Luke Sailor

Hard Bop Messengers: Live at the Last Hotel

by Jack Bowers
August 20, 2022

First came the Jazz Messengers, led by drummer Art Blakey, a high-powered group (usually a sextet), that performed for more than thirty-five years until Blakey's death in 1990. Now come the Hard Bop Messengers, another sextet led by trombonist John Covelli, the title of whose 2022 album, Live at the Last Hotel, is rather misleading, to say the least. First, the album wasn't recorded live but in a studio; second, the studio isn't at the Last Hotel in St. Louis ...