Blue Note's Tone Poet Series Expands With Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith & Herbie Hancock

Three new releases joined the Tone Poet Series from Blue Note last Friday, September 25th, and are here at Tower Records now for you to check out.

Tone Poet releases are produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from original masters at Blue Note, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI, and packaged in deluxe gatefold tip-on jackets printed at Stoughton.

First up, there's Horace Silver's Further Explorations (Blue Note, 1958).  This release features Horace Silver’s quintet with Art Farmer on trumpet, Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone, Teddy Kotick on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums. In this session from January 1958, Silver wrote all but one of the compositions. Highlights include “The Outlaw” and “Moon Rays”.

Next, there's Jimmy Smith's Prayer Meetin’ (Blue Note, 1963). Jimmy Smith revolutionized the use of the Hammond B-3 organ in Jazz during the mid-1950s and he often recorded with tenor saxophone Stanley Turrentine in the early 1960s, as he does on this album, which helped define Soul Jazz. Highlights of this session include the interplay between Smith, Turrentine, guitarist Quentin Warren, and drummer Donald Bailey on the title track and “Red Top”. Also of note is “I Almost Lost My Mind.”

Lastly, for now, there's Herbie Hancock in My Point of View (Blue Note, 1963). This was the pianist & composer Herbie Hancock’s second album for Blue Note. Featuring Hancock compositions, this session from 1963 has an all-star cast of Donald Byrd on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Grachan Moncur III on trombone, Grant Green on guitar, Chuck Israels on bass, and Tony Williams on drums, who was just 17 at the time of this recording. This session also contains essential Hancock compositions such as “King Cobra,” “A Tribute To Someone,” and also “And What If I Don’t.”