"Song for My Father" (Horace Silver)

I really got into jazz as a teenager.  It stemmed from listening to groups like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul and then scanning the song credits to figure out where they were getting those sick jazz breaks and beats.  Pretty frequently, I was seeing the phrase "sample courtesy of Blue Note Records."  So I went hunting for stuff on the Blue Note label at the record store.
I didn't realize it at the time, but Blue Note had been defunct for quite a few years, the result of acquisitions and mergers and all of the stuff that has nothing (and everything) to do with how one consumes music.  So finding reissues of the back catalog wasn't easy at first.  Although, my guess is there were enough people like me, hearing these jazz breaks on hip-hop records and then specifically asking for this music, that the people holding the purse strings realized the Blue Note brand still had cache and there was money to be made reissuing the old albums.
Anyway, the first jazz album I ever bought was a compilation of hard-bop jazz, The Best of Blue Note (1991), and one of my favorite tracks on that compilation was pianist Horace Silver's "Song for My Father," a bossa nova groover with a memorable hook and funky/churchy soloing by Silver and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.
Story goes, Silver was inspired to record the tune and ultimately the Song for My Father album (1964) after a trip to Brazil.  The excursion allowed Silver to reconnect with his roots—his father having hailed from the Cape Verdean island of Maio, a former Portuguese possession off the western coast of Africa.  Thinking about those influences, it's only natural the track "Song for My Father" would blend Brazilian bossa nova with a touch of African/island folk.
As a keyboardist myself, what appealed to me about the track is that it's very piano driven; Silver solos for more than half the song.  It also has this interesting mix of funky block chords and bluesy runs.  It's a great piece to warm up and/or practice with because it has that kind of variety.  Its cyclical structure and repeating bassline also sort of give you the freedom to noodle around and invent new riffs, runs, etc.
I even played it a few times for audiences, who immediately assumed that I was about to deliver an acoustic rendition of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number."  (Steely Dan borrowed the opening notes of "Song for My Father" for its 1974 hit.)