his first five releases.
Among the tracks on the new record are the standards “Ecaroh” (”Horace” spelled backwards), “Señor Blues” and “Song for My Father,” the last of which features vocalist Gregory Porter. Mr. Hayes did compose