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Art Blakey
Albums
![Indestructible [Bonus Track]](/cache/JS/g0/130x130_on-sale_g00335cjij9.png)
This 2003 reissue of the Art Blakey classic Indestructible is part of Blue Note's Rudy Van Gelder series. Van Gelder himself has done the 24-bit remasters from analog masters. The added track left off the original session is Wayne Shorter's
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
A glance at this CD's cover might cause collectors to have a double take for it looks similar to the original A Night at Birdland album by Horace Silver and the Jazz [more]
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
![Night at Birdland, Vol. 1 [Reissue]](/cache/JS/l6/130x130_on-sale_l68166gf0qv.png)
Just prior to forming the first edition of the Jazz Messengers, drummer Art Blakey led a superb quintet at Birdland for a brief gig in 1954. The band featured [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
![Big Beat [RVG Edition]](/cache/JS/g9/130x130_on-sale_g92595sojco.png)
Perhaps the best-known and most loved of Art Blakey's works, The Big Beat is a testament to the creative progress of one of the best jazz drummers of all time. [more]
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
This is a particularly obscure live set by Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, one not even listed in most discographies. The 1968 edition of Blakey's band was a strong if [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
This is the one that started it: Mosaic, recorded in 1961, was the first recording of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers as a sextet, a setting he kept from 1961-1964. The band's [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
![Buhaina's Delight [2004]](/cache/JS/g3/130x130_on-sale_g38175mwqe4.png)
In 1961, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers had expanded to a sextet, likely his most talented ensemble, and riding on the crest of tenor saxophonist Wayne [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
![Night in Tunisia [RVG Edition]](/cache/JS/g6/130x130_on-sale_g65512dwslv.png)
The lengthy title track on this CD easily overshadows the rest of the program for it is one of the most exciting versions ever recorded of Dizzy [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
Three-disc anthology that covers various editions of The Messengers from the beginning to the end. It contains such classics as
- List Price: $50.97
- Member Price: $35.94
By the time that jazz icon/bandleader/percussionist Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers began recording for Riverside in the fall of 1962, Blakey had already been the [more]
- Member Price: $20.05
Appearances
This album is perhaps most significant for the process it set in motion -- the collaboration between Gil Evans and Miles Davis that would produce Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, two [more]
- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $11.98
Often overlooked, perhaps because he wasn't a great innovator in jazz but merely a stellar performer, tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley was at the peak of his powers on Soul Station. [more]
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
This magnificent limited-edition set launched the Mosaic label in real style. Included are all of Thelonious Monk's Blue Note recordings, six sessions as a leader [more]
- Member Price: $67.96
![Somethin' Else [RVG Edition]](/cache/JS/k3/130x130_on-sale_k33581kqn7y.png)
It isn't too difficult to understand why MFSL considered this album to be a worthy candidate for an Ultradisc reissue -- aside from Cannonball Adderley, you have a [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
This 2003 reissue of the Art Blakey classic Indestructible is part of Blue Note's Rudy Van Gelder series. Van Gelder himself has done the 24-bit remasters from analog masters. The added track left off the original session is Wayne Shorter's
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
Like swing guitarist Charlie Christian, Clifford Brown was incredibly influential for someone who died so young. The Fats Navarro-minded trumpeter was only 25 when a [more]
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
Miles Davis' recordings of 1951-1954 tend to be overlooked because of his erratic lifestyle of the period and because they predated his first classic quintet. Although he rarely [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
![Miles Davis, Vol. 2 [Blue Note]](/cache/JS/c4/130x130_on-sale_c469229e807.png)
This CD contains all of the music recorded by a particularly strong sextet in 1953, six selections and five alternate takes. With trumpeter Miles Davis, trombonist J.J. [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
A glance at this CD's cover might cause collectors to have a double take for it looks similar to the original A Night at Birdland album by Horace Silver and the Jazz [more]
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
This double-disc collection contains three sessions saxophonist John Coltrane recorded for Bethlehem as a sideman at the end 1957. Disc one contains the original album Winners [more]
- List Price: $33.98
- Member Price: $23.96
Biography
- Born Oct 11th 1919 in Pittsburgh, PA
- Died Oct 16th 1990 in New York, NY
In the '60s, when John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were defining the concept of a jazz avant-garde, few knowledgeable observers would have guessed that in another 30 years the music's mainstream would virtually bypass their innovations, in favor of the hard bop style that free jazz had apparently supplanted. As it turned out, many listeners who had come to love jazz as a sophisticated manifestation of popular music were unable to accept the extreme esotericism of the avant-garde; their tastes were rooted in the core elements of "swing" and "blues," characteristics found in abundance in the music of the Jazz Messengers, the quintessential hard bop ensemble led by drummer Art Blakey. In the '60s, '70s, and '80s, when artists on the cutting edge were attempting to transform the music, Blakey continued to play in more or less the same bag he had since the '40s, when his cohorts included the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Fats Navarro. By the '80s, the evolving mainstream consensus had reached a point of overwhelming approval in regard to hard bop: this is what jazz is, and Art Blakey -- as its longest-lived and most eloquent exponent -- was its master.
