Putting the Brakes on My Horace Silver Doc

Requiem for a Jazz Video Guy

Photo: Brian McMillen

It is with a heavy heart and gut-wrenching disappointment that I must announce the suspension of production on my Horace Silver documentary. For the past four months, I have been deeply immersed in what was to be my fifth feature-length documentary, a project driven by love and dedication. As a devoted Horace Silver fan for over sixty years, the chance to tell the story of his life and music was both thrilling and daunting. The work was hard but it was honest and now it must be set aside.

Unexpectedly, I hit a wall of insurmountable challenges, mostly from the fortress of Horace Silver’s estate and the bureaucratic maze of Blue Note Records. Making a film like this is a wild ride in itself, but securing rights? That’s a whole other beast. The music industry is a snake pit of injustice, having chewed up and spit out many of our greatest artists. Even worse, so many of their masterpieces are now locked away, hoarded by the greedy and the clueless. It’s always been this way, and it probably always will.

“There’s only one business tougher than Jazz, and that’s boxing.” Sonny Rollins

I've never been shy about expressing my thoughts on the tough world of the jazz business. Twenty-six years ago, I ignited the scene with the first-ever jazz blog, "Bird Lives!" Using the pseudonym "The Pariah," I exposed the music industry's dirty secrets with fiery rants dubbed diatribes. The blog gained a cult following, and my unapologetic truths upset many bigwigs. Even now, decades later, some folks still won't look me in the eye because of the bombs I dropped.

I Was Warned - Stay Away from the Music Business

My father, Frank Primack, was a talented pianist. During World War II, his London-based big band, the Skyliners, backed Bob Hope on USO tours. From an early age, I showed a strong interest in music. In the mid-50s, when most American schools had music programs, I started playing the trumpet in fourth grade. One of the first LPs my parents bought for our first ever hi-fi system was Duke Ellington’s "Nutcracker Suite." I also saw Louis Armstrong on the Ed Sullivan Show multiple times. Seeing his joy and hearing his music made me want to climb into the screen and join him.

Like many rebellious youngsters, I had no interest in practicing. Self-discipline was not in my vocabulary. My dad wasn’t a cheerleader either. He hammered it into my head: "Don't become a musician." His brutal experiences in the music biz left him scarred and convinced I should avoid such a treacherous career path. By thirteen, I was already a jazz junkie, but he never stopped warning me about the industry's dark side.

As a teenager, I fell in love with filmmaking after meeting Francis Coppola at a lecture in '66. Fast forward to NYU Film School, where I studied under Martin Scorsese. Concurrently, I hung out in the kitchen of the Village Vanguard, rubbing elbows with the very men whose music I worshipped. Their camaraderie, humor, and deep love for the music were mesmerizing. Yet, I soon realized they weren’t gods, just men.

A few years earlier, I met Horace Silver on a train from New York to Hartford. As a high schooler, I started going to New York on Sundays to catch matinees at the Vanguard and browse record stores. One Sunday, on my way back to Hartford, I encountered Horace, who was on his way to Norwalk to see his father. I sat next to him, and for an hour, I spoke with a jazz musician whose music had moved me. Horace was intelligent, well-spoken, and affable. He connected with me on a personal level. That meant a lot to a seventeen year old.

The Big Apple Beckoned

Walter Bishop, Jr. aka Bish

After NYU Film School, my relationships with musicians deepened. Richard Dubin, a protégé of Clark Terry and still one of my closest friends, opened doors for me. Thanks to Dubin, I got to hear and hang out with Clark Terry countless times. Walter Bishop, Jr., who made his mark playing with Charlie Parker in the 50s and was CT's pianist, also became a trusted friend. Walter Davis, Jr., Charlie Rouse, Gary Bartz and a number of the cats one or two generations removed from mine, who were all rooted in bebop, became my contemporaries.

Jazz Journalism wasn’t on my radar, but after DownBeat published an interview I did with Bish, writing gigs started rolling in. I was living the dream in a penthouse studio on the Upper West Side, soaking in live music almost every night and chilling with some of the coolest creators on the planet, most of whom have since left the concert, as Ron Carter would say. That was a golden era for me. They eventually dropped their bodies, as we all do, but they’ve never left my life.

My interest in technology eventually led me to the internet and in 1994, I co-founded the first major jazz website, Jazz Central Station. Billy Taylor was part of that project and for the next twenty years, we did some great work together. Just after Y2K, after successfully riding the dot-com wave, I was producing websites for musicians and decided to get back into filmmaking due to the lower production costs, thanks to computers, and free global video distribution. Working with Sonny Rollins, Billy Taylor, and Joe Lovano, whose websites I was producing, I started shooting interviews and performances. In 2006, I became the Jazz Video Guy. Eighteen years later, I have posted nearly three thousand videos that have garnered over thirty million views. I’ve also written two books, seven plays, and produced four documentary features.

