The Jazz Messengers
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.
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…