Art Blakey
Art Blakey (Arthur Blakey; October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he became a Muslim.
Blakey made a name for himself in the 1940s in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He 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 that the drummer was associated with for the next 35 years. The Messengers were 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 and Wynton Marsalis. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz calls the Jazz Messengers "the archetypal hard bop group of the late 50s".
He was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame (in 1981), the Grammy Hall of Fame (in 1998 and 2001), and was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1991.
The Jazz Messengers
The Jazz Messengers were an influential jazz combo that existed for over thirty-five years beginning in the early 1950s as a collective, and ending when long-time leader and founding drummer Art Blakey died in 1990. Blakey led or co-led the group from the outset. "Art Blakey" and "Jazz Messengers" became synonymous over the years, though Blakey did lead non-Messenger recording sessions and played as a sideman for other groups throughout his career.
The group evolved into a proving ground for young jazz talent. While veterans occasionally re-appeared in the group, by and large, each iteration of the Messengers included a lineup of new young players. Having the Messengers on one's resume was a rite of passage in the jazz world, and conveyed immediate bona fides.
Many Messenger alumni went on to become jazz stars in their own right, such as: Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Timmons, Curtis Fuller, Cedar Walton, Chuck Mangione, Keith Jarrett, Joanne Brackeen, Woody Shaw, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison and Mulgrew Miller. A more complete list of alumni can be found on the right column. Some members such as bassist Clarence Seay and then 16-year-old trombonist Gregory Charles Royal are documented to have played in the Jazz Messengers but did not record with the group.
The Jazz Messengers (1956 album)
The Jazz Messengers is a 1956 album by the Jazz Messengers, released by Columbia Records. It was the last recording by the Jazz Messengers lineup featuring pianist Horace Silver.
In 1968 Columbia reissued the LP in their Jazz Odyssey Series with a new cover under the title Art Blakey with the Original Jazz Messengers. In 1997 the album was digitally remastered and released on CD, again with its original title and cover, featuring all the tracks from the original LP along with five additional tracks drawn from the same recording sessions but previously released only on foreign imports.
Track listing
This is the track listing for the current Columbia CD release. Tracks 1−7 are from the original LP and in the same order. The adjacent tracks 8−10 and 12 were first released on Originally (Columbia CL 897, 1956). Track 11 was previously unreleased.
Podcasts:
Art Blakey
ALBUMS
- Jazz Messengers!!!!! / A Jazz Message released: 2011
- The Jazz Messengers released: 2011
- Golden Boy released: 2010
- Cu-Bop released: 2010
- Latin & Jazz, Volume 1 released: 2009
- Birdland Masters, Volume 2 released: 2009
- Birdland Masters, Volume 1 released: 2009
- Live at the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival released: 2008
- The Early Years released: 2008
- Split Skins released: 2008
- Coleção Folha clássicos do jazz, Volume 5 released: 2007
- Holiday for Skins released: 2006
- Hard Bop released: 2005
- Quadromania Jazz Edition: Art Blakey: Out of Nowhere released: 2005
- Drum Suite released: 2005
- Les Liaisons Dangereuses released: 2004
- Jazz in Paris: 1958 Paris Olympia released: 2001
- A Night at Birdland, Volume 1 released: 2001
- Midnite Jazz & Blues: My Romance released: 2000
- Ken Burns Jazz: Definitive Art Blakey released: 2000
- Drums Around the Corner released: 1999
- The Concord Jazz Heritage Series released: 1998
- The History of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers released: 1991
- The Big Beat released: 1991
- Feel the Wind released: 1989
- New York City, Birdland Club, February 21, 1954 released: 1988
- Theory of Art released: 1988
- Live Messengers released: 1978
- Percussion Discussion released: 1976
- Hold On, I'm Coming released: 1966
- Paris 1958 released: 1959
- Holiday for Skins, Volume 1 released: 1958
- Holiday for Skins, Volume 2 released: 1958
- Orgy in Rhythm, Volume Two released: 1957
- Orgy in Rhythm, Volume One released: 1957
- Ritual: The Modern Jazz Messengers released: 1957
- New Sounds released: 1952
- Hooray for Art Blakey released:
- Orgy in Rhythm, Volumes One & Two released:
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud / Des femmes disparaissent released:
- Blakey released:
- The Best of Art Blakey released:
- Child's Dance released:
- Au Théâtre des Champs-Élysées released:
- Blues March released:
- The Jazz Messenger released:
- This Is Jazz released:
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud / Des femmes disparaissent
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Générique
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : L'Assassinat de Carla
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Sur l'autoroute
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Julien dans l'ascenseur
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Florence sur les Champs-Élysées
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Dîner au motel
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Évasion de Julien
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Visite du vigile
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Au bar du petit bac
- Ascenseur pour l'échafaud : Chez le photographe du motel
- Des femmes disparaissent : Générique
- Des femmes disparaissent : Pierre et Béatrice
- Des femmes disparaissent : Ne chuchote pas
- Des femmes disparaissent : Mambo dans la voiture
- Des femmes disparaissent : Juste pour eux seuls
- Des femmes disparaissent : Blues pour Marcel
- Des femmes disparaissent : Blues pour Vava
- Des femmes disparaissent : Pasquier
- Des femmes disparaissent : La divorcée de Leo Fall
- Des femmes disparaissent : Des femmes disparaissent
- Des femmes disparaissent : Final pour Pierre et Béatrice
Born: 1919-10-11
Died: 1990-10-16
The Art
by: TaetreStringed puppets dancing,
Drawing flies to the stench
Flesh impaled with wires
Sick, amusing, painful play
Imagination, evisceration
A morbid show
With blood on the wall
Hear people’s call
Chant and applaud
Caged in mocked misery
And audience with bleeding taste
Pulling strings, open sores
Come in,
Come in and catch the art
Barbed wire, embracing like fire
Deforming architecture
Endless desires, clawing pyre
Like a living dissection
Closing ecstasy, a fevered burning plague
Temptations lost control,
Rips apart the victims whole
Artistic patterns remain
Like a puzzle in its chaos start