Despite my success, my early programming left me with a healthy dose of suspicion about the music business. Aside from a stint at Jazz Central Station, I’ve never tied myself down to any full-time gig in the entertainment world. I’ve always steered clear of the snake pit that is record companies and their lawyers, until the ill fated Horace Silver documentary.

Go South, Young Man

Two years ago, I ditched the grind and moved to Guanajuato, Mexico, a place that's turned out to be pure magic. Last year, I kicked off this blog, and.a few months back, I got the itch to write about Horace. Out of nowhere, like some cosmic prank, the chance to produce the official Horace Silver documentary landed in my lap. Naturally, I jumped on it.

Horace was a deeply spiritual man, regularly communing with his spirit guides. This quest for his soul was set to be the backbone of the film, the thread weaving it all together.

What Could Have Been But Sadly, Will Never Be

After diving into his autobiography, I envisioned a unique approach: A cinematic tone poem, blending his music, performances, and reflections from his contemporaries, all brought to life with cutting-edge animation and motion graphics. Pushing the boundaries further, I used AI to clone Horace’s voice (a matter of some controversy), planning to have him narrate the film with excerpts from his autobiography. I envisioned a vibrant, living tribute to Horace's soul and legacy, capturing his essence in a way that’s never been done before.

But then the obstacles started piling up, rights issues, for starters. It got overwhelming fast. The music business and the greedy, dishonest parasites running the show basically shut down my film, not that this was their intention, for them, it was just business as usual.

I've had other projects run amok, who hasn’t. This is hardly my first rodeo—gut-wrenching disappointments have crashed into my life three or four times already. Thankfully, after the first few hits, the grieving process speeds up. Moving forward, I’d rather eat ground glass than work with a record label, producer, or attorney ever again. And I won’t.

To put a period on the Horace Silver documentary saga, I'm unleashing all the content I’ve created and gathered onto my YouTube channel, Jazz Video Guy. Over the next several months, you’ll see performances and interviews with Ron Carter, Billy Cobham, Randy Brecker, Terry Gibbs, Mulgrew Miller (from 2008), Miki Yamanaka, and Will Lee, along with Larry David, Kim Kardashian and Howard Stern. Well, maybe not those last three, but they were on the list of possibles..

Keep Hope Alive

I’ve enrolled at an AI Filmmaking School and I started classes yesterday.

I want to learn and master these new tools and platforms. AI Filmmaking is just beginning. In just a year, it promises remarkable potential. It’s moving forward at breakneck speed, for several reasons. Number one: the competition. There are numerous companies developing AI Filmmaking programs, driving the quality of programs forward rapidly. And secondly, AI teaches itself to get better.

The next major development will be the release of Sora, the Open AI video program that will democratize filmmaking. In a few years, millions of people will become filmmakers, much like how technology has enabled millions to become musicians today. Democratizing creativity is crucial—it shouldn't be monopolized by greedy business types and profit-driven multinational corporations.

The movies these new filmmakers are cranking out are bound to look nothing like the polished, formulaic Hollywood crap we're used to—and thank the gods for that. We're talking about raw storytellers and mad graphics wizards, crafting their own cinematic universes. Sure, most of it will cater to niche audiences, like a raucous garage band playing to a devoted crowd in a dingy club. And that's perfectly fine. The real thrill is in the creative chaos, the sheer act of making something that’s theirs. It’s the doing of it that counts.

Thirty years ago, I worked with tech wizard and musician/composer Steve Laifer at his Electric Imagine Center in Edgewater, New Jersey. Recently, we reconnected, and in discussing AI filmmaking, he wrote, “It's a filmmaker's ultimate dream tool. Cost becomes negligible for achieving big budget quality. Imagination is the only limiting factor. It doesn't get better than this.”

As I delve deeper into AI filmmaking, I’ll share my work. I’m thrilled to be on the ground floor of a medium where the only limits are my imagination. As part of my new course, I’ve also joined a global community of other filmmakers around the world on Dischord. It’s quite interesting to interact with them.

But for now, here's an excerpt from my interview with Billy Cobham about Horace Silver. Fresh out of the Army, his first gig was with Horace's quintet in 1968. In this clip, he remembers an out-of-body experience he had while playing with Horace. And then, they play Horace’s Nutville, from the Cape Verdean Blues. The band: Horace Silver, piano; John Williams, bass; Billy Cobham, drums; Bennie Maupin on tenor saxophone and Bill Hardman on the trumpet.

A few years after his time with Horace, he joined the Mahavishnu Orchestra and became a percussion icon. Now, at the age of eighty, this Swiss resident continues to perform, each appearance serving as a Master Class.