Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

Drummer Art Blakey and his band, The Jazz Messengers, are the pioneers of a jazz subgenre called “hard bop.” Hard bop takes the fundamentals of bebop and adds elements of rhythm and blues. The idea behind hard bop was to make bebop music more danceable and, perhaps, more palatable to mainstream music fans.

Art Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1919, and by the fifties, his virtuosic and incessant drumming would put him at the forefront of the bebop genre along with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others.

In 1954, he formed the band, The Jazz Messengers, which became a training ground for up-and-coming young jazz musicians. New Orleans trumpet prodigy Wynton Marsalis would get his professional start as a member of the band. Among the best of the Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers albums are “A Night at Birdland” (Volumes 1-3) (1954), “The Jazz Messengers” (1956), “A Night in Tunisia” (1957), “Drum Suite” (1957), “Ritual” (1959), “Moanin’” (1959), “The Big Beat” (1960), “Mosaic” (1961), “Free For All,”  and “Indestructible” (1965).

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