Art Blakey, The Jazz Messengers

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Promotional copy. Insert and obi included.

1981, and the old master strikes again: Art Blakey unveils a Messengers lineup featuring a teenage Wynton Marsalis alongside Bobby Watson, Billy Pierce, James Williams and Charles Fambrough. The title was a provocation and the music backs it up - Watson's writing gives the band real character, Marsalis announces himself with frightening poise, and Blakey, past sixty, hits harder than drummers a third his age. The great lesson of late Blakey: the university of hard bop never lowered its standards, it just kept enrolling geniuses. Japanese pressing of the Timeless session, and a high point of the whole Messengers renaissance.