ART BLAKEY

Born in Pittsburgh, PA on October 11, 1919, Art Blakey originally started out playing piano and leading a band in his early teens. He eventually switched to drums and taught himself to play, much in the manner of Sid Catlett. He spent 1942 with pianist Mary Lou Williams and the next two years with Fletcher Henderson's big band before joining the ground-breaking orchestra led by popular vocalist Billy Eckstine. Eckstine's big band was among the first to play bop, and jump-started the careers of players like Miles Davis and Dexter Gordon. By this time, Blakey had absorbed and internalized the bop style of Max Roach and Kenny Clarke, but expanded those fundamentals via his forceful explosiveness, invention and sheer power. His press rolls could lift the roof off and inspire any soloist to creative heights.

In 1947 he organized the 17 Messengers. The band was in essence a rehearsal band and later recorded with an octet that had the same name. After spending a year in Africa to learn about Islamic culture, Blakey freelanced throughout the early 1950s, playing with the likes of Clifford Brown, Miles Davis and Horace Silver. Blakey and Silver really hit it off, and in 1955, formed the co-op Jazz Messengers. Silver left after a year to form his own unit, leaving Blakey as the leader of the Messengers.

"It was the archetypal hard-bop group of the late 1950s, playing a driving, aggressive extension of bop with pronounced blues roots," according to Lewis Porter in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Porter further described Blakey's style as exuding "power and originality, creating a dark cymbal sound punctuated by frequently loud snare and bass drum accents in triplets or cross-rhythms. His much-imitated [but seldom duplicated] trademarks, the forceful closing of the hi-hat on every second and fourth beat, and the press roll, had been a part of his style since 1950. A loud and domineering drummer, Blakey also listened and responded to his soloists."

Various writers though the years have said Blakey's style reflected the influence of African rhythms. He always denied that claim, saying that African rhythms had nothing to do with the jazz feel.

Art Blakey kept The Jazz Messengers going until not long before his death on October 16, 1990.