The Jazz Messengers
The Jazz Messengers were an American jazz group formed in the mid-1950s by drummer Art Blakey and pianist Horace Silver. The band is closely tied to hard bop, and Blakey led it for more than thirty-five years, until his death in 1990. Over that time it worked as a school for young players, many of whom went on to lead groups of their own. Silver led the first Blue Note sessions under the name in 1954 and 1955, with Blakey, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham and Doug Watkins. Silver left in 1956 and Blakey kept the band, later billed as Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
Aliases: Art Blakey
Olympia Concert (LP)
Early 1970's US re-issue on Mercury of the 1959 French live album.
Straight Ahead (LP)
Original Japanese edition with different cover on Concord Jazz of the 1981 album. With insert and obi.
Gotham City (LP)
Original Japanese edition on CBS/Sony of the 1981 album featuring Art Blakey and George Benson. With insert and obi.
Francis Paudras Legacy / Cecilia Powell's Heritage series voll. 1 to 10 (10LP bundle)
All 10 volumes released in 1989 on Black Saint / Mythic Sound's "Francis Paudras Legacy / Cecilia Powell's Heritage" series dedicated to Powell's recordings from 1944 to 1964 featuring Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Lee Konitz, Jay Jay Johnson, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Barney Wilen, Zoot Sims and Johnny Griffin among many others.
Julius Watkins Sextet (LP)
Original and sole vinyl edition on Blue Note's "10 Inch LP Collection" of the Japan-only compilation coupling two 1954 10"s featuring Art Blakey and Hank Mobley. With insert and obi.
One Night With Blue Note Volume 3 (LP)
Original Japanese edition on Blue Note of the 1985 live album. With insert.
Somethin' Else (LP)
Rare 1994 Japanese re-issue on Blue Note's "LP 1500 Collection" series of the 1958 album featuring Miles Davis and Art Blakey. With insert and obi.
Alison's Uncle / Autumn Leaves (12"EP)
1983 Japan-only EP on Blue Note with recordings from 1958 featuring Miles Davis and Art Blakey. With insert and obi.
A Night At Birdland Volume 1 (LP)
1976 Japanese re-issue in Blue Note's "Jazz Right Now" series of the 1956 album. With insert.
Au Club Saint-Germain Vol. 2 (LP)
1976 Japanese re-issue in RCA's "RCA不滅のジャズ1800" series of the 1959 album. With insert and obi.
3 Blind Mice (LP)
1976 Japanese re-issue in United Artists' "Jazz Library 1500" series of the 1962 album. With insert and obi.
Tough! (LP)
1976 Japanese re-issue in Chess/Cadet's "Chess Black Sounds Collection" series of the 1966 album with recordings from 1957. With obi.
A Day With Art Blakey 1961 (2LP)
1983 Japanese edition with different cover on Timeless of the Dutch 1981 album. With insert and obi.
Album Of The Year (LP)
1983 Japanese edition with different cover on Timeless of the Dutch 1981 album. With insert and obi.
Keystone 3 (LP)
Original Japanese edition on Concord Jazz of the 1982 album. With insert and obi.
Aurex Jazz Festival '83 (LP)
Promotional copy of the original edition of the Japan-only 1983 LP in Eastworld's "Aurex Jazz Festival" series. With insert and obi.
New Year's Eve At Sweet Basil (LP)
1986 re-press of the 1985 Japanese live album on Paddle Wheel. With insert and obi.
