Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers

This album is the sound of jazz finding its heartbeat again.

After the intellectual abstractions of bebop, Horace Silver and Art Blakey injected the genre with a heavy dose of the blues and the black church. It feels like a crowded, smoke-filled basement club where the music is as much about the physical groove as it is about the technical skill. Silver's piano playing is percussive and rhythmic, favoring infectious riffs over dizzying speed, which gives the entire record a welcoming, soulful accessibility.