Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers · The Jazz Messengers were a jazz group around the drummer Art Blakey that existed for more than thirty-five years, from the early 1950s until Blakey's death in 1990. As early as 1947 Blakey recorded for Blue Note with a group called Art Blakey's Messengers. The real Jazz Messengers came into being around 1954 and 1955 in New York, as a collective of Blakey and the pianist Horace Silver, with Kenny Dorham and Hank Mobley, among others. The first records under that name were live recordings at Café Bohemia. After Silver left in 1956 Blakey kept the name.

Music and breakthrough

In 1958 Blakey formed a new line-up with four musicians from Philadelphia: Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt. Their album Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers produced the group's biggest hit: Moanin'. After that the saxophonist Wayne Shorter joined, and records such as A Night in Tunisia, Mosaic and Free for All followed. The music was hard bop: jazz with the speed of bebop, but with more blues, more gospel and a solid, swinging groove, driven on by Blakey's powerful drumming.

Influence

The most important thing about the Messengers was their role as a training ground. Blakey kept taking young musicians into his band. Anyone who had played with him counted in the jazz world. Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Chuck Mangione and later Wynton and Branford Marsalis began their careers there. In this way the group remained, for decades, the most important school of hard bop.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1955Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 5: Jazz Festival^NL Reader
• After Hours: Session 2^NL Reader
• After Hours: Session 2^NL Reader