Lee Morgan Performance
This is a beautiful performance of Benny Golson’s “I Remember Clifford” by Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Lee Morgan and Golson. This is probably from a November 1958 European tour.
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Wayne Shorter Talks Saxophone and Saxophonists
This 1992 interview of Wayne Shorter by fellow saxophonist Mel Martin is wonderfully in-depth and revealing. Wayne talks about horns, meeting John Coltrane and Lester Young, joining Blakey and Miles and other early career highlights.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Art Blakey Photograph By Herman Leonard
Blakey in action was a thing to behold. I saw him perhaps a hundred times over 30 years and he threw himself into every performance with everything he had. At the first Mt. Fuji Blue Note Festival, after a jam session, I asked tenor saxophonist Ralph Bowen what it was like playing with Art. He said simply, “It’s like being chased by a team of wild horses.”
(A Herman Leonard photograph available at www.morrisonhotelgallery.com)
-Michael Cuscuna
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Read MoreArt Blakey All-Star Big Band with Woody Shaw
Oh, man, it’s great seeing this. This is from the second Mt. Fuji Blue Note Jazz Festival. Every time we had Art Blakey at the festival, I’d assemble a big band around him to close the three-day festival. Looking at Art, swinging like hell, connecting with the musicians and with the audience — what an amazing man. Woody Shaw is in magnificent form here. That’s Bobby Watson taking the alto breaks, and, of course, Herbie Hancock on piano, He and Woody are locked in on this. Cool to see young musicians in and among veterans like Grachan Moncur and James Spaulding.
-Michael Cuscuna
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View VideoArt Blakey Takes A Solo
Art Blakey, Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones were the greatest drummers of the ‘50s. All three were very different from each other in approach, sense of swing and style. What they did have in common was the insistence of keeping drum solos concise and played over the tempo of the tune. Here is a great example of Blakey’s approach from a 1965 London show with Lee Morgan, John Gilmore, John Hicks and Victor Sproles.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers: Class of ’57
Well, well, it’s nice to see the Night Lights site paying homage to a wonderful, overlooked edition of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Jackie McLean, Bill Hardman, Sam Dockery and Spanky De Brest. It was a gem of a band and recorded frequently during its short existence. When we started our Mosaic Singles series, one of the first project I targeted as this band’s HARD BOP LP on Columbia (MCD-1005). There was actually another half of album of material used on DRUM SUITE, so I combined it all and was lucky enough to discover stereo session reels and make it available in that format for the first time.
-Michael Cuscuna
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The Blue Note sound: listening to the heart of Hard Bop
I think it’s safe to say that Hard Bop (as in the Blue Note sound forged by Art Blakey and Horace Silver) is the foundation of modern jazz today, even more so than the stylistic revolution (Be bop) which made it possible. Here are five prime examples.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Thelonious Monk And Art Blakey: 24 Years Of Telepathy
Patrick Jarenwattananon wrote an excellent blog on the deep music relationship that Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey shared from Monk’s first Blue Note sessions in 1947 to his final studio recordings in London in 1971. An added bonus is a video of “’Round Midnight” by the Giants Of Jazz (Monk, Blakey, Sonny Stitt, Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding and Al McKibbon) from a 1971 European tour.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Read MoreArt Blakey – Interview & Performance
An interview with Art Blakey from 1965 and a performance of Freddie Hubbard’s “Jodo” with Hubbard, Nathan Davis, Jaki Byard and Reggie Workman.
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