Drum Suite (CD)
1992 release (light wear) ** The 1957 Columbia session with a split personality, and both halves are excellent. One side belongs to the Art Blakey Percussion Ensemble - Art Blakey surrounded by Latin percussion masters, exploring African and Afro-Cuban drumming in extended, ritualistic pieces years before such projects became fashionable. The other side is a hard-swinging Messengers date, business as usual at the highest level. Blakey's lifelong fascination with the drum as a global instrument, …
Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (CD)
1992 release (light wear) ** 1958, and a perfect match: Thelonious Monk sits in with Art Blakey's Messengers - Johnny Griffin and Bill Hardman in the front line - for a full program of Monk compositions. Blakey understood Monk's rhythm like few drummers ever have; the two go back to the foundational 1947 Blue Note sessions together, and that deep history is audible in every bar. Monk's angles and Blakey's shuffle lock together like old machinery that never rusted. Griffin, soon to join Monk's ow…
Mosaic (CD)
1992 release (light wear) ** The 1961 sextet masterpiece: Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Curtis Fuller, Cedar Walton, Jymie Merritt - and Art Blakey detonating Walton's title track, one of the great set-openers in the hard bop repertoire. This edition of the Messengers was a compositional powerhouse: nearly everyone in the band wrote, and wrote brilliantly, giving the records of this period a richness that goes far beyond blowing-session logic. Shorter's pieces already carry that unmistakable s…
Free For Alll (CD)
1994 release (light wear) ** February 1964: the most ferocious Messengers record ever made, and one of the most intense hard bop sessions in the whole Blue Note vault. Wayne Shorter's title track is eleven minutes of controlled fury - Art Blakey playing like a man possessed, pushing wave after wave of pressure under the horns, with Freddie Hubbard answering everything at full burn. Shorter's "Hammer Head" and Hubbard's "The Core" keep the temperature high. Recorded right as the new thing was bre…
Moanin'
Moanin’ is the sound of Art Blakey turning a band into a congregation, with Lee Morgan’s trumpet, Benny Golson’s tenor saxophone, Bobby Timmons’s piano, and Jymie Merritt’s bass all testifying over Blakey’s unmistakable cymbal crashes and press rolls. From the call‑and‑response of the title track to the burning hard‑bop vehicles that follow, the record distils church‑infused, blues‑drenched celebration into a small‑group format. Each soloist brings a distinct voice – Morgan’s bright fire, Golson…
Buttercorn Lady
On Buttercorn Lady, Art Blakey leads a brief but blazing mid‑60s Jazz Messengers lineup at The Lighthouse, launching a young Keith Jarrett and Chuck Mangione in a hard‑bop set that feels both like a proving ground and a joyous passing of the torch.
Des Femmes Disparaissent
Art Blakey was the new hero on the Paris jazz scene, thanks to his Olympia concert on November 22nd 1958, and his subsequent appearances at the Club St. Germain. People swore by his 'Blues March' and 'Moanin', so why not get him to do the soundtrack for the film Molinaro just finished? The only problem, albeit a major one, was that time was short, so an original score was out of the question: the Jazz Messengers would have to preach the good word by other means. Fortunately, the band's tenor and…
Roots & Herbs
** Special Time-Limited Offer ** With Roots & Herbs, Art Blakey leads a Jazz Messengers unit that includes Lee Morgan on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Bobby Timmons on piano, and Jymie Merritt on bass, a line‑up that can pivot from crisp unisons to eruptive solos in a heartbeat. The tunes are full of rhythmic feints and harmonic twists, yet the band makes it all sound effortless. Blakey’s drumming is simultaneously a grid and a storm: he sets up hits, detonates climaxes, and constan…
Mosaic
** Special Time-Limited Offer ** On Mosaic, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers show exactly why the band became a kind of graduate school for hard bop. This edition of the Messengers fields Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Cedar Walton at the piano, Jymie Merritt on bass, and Blakey himself driving the drums, a front line and rhythm section as elegant as they are explosive. The compositions are memorable without ever feeling formulaic, stit…
Like Someone In Love
One of the greatest line-ups of drummer Art Blakey’s hard bop finishing school The Jazz Messengers locked into place in 1960 when tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter joined trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist Jymie Merritt for the recording of The Big Beat, an album that signaled the transformation of the band into a modern jazz juggernaut. In August of that year The Jazz Messengers returned to Van Gelder Studio twice for sessions that would yield the companion albums A Night In…
Second Set Lausanne 1960
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers ignite the Lausanne stage in Second Set Lausanne 1960, channeling hard bop’s volatile spirit through a telepathic lineup. Reeling through standards and infernal originals, the band radiates volcanic intensity and effortless swing, immortalizing a high-water mark in live jazz.
