Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Music Guide provides a guide to the best recordings of the hard bop legend, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s.
Blakey made a name for himself in the 1940s in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He then worked with bebop musicians Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-1950s, Horace Silver and Blakey formed the Jazz Messengers, a group which he led for the next 35 years. The group was formed as a collective of contemporaries, but over the years the band became known as an incubator for young talent, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Curtis Fuller, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard, and Wynton Marsalis. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz calls the Jazz Messengers "the archetypal hard bop group of the late 50s.
Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s.
Blakey made a name for himself in the 1940s in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He then worked with bebop musicians Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-1950s, Horace Silver and Blakey formed the Jazz Messengers, a group which he led for the next 35 years. The group was formed as a collective of contemporaries, but over the years the band became known as an incubator for young talent, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Curtis Fuller, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard, and Wynton Marsalis. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz calls the Jazz Messengers "the archetypal hard bop group of the late 50s.
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MusicTranscript
00:00Drummer Art Blakey and his band the Jazz Messengers are the pioneers of a jazz sub-genre called hard
00:13bop. Hard bop takes the fundamentals of bebop and adds elements of rhythm and blues. The idea behind
00:22hard bop was to make bebop music more danceable and perhaps more palatable to mainstream music
00:31fans. Art Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1919. By the 1950s his
00:42virtuosic and incessant drumming would put him at the forefront of the bebop genre along with
00:51Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. By 1954 Blakey formed the band the Jazz Messengers
01:03which became a training ground for up-and-coming young jazz musicians. New Orleans trumpet
01:10prodigy Wynton Marsalis got his professional start as a member of the band. Among the best
01:20of the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messenger albums are the following. A Night in Birdland volumes
01:28one to three from 1954. The Jazz Messengers from 1956. A Night in Tunisia from 1957. Drum Suite
01:42also from 1957. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk from 1958. Ritual from 1959. Monin
01:55also from 1959. The Big Beat from 1960. Mosaic from 1961. Free For All. A Night in Tunisia from 1961
02:11and Indestructible from 1965.