Junior Cook (tenor sax), Blue Mitchell (trumpet), Horace Silver (piano), Gene Taylor (bass) and Louis Hayes (drums). From the album Blowin’ the Blues Away (1959).
Silver built his career based on catchy songs performed by good musicians at medium and medium-fast tempos, but his weak part was the slow tempos: the ballads. When he finally composed his master ballad, it was not about love and courtship, but about peace and serenity.
This praise to tranquility is so natural that one might think that this kind of meditative themes were the usual in Silver, but none of its other standards resemble it. In this theme you won’t find any infectious melody, any surprising interlude or any harmonic change that will take the piece in an unexpected direction. Instead, the soloist revolves around a series of moderate resolution chords creating a calming circular motion.
Mitchell plays the melody of a slow tempo theme adorned by brief interventions by Silver while Cook makes an accompaniment below. At the end of the theme, Mitchell continues to make his solo that invites calm and serenity. Silver follows him with a slow statement conducive to meditation, but then encourages himself by doubling his tempo. Then Mitchell returns to re-expose the theme at slow tempo and ends with a short phrase from Silver and two double bass notes.
