One of my favorite albums of all time has to be Horace Silver’s “Blowing the Blues Away“. Its the first album I heard of his and the sensation of listening to it then and now hasn’t dulled. He managed to incorporate all elements of jazz without loosing that toe tapping, hip twisting essence. As someone said, Horace was funky before the word was.
Although not on the album mentioned, The Jody Grind was one of his songs that I could tackle with the arrangement I had in mind. Being the first song, I wanted to use early elements like drums, trumpet and dance and in this case tap. I also wanted to incorporate some electronica and therefore looked at the theremin for inspiration being one of the earliest electronic musical instruments.
The first step is to get “The funky Drummer from Hell”, Neil Conti to lay down the rhythm. I should have the tracks back within the week. Cant wait!!
P.S Lenin was so impressed by the theremin that he started taking lessons on it and then commissioned Leon to build 600 more after which he sent him on a world tour to promote it. The Moog and all other synthesizers were to follow in its footsteps.
Here is Leon Theremin demonstrating his invention in 1927
