Art Blakey
Art Blakey led or co-led the Jazz Messengers from 1954 until his death in 1990, and that band was the most important developmental space for hard bop musicians during those four decades. The catalog reviewed here covers the canonical Blue Note Birdland recordings, the Moanin' session with Lee Morgan and Benny Golson, the 1960s peak with Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard, and the late return on Concord. Fifteen albums across two eras. Browse below.
Browse by Era
Each era page covers a distinct period in Art's career, with full reviews, personnel details, Apple Music audio previews, and album art for every record.
Six records covering Blakey's first half-decade leading the Jazz Messengers. The Blue Note Birdland live recordings with Clifford Brown and Lou Donaldson, the Columbia and Atlantic sessions of the mid-1950s, and the canonical Moanin' with Bobby Timmons, Lee Morgan, and Benny Golson.
Nine records covering the 1960s Blue Note peak and the late Concord session. The Wayne Shorter and Lee Morgan band (The Big Beat, A Night in Tunisia, The Freedom Rider), the Riverside sessions, the post-Shorter Blue Note dates, and Straight Ahead from 1981.
Six landmark Jazz Messengers records embedded as full-album videos: Moanin', Free For All, Indestructible, Mosaic, Caravan, and A Night in Tunisia.
Open the Art Blakey video page →Art Blakey, 1919–1990
Art Blakey was born October 11, 1919, in Pittsburgh. He played piano first and switched to drums while still in his teens. He worked with Mary Lou Williams, Fletcher Henderson, and Billy Eckstine (in the orchestra that incubated Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan) before forming the Jazz Messengers as a working band in 1954.
The personnel changed constantly, and that was the point: the band was a finishing school for young hard bop musicians. Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Curtis Fuller, Hank Mobley, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, and Donald Harrison all came through.
The Blue Note catalog of the late 1950s and early 1960s is what most listeners reach for first. Moanin’ (1958) and A Night in Tunisia (1961) are the two most famous Jazz Messengers records, but the Riverside albums with Curtis Fuller and Wayne Shorter (Caravan, Ugetsu) are equally substantial.
Blakey continued leading the band through serious health problems in the 1980s, including a sharp decline in his hearing, though bandmates disagreed about how far it had gone. He died of lung cancer in New York City on October 16, 1990, at age seventy-one.