Art Blakey, The Jazz Messengers

condition (records/cover): NM / NM

Insert included. No obi.

The 1954 Birdland recordings that announced the hard bop era, complete with Pee Wee Marquette's unmistakable pint-sized introduction - one of the most famous spoken intros in all of jazz. Art Blakey with Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, Horace Silver and Curly Russell, live and absolutely on fire. Brownie plays with a brilliance that still stops trumpet players cold seventy years later: that fat singing tone, those endless ideas, that joy. Silver is already sketching the gospel-soaked language he would trademark, and Blakey drives the whole thing like a man who has just invented his own job. Foundational live jazz. Japanese Blue Note pressing, quiet and punchy.