In the '60s, when John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were defining the concept of a jazz avant-garde, few knowledgeable observers would have guessed that in another 30 years the music's mainstream would virtually bypass their innovations, in favor of the hard bop style that free jazz had apparently supplanted. As it turned out, many listeners who had come to love jazz as a sophisticated manifestation of popular music were unable to accept the extreme esotericism of the avant-garde; their tastes were rooted in the core elements of "swing" and "blues," characteristics found in abundance in the music of the Jazz Messengers, the quintessential hard bop ensemble led by drummer Art Blakey. In the '60s, '70s, and '80s, when artists on the cutting edge were attempting to transform the music, Blakey continued to play in more or less the same bag he had since the '40s, when his cohorts included the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Fats Navarro. By the '80s, the evolving mainstream consensus had reached a point of overwhelming approval in regard to hard bop: this is what jazz is, and Art Blakey -- as its longest-lived and most eloquent exponent -- was its master.
The 1960 version of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (which consisted of the drummer/leader, trumpeter Lee Morgan, tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist Jymie Meritt) was very well documented. One can argue that these performances of "It's Only a Paper Moon," "'Round Midnight," Wayne Shorter's "The Summit," "A Night in Tunisia" and Timmons' "This Here" do not add that much to the Messengers' vast legacy, but the music is really too good for hard bop fans to pass up.
Tracklist:
A1 Announcement 1:30
A2 It's Only A Papermoon 12:13
A3 'Round About Midnight 10:03
B1 A Night In Tunisia 10:39
B2 This Here 10:26
(320 kbps, cover art included)
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