condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (light ring wear)

The 1958 European tour is the stuff of legend, and this is why. Art Blakey brought the Messengers to the Paris Olympia with a front line of Lee Morgan and Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons at the piano and Jymie Merritt on bass, and a French audience that had waited a very long time for this music went completely out of its mind. The band plays accordingly. Golson's writing gives the set its shape, Morgan is nineteen and already frightening, and Blakey drives the whole thing with those press rolls that seem to physically lift the tempo. Recorded hot, in front of people, exactly as it should be.

Mercury pressing of the Paris Olympia recordings. Hard bop as a live event rather than a studio product.