The Jazz Messengers had always been an incubator for young talent. A list of the band's alumni is a who's who of straight-ahead jazz from the '50s on -- Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Donald Byrd, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Benny Golson, Joanne Brackeen, Billy Harper, Valery Ponomarev, Bill Pierce, Branford Marsalis, James Williams, Keith Jarrett, and Chuck Mangione, to name several of the most well-known. In the '80s, precocious graduates of Blakey's School for Swing would continue to number among jazz's movers and shakers, foremost among them being trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis became the most visible symbol of the '80s jazz mainstream; through him, Blakey's conservative ideals came to dominate the public's perception of the music. At the time of his death in 1990, the Messenger aesthetic dominated jazz, and Blakey himself had arguably become the most influential jazz musician of the past 20 years.
Blakey's first musical education came in the form of piano lessons; he was playing professionally as a seventh grader, leading his own commercial band. He switched to drums shortly thereafter, learning to play in the hard-swinging style of Chick Webb and Sid Catlett. In 1942, he played with pianist Mary Lou Williams in New York. He toured the South with Fletcher Henderson's band in 1943-1944. From there, he briefly led a Boston-based big band before joining Billy Eckstine's new group, with which he would remain from 1944-1947. Eckstine's big band was the famous "cradle of modern jazz," and included (at different times) such major figures of the forthcoming bebop revolution as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. When Eckstine's group disbanded, Blakey started a rehearsal ensemble called the Seventeen Messengers. He also recorded with an octet, the first of his bands to be called the Jazz Messengers. In the early '50s, Blakey began an association with Horace Silver, a particularly likeminded pianist with whom he recorded several times. In 1955, they formed a group with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham, calling themselves "Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers." The Messengers typified the growing hard bop movement -- hard, funky, and bluesy, the band emphasized the music's primal rhythmic and harmonic essence. A year later, Silver left the band, and Blakey became its leader. From that point, the Messengers were Blakey's primary vehicle, though he would continue to freelance in various contexts. Notable was a 1963 Impulse record date with McCoy Tyner, Sonny Stitt, and Art Davis; a 1971-1972 world tour with "the Giants of Jazz," an all-star venture with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Al McKibbon; and an epochal drum battle with Max Roach, Elvin Jones, and Buddy Rich at the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. Blakey also frequently recorded as a sideman under the leadership of ex-Messengers.
Blakey's influence as a bandleader could not have been nearly so great had he not been such a skilled instrumentalist. No drummer ever drove a band harder; none could generate more sheer momentum in the course of a tune; and probably no drummer had a lower boiling point -- Blakey started every performance full-bore and went from there. His accompaniment style was relentless, and woe to the young saxophonist who couldn't keep up, for Blakey would run him over like a fullback. Blakey differed from other bop drummers in that his style was almost wholly about the music's physical attributes. Where his contemporary Max Roach dealt extensively with the drummer's relationship to melody and timbre, for example, Blakey showed little interest in such matters. To him, jazz percussion wasn't about tone color; it was about rhythm -- first, last, and in between. Blakey's drum set was the engine that propelled the music. To the extent that he exhibited little conceptual development over the course of his long career, either as a player or as a bandleader, Blakey was limited. He was no visionary by any means. But Blakey did one thing exceedingly well, and he did it with genius, spirit, and generosity until the very end of his life. ~ Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide
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