{"id":98486,"date":"2016-06-17T08:23:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T08:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/6toplists.com\/?p=98486"},"modified":"2017-12-12T12:21:40","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T12:21:40","slug":"the-top-6-albums-of-art-blakey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/6toplists.com\/?p=98486","title":{"rendered":"The Top 6 Albums of Art Blakey"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t Order Now from Amazon\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nMirage<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nMoanin<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nThe Best of Art Blakey<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nTheory of Art<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nFree For All<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\nMosaic<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Art Blakey is a musician who featured a lot of the younger artists as they were coming up. He caught the talent early, \u00a0put it up front, and gave it a good chance to develop.<\/p>\n

Art Blakey\u2019s Jazz Messengers is all but defined hard bop. Powered by Art Blakey\u2019s compulsive, polyrhythmic drumming which transformed jazz drumming in the 50s and 60s, a succession of brilliant players who would do so much to shape jazz in the coming decades took their place at the forefront of his music \u2013 Horace Silver, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan<\/a>, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton, Curtis Fuller.<\/p>\n

And following the difficult period in the \u2018seventies when mainstream jazz could not find an audience, in the \u2018eighties a new generation of Jazz Messengers were inducted and educated in Art Blakey\u2019s band \u2013 developing the careers of Wynton Marsalis, Wallace Rooney, Terence Blanchard and Mulgrew Miller.<\/p>\n

The two greatest line-ups featured Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter (1960 \u20131961) and then Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter and Curtis Fuller (1961 \u2013 1964). The first line up produced the great albums \u201cA Night In Tunisia\u201d, \u201cRoots and Herbs\u201d, \u201cThe Freedom Rider\u201d and \u201cThe Witch Doctor\u201d; the second line up produced the even better albums \u201cMosaic\u201d, \u201cBuhaina\u2019s Delight\u201d and \u201cFree For All\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIndestructible!\u201d is a further hybrid when Lee Morgan then rejoined for one album, replacing Freddie Hubbard but keeping the sextet format in place.<\/p>\n

The addition of Curtis Fuller on trombone allowed a fuller, more complex harmonic approach to be taken and, if anything to then allow the hard rhythmic underpinnings of the music to become the more intense (listen to, for example, \u201cHammerhead\u201d or \u201cFree For All\u201d on the \u201cFree For All\u201d album where the music becomes as heavy as any jazz played anywhere)<\/p>\n

Art Blakey had learned piano in his home town of Pittsburgh<\/a> and had his own big band by the age of fifteen. He switched to drums when Erroll Garner took over the piano slot and the rest, as they say, is history. By 1939 he was touring with the Fletcher Henderson<\/a> band before joining Billy Eckstein<\/a> three years later in New York. Gigging brought him sessions with Charlie Parker<\/a> and Dizzy Gillespie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By 1948, he had visited Africa to learn polyrhythmic drumming and also took up Islam, adopting the name Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, and being referred to as \u201cBu\u201d by friends and colleagues. 1955 was the year of the partnership with Horace Silver<\/a> that led to the first Jazz Messengers band. When Horace Silver left, the name remained with Art Blakey and became a premier rallying point for the new jazz talent over the next thirty five years.<\/p>\n

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“ Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life ”<\/p>\n

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Blakey became known for his frenetic snare drum patterns, fiery cymbals and eccentric rhythms in a band that has many credit with reshaping the face of modern jazz.Over the years, Blakey’s Messengers came to include trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who was only 18 when he joined Blakey in 1981.<\/p>\n

Older Marsalis brother Branford, a saxophonist, was already a member. Others were trumpeters Mangione, Hubbard and Clifford Brown, saxophonists Jackie McLean, Wayne Shorter and Johnny Griffin, and pianists Keith Jarrett, Walter Davis and JoAnne Brackeen<\/a>, the first woman Messenger.<\/p>\n

In the late 1970s, Blakey’s ear for talent brought Valery Ponomarev<\/a>, a Kiev-born trumpeter only months out of the Soviet Union, into the Messengers. But Blakey denied being a teacher, saying that as a self-taught musician, “I don’t know anything myself.”<\/p>\n

Yet at another time he said, “When I take these 18-year-old kids out on tour, it makes most of the pros feel like cutting their wrists. . . . They’re going to take the music farther than it has been.” In a television film about Blakey’s career, Messengers alumnus Davis said: “I think no one in jazz has brought more great musicians to music than Art Blakey.”<\/p>\n

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The 1981 Newport Jazz Festival<\/a> gave over an evening to “The Blakey Legacy,” in which the drummer was joined by the players who had been with his band during the previous quarter century.<\/p>\n

When the Marsalis brothers opted for individual fame, Blakey quickly replaced them with two other promising youths–trumpeter Terence Blanchard<\/a> and saxophonist Donald Harrison<\/a>. (Recently Blanchard and Branford Marsalis<\/a> teamed on the title duet of the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s film “Mo’ Better Blues.”)<\/p>\n

There was more than just a musical side to Blakey. He was a fierce defender of racial justice, in the process incurring the displeasure of some blacks.<\/p>\n

Blakey had been living in Manhattan<\/a> when he died of lung cancer, aged 71, at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center. His New York Times<\/em> obituary notes that he was survived by four daughters (Gwendolyn, Evelyn, Jackie, and Sakeena), and four sons (Takashi, Kenji, Gamal, and Akira)<\/p>\n

Max Roach described him thus:<\/p>\n

“Although Blakey discourages comparison of his own music with African drumming, he adopted several African methods\u00a0after his visit in 1948-9, including rapping on the side of the drum and using his elbow on the tom-tom to alter the pitch.<\/p>\n

Later he organized recording sessions with multiple drummers, including some African musicians. His much-imitated trademark, the forceful closing of the hi-hat on every second and fourth beat, has been part of his style since 1950\u201351. \u2026 A loud and domineering drummer, Blakey also listens and responds to his soloists.”<\/p>\n

Let’s have a look now at the top six albums of Art Blakey, the great jazz messenger:<\/p>\n

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6. Mosaic<\/h2>\n

\u201cMosaic\u201d finds the band in 1961 with the partnership between Freddie Hubbard<\/a>, Curtis Fuller<\/a> and Wayne Shorter<\/a> in full bloom. The album conveys a maturity and an elegance that sets it above the thrash jazz of \u201cA Night In Tunisia\u201d or \u2018Free For All\u201d and yet the music stays true to the spirit of hard bop \u2013 challenging, demanding, uplifting, pointing to the possibility of transformation. Beauty in the face of the corruption of the world.<\/p>\n

A hard beauty that is indestructible. In that sense this is the music which is heir to the legacy of the blues.<\/p>\n