Caravan
Orrin Keepnews produced Art Blakey's 1963 debut for Riverside Records, a hard-bop triumph featuring an all-aces band: Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton and Reggie Workman. Blakey drives them with power and passion as they play Caravan: Sweet 'n' Sour: In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning: This Is for Albert: Skylark, and Thermo. Back on vinyl again!
The Jazz Messengers
On December 17, 1947 Art Blakey led a group known as “Art Blakey’s Messengers” in his first recording session as a leader, for Blue Note Records. The records were issued as 78’s at the time and two of the songs were released on the New Sounds 10” LP compilation (BLP 5010). This octet included Kenny Dorham, Howard Bowe, Sahib Shihab, Musa Kaleem, Ernest Thompson, Walter Bishop, Jr., and LaVerne Baker. Around the same time – in 1947 or 1949 – Blakey led a big band called “Seventeen Messengers”. Th…
Ugetsu
Ugetsu: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers at Birdland is a live jazz album by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers released on Riverside Records in October 1963. The album was recorded at Birdland in New York City.
The original LP had six tracks and producer Orrin Keepnews stated in the liner notes that "there were other performances taped that night that couldn't be fitted into the resulting album". The Jazz Messengers' tour in Japan had ended a few months before this live performance; then the band d…
Introducing Paul Bley
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Originally released in 1953 on Charles Mingus's own "Debut" label, this is Paul Bley's historical debut album. Here the young talented and technically strong pianist appears as leader of a super-trio with nothing but Mingus himself on bass and Art Blakey on drums. This is a beautifully varied set including both renditions of classic standards such as "I can't get Started", and Bley's early originals like "Opus 1" and "Spontaneous Combustion" This is where you ca…
Blakey In Paris
*300 copies limited edition* This is Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers, with guests Bud Powell - piano and Barney Wilen - alto sax, caught live at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in1959. At that time Blakey's Messengers were no less than Lee Morgan – trumpet, Wayne Shorter – tenor sax, Walter Davis Jr. – piano and Jymmy Meritt – bass. In other words one of the greatest Hard Bop combos ever, a pool of great young individuals under the direction of one of the most influential drummers and…
A Night In Tunisia
Remastered, Mono, 180 gram. Released in the late fifties, A Night In Tunisia is a Jazz milestone and prime example of Blakey's exceptional rhythmic prowess. This album is not all about drumming though; it leaves much space for great melodical interplay by fellow musicians Sam Dockery on piano, John Griffin and Ferris Benda on saxophone, Bill Hardman on trumpet and Jimmy De Brest on double bass.
Art Blakey is one of the inventors of the modern bebop style of drumming. Known as a powerful musician…
Orgy In Rhythm - Volume One
It is interesting how the Jazz sounds of the 1950s and early 1960s influenced later psychedelic bands and if you dig yourself through to the most influentual records of that mind expanding extraordinary wing of jazz music you will hit Art Blakey and this album directly with your nose. The title says it all and what you get to listen to here will surely take you away from the cold and grey reality and drag you onto a trip to the center of your galaxy. It starts with a haunting passage that shows …
Indestructible
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Blue Note, here comes the first releases of a new series of LPs, entitled Great Reid Miles Covers, that celebrates the extraordinary and famous covers created by graphic designer and photographer Reid Miles, the artist who gave an unmistakable image to the albums of the blue label and also wrote an unforgettable page in the history of graphic design of the 20th Century. For this series, the new masters were processed by Kevin Gray from the original anal…