Jazz Articles about Art Blakey

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Blakey's Beat

by John Kelman
July 12, 2004

Art Blakey may never have strayed far from the music that captured his spirit in his youth, namely the more soulful and simple-themed variation on bebop called hard bop, but throughout the course of his fifty-plus year career, he was a constant, most notably with his Jazz Messengers band, starting in '53 and continuing until literally months before his death in '90. Blakey's Beat is part of Concord Jazz's reissue series that releases two like-minded CDs as a budget-priced two-CD ...

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers

by Samuel Chell
February 21, 2004

Rare and Rewarding

This concert date by Blakey, filmed during the summer of 1976 in Umbria, Italy, is visually stunning. The setting is a make-shift stage in the street, nestled among stucco houses in a space so confined as to suggest an intimate night club. The crowd is attentive and receptive, though not especially enthusiastic. Some listeners are simply peering out from open casa windows. Sartorially, this edition of the Messengers fits in particularly well. They look less like jazz ...

Art Blakey: A Night in Tunisia

by Matt Rand
July 17, 2002

Recorded in 1957, Art Blakey's A Night in Tunisia jumps right into powerful rhythms, pounding through a full two-and-a-half minutes before a melody begins. But once begun, the melody, the chord changes, and even the solos, are all just an afterthought to the music's driving force. The force is unrelenting: when the young bassist, Spanky De Brest, cannot keep up, Blakey keeps moving forward. Included on this particular reissue are alternate takes of the first three cuts ...

Art Blakey: A Night At Birdland, Vols. 1 and 2

by Michael Fortuna
September 1, 2001

We should all stand up right now and applaud Alfred Lion and Rudy Van Gelder of Blue Note Records for rolling the tapes at Birdland on a February night in 1954.Lion and Van Gelder captured drummer Art Blakey's quintet at the New York nightclub on a night when they were really cooking. Because of their efforts, listeners have been able to relive A Night at Birdland whenever they wanted to. Now, Van Gelder has digitally remastered the two-volume ...

Dinah Washington: Queen of the Juke Box "Live", 1948-1955

by Dave Nathan
January 1, 2001

Ted Ono's Baldwin Street Music has rescued Dinah Washington's live performances from New York's Birdland, Royal Roost and Basin Street. There are also a couple of cuts from the soundtrack of Harlem Variety Review. It was during this period that many of her recordings consistently appeared at the top of the R & B charts. But it wasn't until her classic “What a Difference a Day Made" that she broke through to the pop charts. The first performance on the ...

Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers: Coast To Coast

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 2000

Now that Concord Jazz is in the midst of a number of reissues from the label’s classic albums, jazz listeners are fortunate that Carl Jefferson had the foresight and opportunity to record the Jazz Messengers’ mid-eighties band in live performances a continent apart. With one disk recorded in New York’s Mikell’s and the other recorded almost a year later in San Francisco’s Kimball’s, the set offers a complement for comparing the two gigs and augmenting Art Blakey’s discography with even ...

Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers: Reflections Of Buhaina

by Jim Santella
November 1, 2000

A reissue, Reflections Of Buhaina contains two albums: one by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and one by the Bill Hardman Quintet. Study In Rhythm (Elektra 120 and Savoy MG 1217) features trumpeter Hardman and saxophonist Jackie McLean as Jazz Messengers. The Bill Hardman Quintet (Savoy MG 12170) features the trumpeter with Sonny Red, Ronnie Mathews, Doug Watkins and Jimmy Cobb. They’re performing the last four tracks listed below.

“Reflections of Buhaina” changes meter as well as drum set ...