Art Blakey (1919-1990) has been higher in my consciousness in recent months from hearing Steve "Epstein" Krantz's stories about managing jazz clubs back in the '80s. Blakey was in his last days when Steve knew him, and he speaks of the old guy with reverence. Blakey had arrived on the scene just in time to play a major part in the movement from swing to be bop. It is amazing to think of him still playing and influencing younger musicians in the age of Prince, Madonna, U2, and Guns 'N' Roses, and to think that, thanks to Steve and others, I'm only degree of separation from Art Blakey.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Blakey was influenced by a musical uncle and originally started out on piano. An almost certainly apocryphal story Blakey used to tell was that he was forced to switch from piano to drums at gunpoint by a club owner who wanted Erroll Garner on piano. Whatever the case, he was playing drums for Mary Lou Williams by the time he was 20 years old and playing with Fletcher Henderson not long thereafter. He was with Henderson's band when he was savagely beaten by a police officer while touring the Deep South, necessitating a metal plate in his head. For reason of this, he was excused from military service during World War Two.
From 1944 through 1947 he played with Billy Eckstein's big band, considered the first be bop big band, for its members included Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughn, and others. He also backed Thelonius Monk on some of his earliest recordings. Fellow drummer Max Roach met him in the mid '40s and always spoke highly of him as a peer. Around this time he began his earliest tentative outings as a band leader with various iterations of his "Messengers", though these were short lived. He then spent a couple of years in Africa, exploring the culture, and briefly converting to Islam. He launched The Jazz Messengers in earnest in 1954. Its members over the years included guys like Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard,Chuck Mangione, Keith Jarrett, and the Marsalis Brothers. Until the end, he maintained a philosophy of promoting and mentoring younger musicians.
Blakey's official website, maintained by his estate, had some great quotes: "All you have to do is to be able to feel" (it's surprising how many artists seem unable or averse to doing this seemingly basic thing). And, "This is the music of my culture, good, bad, or indifferent. No America - No Jazz. It's the only culture America has brought forth." There are also great entries on him on the web sites of Blue Note Records, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Percussive Arts Society.
October 11 is a good day for black music and dance; it's also the birthday of P.G. Lowery and Peg Leg Bates. Man, the three of them would make for one crazy act!
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