Horace Silver - 1959
‘St. Vitus Dance’ is played by just the trio on ‘Blowin the Blues Away’ giving us a chance to look closely at Silver’s piano style. His percussive attack drove the rhythmic propulsion along like few other players could do, with the possible exception of Bud Powell at his best.
At its core, ‘St.Vitus Dance’ is an 8 bar blues in the key of F minor. The first chord is a tritone substitution for a C chord setting up the tonic Fm. Bar 4 is a II – V set up for the IV chord Db and so on.